A few weeks ago was my first U21 Standard Youth Squad camp!  It was a great four days to kick off the start of my winter training.  The camp was a prime opportunity to chat with the coaches and the rest of the team about the 3 qualifiers that have just past to see where we could all improve (see my other post).  It was also a really good chance to discuss next summer and my target events for the year ahead, exciting times!  The week was pretty tough for me as I had a lot of uni work to catch up on in the evenings; I had a report to hand in on the Friday of the camp and I had to catch up on the four days I had missed, I had a few late nights but it’s all done now!  All in all a great week with good improvements and lots of takeaways to work on.

I flew down from Edinburgh to Southampton on Monday night and hopped on a train to Weymouth.  The camp started on Tuesday and after an introduction to the team we quickly got on the water.  The main focuses of the camp were downwind turning, downwind tactics and match racing tactics.  We headed downwind into Weymouth bay on one of the days; here’s a short clip of the downwind turning I’ve been working on…

Thanks to Alex Mills Barton for the filming.

The match racing was very hard!  We were fortunate to be joined by a few of the sailors from the British Sailing Team who taught us a thing or two… or three… or four… about match racing tactics.  Loads of fun and heaps to learn which is super exciting!  We rounded the camp off with some short races in Weymouth Bay; a perfect chance to piece together the points discussed and consolidate them as much as possible.

We finished early on the final day of the camp which allowed me an hour or two to get some boat preparation done before my flight back home; it’s pretty hard to find the time to work on my boat when its kept 460 miles away! The boat is now all ready for a trip abroad this Christmas!  The rest of the team and I are heading out to Palamos, Spain for the Christmas regatta on the 15th.  I’ve not been away from home at that time of year before so that might be a challenge ,but I will be home just in time for Christmas Day.

I have a busy block of training at the moment including some training as part of the Scottish Elite Squad and the Scottish Keelboat Academy, looking forward to it!

Thanks for reading,

Lewis