Friday July the 10th was the date set for the second free - yes free! - training day for Osprey members. Following on from Jim Hunt at Blithfield in April it was time to call upon the talents of Adam Bowers to continue the knowledge transfer.

10 boats took up the offer directly before the successful Weymouth Regatta and were rewarded with a truly fabulous day to be afloat. The sun shone all day and the wind settled at an ideal force 3 from the East therefore providing some slight waves to add to the technical side of the day.

Things kicked off with a short briefing followed by around 2 hours afloat carrying out short course starts, beats and runs. Adam was in contact with the fleet at key points in his RIB to give live feedback and advice to individuals as required.

The biggest observations were rig set ups being too raked or insufficient lower mast control and leeward mark rounds that were too narrow on entry and subsequently too wide on exit.

Back ashore for some well-earned lunch Adam then ran back through the video footage played out on the big TV screen in the clubhouse to pick up on the key points and to demonstrate the differences achieved after boat and crew adjustments.

Once everybody had recharged it was time to do some boat park discussion to look at boat setups and crew drills for kite work. Crew communication also formed a big part of the day in general.

The last part of the day saw the boats afloat again in a slowly dropping breeze to repeat the drills of the morning to look for improvement which was clear to see especially the leeward mark rounding and also to broach slightly onto the race tactics of downwind sailing and start line positioning.

Later on the crews were asked to hover in position on Starboard tack before heading upwind and then tack on mass at the sound of Adams whistle; this focussed his attention on tacking techniques and handle to handle crew tacks as well as pointing angles upwind.

The session was completed with a wing mark added to look at techniques and reach to reach gybing along with the pros and cons of twin pole systems as opposed to single pole in this mode, an interesting debate!

A further debrief followed, again with video playback to end the day after some 11 plus hours! This happened to tie in nicely with the bar opening and a more informal chat with individuals until a lot later into the evening.

Many thanks to those that attended and gained an advantage over those that didn't!! Also a big class thank you to Adam for making the day so involving and relative to the people that campaign these awesome machines.

Already looking forward to the next one.

Videos available on YouTube