We had another one of these very unusual misty, light wind weekends at the RCYC. On Saturday we got 3 boats out for the sail training, with the best breeze we have seen for 4 weeks, topping out at 12kn. Duane was wearing his safety hat for good reasons.

I am very amazed how ambitious our students really are to get out on the water. Clearly the mist and the light wind conditions did not hamper their sailing spirit during the last month. We set a course around two marks to improve the crew work on all boast. It was also great to see a big fleet of RCYC yachts at the start of the Inter Professions Team Challenge. The team on Bally Hoo II was clearly nailing the start on this one, well done.

The weather didn’t change much for our Lipton training on Sunday, as the fog only cleared in the afternoon and we probably only saw a max wind of 8 kn. Team B&G, Escape and the UCT team on Mac a Tini battled it out. It was nice to match our boat speed against the other 2 boats. It sure helps to keep the concentration of our team on a higher level, if we have someone to sail against. We did rabbit starts at the No 10 and used the No 4 as the weather mark. Despite it was the first training day for the UCT students, they sure put up a good fight. Once they have sorted out their crew work, they will be as competitive as they were during the last few Liptons. It’s great to see that the UCT students are managing to keep up their competitive sailing with various teams each year.

Something has to happen with our wind in Cape Town or our academy students are dying of boredom pretty soon. It’s nice to ghost around sometimes but please not every weekend.

Apart from the weekly sail training, team B&G is also getting together for some team building during the week. So far they climbed Lions Hill in the dark, did a work out at the Sea Point open air gym with some weird other gym fanatics off the street and are planning a bowling evening. It is quite important for a sailing team to let off some steam together. Physical exercise beats the far too common drinking exercise of other teams hands down. After all, sailing is supposed to be a sport and slowly but surely many sailors around the world are taking their sport and their physical fitness level a lot more serious.

Alcohol and the effect thereof sure has some entertaining factor to most of us. It’s just a matter to demonstrate the younger folks how to combine sailing and drinking in a more sensible way. There is no other sport I can think of that has that affect on people, to frantically rush to the bar directly after a race.

In an effort to make it easier for our teams to find sponsorship for their Lipton campaign, the academy committee has decided to assist the teams to purchase the sails they need for a successful campaign. It is a lot easier to sell the marketing value of a well-structured racing campaign than begging for money to buy some sails to make it happen. A lot of potential sponsors are not willing to get involved in the process of ordering sails anyway. I hope some potential sponsors do see the value our young sailing teams have to offer to represent their brand.

It’s about time that younger teams get the same support as teams who sail Lipton for the last 20 years.