Sometimes I go to school, and I love it!

On Thursday I’ve been at school, and with one of the best coaches around! My friend Paolo, from Scuola Vela Toscana, recently bought a Mini650, ITA520, and invited me to his first training session in Genova where the Italian sailing federation is basing most of the Mini650 activity at the moment. Could I pass on the opportunity to sail on a completely new boat for me, and to be coached by the latest winner of the Mini Transat? I don’t really think so, and in fact I immediately accepted the invitation.

We left a bit late from Pisa, so when we arrived, the other 5 crews were ready to go sailing and we had to rush a bit with the boat setup. It was my first time on a Mini, and the second one for Paolo, but we were eager to throw ourselves in the mix, and quickly we found ourselves on a port close reach in 12kts of ESE breeze and a reasonably steep 50cm swell. I cannot say if the briefing had been a bit short and vague, or if we had been too distracted at thinking about our to-do-list, nevertheless as a result we were not entirely sure of what we were supposed to do in most of the excercises. For example at the time we did not think that we were supposed to be working with weight distribution down below…it is obvious now, but I guess that, in a way, we were too focused on the macro stuff to have brainpower available for the rest; a bit like being beginners all over again.

After the close reach came the broad reach with the Code 0… and again the learning curve was super steep! I guess that there is no better way to learn about Code 0 setup than to break the tack line and loose the bowsprit to leeward after having done something wrong.

Anyway, after struggling a bit we managed to recover the sail and to rejoin the others just in time for the final two excercises, in which actually we did not do bad at all!! Sailing close hauled we were pointing higher than everyone else and only loosing a bit of speed against the more experienced crews, while running downwind with the gennaker we were more or less keeping the pace of the fleet. I must say, though, that the best part of the day was the debriefing. Ambrogio really went deep into it, showing us all the pictures and videos one by one, commenting on sail trim, boat heel and pitch, rig tension and manouvers.

I’m sad that I could not stay until the end of the weekend, but I really learned a lot about this little boat. Also, it has been good to be the trainee for once, something that unfortunately does not happen very often to me. It is not only very good to be pushed outside my comfort zone, but also to see how another coach plans and executes his sessions.

Of course, I can’t wait to give it another go!