Yngling newbies

In the first of a regular column for thedailysail Victoria Rawlinson reports on the first regatta of their Olympic campaign

A few weeks ago we jumped into the Yngling for the very first time as a new team. Now we’ve completed our first International Regatta - the Sail for Gold. What a learning experience!

With such a short amount of time between forming the team and our first event, we chose to focus on boat handling in the run up to the regatta. The least we could do was try to turn the corners well! So, in the blue waters of Poole Harbour, with a video camera at the ready, we set out to learn how to go round the cans in an Yngling.

We worked hard and were fairly pleased with our progress. We were blessed with beautifully light winds - ideal for learning the ropes. True to form, as one would expect, the Sail for Gold turned into a strong breeze event! We brought in a coach to help us come up with a starting routine that reflected our individual strengths. From our Youth days, Emma and I knew that starting was going to be a main focus area for us. We divided roles for the pre-start accordingly and came up with a strong routine. We had no way of gauging our speed, other than the feel of the boat and the look of the sails, so that was another unknown going into the event.

As a team we established what out goals for the Sail for Gold should be. We set no performance goals - what would be the point? We needed to find out where we were in comparison to the fleet - how was our boat speed, where were we weak? Finding a tuning partner for the rest of the year was another important aim for the regatta.

The next goal was to see how our boat handling faired under the pressure of racing. Unfortunately our limited training time before the event meant we hadn’t yet experienced the windy conditions we were racing in. Consequently our boat handling was not up to scratch.

We implemented our new starting routine, with success! Still lots of work to do in order to be sure of getting a winning pin end, middle or committee boat end start, but a promising start (so to speak!)

The next question was whether if we were up to fleet speed. We put ourselves in some pretty tough positions over the weekend, where we needed to hold some tight lanes - and we were so pleased with the result. We were holding our own on speed and had great height - brilliant for an Yngling, which generally reaches a certain speed and doesn’t go any faster, so height is a great weapon! We’ve still got work to do, particularly on using the controls to best effect and as smoothly as possible, so there are many hours of tuning ahead of us.

The best part of the regatta was the medal race, commentated by Andy Green, making it all the more exciting! We were one of the three Brits battling for first, second and third all the way round. The breeze was up and our speed was great. We fell down on boat handling and eventually finished fourth, but what a great way to end the regatta!