Friday 14 May 2010

Spanish Eyes




The first of a new kind of event starts with paella and a beer on Sunday on the beach by the Mar Menor in Spain. Alan Hillman's new style Mothfest is already popular with 20 odd entrants. With long distance races, slaloms, pursuit races and three days of coaching by me and Alan, the positioning of the event has found popularity with Moth sailors who want to enjoy a some free ride time with their boats in a great environment. Sailings version of a golfing holiday if you like.

We hope to raise everyones skill levels which are a great mix of personal ambitons in a unique environment where the goal of the event is not to find the champion but to individually improve and collectively have fun.

Each sailor has completed a score card giving us an idea of their strengths and weaknesses and their aim high ambition for 2010 . We'll try hard to help them fulfill that.

But they say practice as if you are the worst and perform as if your the best and I will do the former this afternoon. I find it hard to find time these days but the one thing thats drives me is that when I'm not practicing I'm damn sure somewhere someone is practicing and when I meet him, he might win.

My own 2010 ambitions involve the UK National Championships in July and the European Championships in August, and also to learn to anchor without looking like an idiot but that in fairness involves a different boat.

Sometimes it can be hard to train alone and at HISC we all seem to be good at it despite the 17 Moths we have at the club. I'm very happy to be getting a new Velocitek Speed Puck to help me out, I've tried many GPS's over the years but the Speed Puck I used at the Speed Trials at the Gorge was the best by far.

5 comments:

Fred said...

uuhps, the score card. Forgot that one and batterie is running too low for a search. Will be able to provide you with my "skills" on Sunday. Hope you are not disappointed. Looking forward to improve. Am sure I will be able to beat you by dropping anchor under sails but as you said, that involves a different boat.

Foiler Town USA said...

Hi Simon,

This is a really cool concept. Did you get any Euro boats there or is it all Brit boats...

Anonymous said...

Oh to live in a Simon Payne world!

Simon Payne said...

The hours fly by...

Pat said...

How odd were the 20 entrants? Sounds like waaay too much fun.