It's not really my style to blow my own trumpet but since it's the club's trumpet I will!

From where I was standing the day looked very useful. We had 22 boats on the water, only four of which are regulars on the circuit so hopefully Mike Gibson and Richard Pakes confirmed how friendly the class is and have given everybody the confidence to have a go at an open meeting. Fifteen new boats with twenty regulars should be interesting...

Mike started off with a rigging and tuning session around ItsNeverOva (616), explaining all the settings for different wind conditions with Richard volunteering his secrets as well.

After reviewing everybody's boats this was followed by an on the water boat handling session around a small triangular course, with Richard and Mike pointing out improvements that individuals could make to improve their performance. During this period Richard was filming much of the action, both good and bad, and this was projected onto the big screen (after a very tasty lunch) with a very informative commentary by Mike.

Back on the water Mike gave a demonstration of roll tacking and gybing in front of all the helms and then it was quickly round the buoys again for everybody to pick up on the lunchtime briefing.

This was followed by some starting practice, a short windward leeward course was set up with a 3 2 1 0 start sequence and around six starts were made. The improvement over this intensive period was remarkable, 55 seconds between first and last starter on the first start and about fifteen seconds on the last start. Many lessons were learned, but I won't give them all away here! The only one I will mention is the discovery that it's not a good idea to get to the committee boat early and then try to stay behind the line by reaching down the line at rapidly increasing speed with twenty other boats coming up underneath you calling "Windward"!

A final debrief and video review rounded off the day, with thanks being expressed to Mike (484) and Richard (666) for their presentation, Geoff (644) and Muriel Tucker in the galley and Nick Smith (623) for the use of his video camera.