Bitter Sweet

With the first month of 2015 been and gone and my boat out of the water to get the undersides made nice for the race season it is the perfect time to sit down and review how the month has been.

Up on returning from the Christmas period I was straight in to training with Lorient Grand Large coach Tanguy alongside the Rookies. The idea of these training sessions been to drill in the boat handling side (which was Well needed after a long break from the Figaro). starting off pretty rusty I slowly remembered bit by bit where to pull all the ropes to and how get the boat around a course.

It is great to be getting out training in Lorient from the beginning of January considering last year I started training in Feb down here... it's great to have a bit more time in this very tight program-especially with the Figaro been moved forward starting the last week in May!!

Towards the end of January The French Pro sailors started to reappeared from their winter hibernation / sponsor duties. it was good to line up against these guys and find out how I would match up. With the boat fairly well set up I had some good speed against the French guys and in turn go invited to train with them when the group got split up in to a lower and higher level.

The first thing on the agenda was double handed speed testing (so that we can play and adjust the rigs more easily with a second person on board. This was a good week for me and I found I had great speed and sailing well finding myself at the front of most tuning runs and races too.

Now the not so pleasant side for me over the last couple of weeks has been an unidentifiable electronics issue. I have been having multiple different issues that all seem un connected. So I got under way trying to identify and isolate the problem methodically working systematically unplugging and reconnecting different parts on the NKE system unfortunately I didn't have much luck.

Having this electrical problem has made it almost impossible to use the pilot and training which makes head sail peel & kite work hard as well as the ability to trim and play with the sails.

with the boat currently in the shed some parts have been sent back to NKE for in house testing. hopefully they will find a problem.