January 20th 2009

Withdrawal symptoms were clearly getting to members of the High Seas as more than 15 eager beavers got together at Bernays Hall, Stanmore for a workshop session on the much sought-after art of correctly manoeuvring your canvas in order to progress in a forwardly direction with appropriate momentum according to the prevailing airflow over the aerofoils! Or to put it more simply; setting your sails correctly for the prevailing wind conditions etc!

Sandy came prepared with tea, coffee, cakes and biccies, while Phil came prepared with pieces of wood, pieces of canvas and pieces of string which, when all assembled together, created a dinky little sailing rig that could be “propelled” by warm air flow from electric fan! Perfect!

Amusement and intrigue followed by focus and concentration saw us all learning consciously, (and subconsciously) about how winds change in force with altitude, how this gradient acts upon the sail, and therefore why a sail is curved more at the top! We learnt about correcting for weather helm, lee helm and how to balance a boat, and we learnt how to combine some kind of logic, based on fundamental physics, with our experiential instincts when it comes to trimming sails.)
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_helm

All in all, this was a very well designed and delivered workshop, with great ingenuity, and greatly enhanced by a shared input from all participants.

This formula works, and I believe the club should utilise the resources our more experienced members have to offer, to cover more topics throughout the year.
If YOU, (yes you reading this!) feel you would like to share your particular nautical pet subject and skill with other interested members, please do let me know NOW! We could then fit one or two more workshops in before we all set off for the ocean waves, or something like them anyway!

Many thanks to Phil for organising and presenting the workshop, and to all participants for attending!

Sandy Riegler