Thursday 9 June 2016

97. Sailing - Laser Radial

Event: Sailing - Laser Radial
Date: 9th June 2016
Location: Alton Water Sailing Club  
Cost: £25 each for 3 hour lesson  
Rules:  The Laser Radial is a one person dinghy; a popular design of small sailing dinghy. It's a single-handed boat (sailed by one person).  The Olympic course had a target time of 60 minutes for races and 30 minutes for medal races, for which ten boats qualified. There were many course configurations that race management could choose from. 

   
The Event:



Result:
Olympic Gold Medal, London 2012: Xu Lijia, China. 

Comments:  
Sarah: One more time on the water, and I was sure we'd go in. We weren't banking on nearly completely still conditions, which may not have been ideal for sailing, but it was ideal for us! A quick refresher on the shore from our instructor James, and we took to the water for a gentle...well....'float' you could call it. Or 'drift'. The wind was playing games with us and appearing on the water everywhere but where we were. We tried to chase it, but as soon as we got to the spot, it dropped. It would have been nice if there were a little more wind so we could have felt some speed and attempted some tacks, but this was a lovely relaxing way to end our sailing events. 
          
Ellie: Our last sailing event of our challenge and we were trusted to be in charge of a boat by ourselves. I was certain I was going to capsize and/or ruin a really expensive boat. Luckily, for me and for the boat, the water was really calm and there was so little wind that we could really take our time and amble across the water. Surprisingly, this was by far my favourite sailing lesson. I felt that there was very little pressure because the weather was so forgiving and we had plenty of time to chat about sailing and Alton Water. We did have to give up on our sail when the wind gave up on us but we'd had a good outing and it was a lovely session to end on.

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