Windy night at the end of Mount Batten Breakwater

This was a great night. According to the forecast, we had winds of 37kmh gusting 51.8kmh at 8pm (we were off the water at eight). I make that 22mph with gusts of 32mph which puts us in Beaufort 5 territory.

We spent the first part of the session doing some edging exercises. I had borrowed an Atlantic (not my usual Atlantic LV) and the most striking thing is that boat would take a bigger edge if only I could move my body against the edge to keep my centre of gravity above the boat. I suppose that’s one lesson; I’ve never thought about doing any exercises to target that movement; whilst I’ve done a lot of core work recently I’ve been concentrating on rotating. We also did some turning practice (“Edge”, “Look where you are going” and one other thing which might have been rotation).

After we’d “warmed up”, we went to the end of the Mount Batten Breakwater to play with the wind. Before venturing out, we had a look and a chat. There were large-ish waves, and white foam crests. When venturing beyond the shelter, we angled in to the wind a little, I think to manage the potential for the wind to turn the boat. Basically, that was the pattern for the evening. We’d move into the wind, try out some manoeuvres and go back for a regroup.

• The boat will turn itself away from the wind; you can help this is a little by trying to shift your weight backwards, and not paddling forwards which tends to dig the bows into the water. You could also drop a skeg or do a stern rudder/brace.
• Left to its own devices, the boat doesn’t naturally want to turn straight into or away from the wind, it seems to prefer about 120 degrees off the wind. Getting off that line requires the most effort
• At the end of the evening we followed the wind over to Sutton Harbour; it would have needed a bit more effort to catch the waves than I was making.
• Back paddling is almost entirely useless turning in wind.

All in all, this was a great training evening, with a very controlled way of exposing us to some challenging conditions.