Sam Goodchild Sailing

Plans are starting to come together for this seasons sailing. By next week I will be in Antigua preparing this Class 40 for the crossing back. And, hopefully we will leave at the beginning of April providing the weather is looking kind. My plan is to then do as many of the RORC offshore races as I can and hopfully, by then we will have some of our Match Racing funding in place and we can start competing instead of training.

Over the weekend we had the two Match Racing boats at Oxford Sailing Club on the water and we’re doing some racing against Abingdon Schools NSSA team, helmed by our Match Racing teams bowman, Nick Wilkinson. We mostly focused on pre-start but, noticed the boats were very unequal which, puzzled us all day untill we came to winding up the keels and found out that one of them hadn’t been wound down.

A lot of the final plans for the events this season have not been finalised yet but, there are lots of options and hopefully it will be a successful one. I also hope to do some of the Mini Transat events with my own boat or crewing for another boat if I am unable to get use of one myself.

Sam

After a long weeks work on the Class 40 we were finally measured and the boat was ready for the owner to take it back to Germany. I learnt a lot of useful information about the measurements that are taken and how they are done which, was very interesting and useful. Now, my plan is to complete the work that needs doing on the Match Racing boats at Farmoor. Then there is lots of training to do, both for our team and also some practise for the Abingdon school team in preparation for there schools nationals next month.

In the next couple weeks I am flying out to Antigua to complete a delivery back to the UK on a different Class 40. I’m looking forward to going offshore again in a relatively new and competitive boat.  Final plans have not been made yet but, we will leave at the end of the month and it will talk a few weeks.

Once I get back, we are going to carry on doing some more Match racing events, if we can get funding we will do some more events in mainland Europe but otherwise, we will do the British Qualifiers, leading up to The Governers Cup in July and then Hopefully the Nationals in October.

Sam

Over the weekend I joined 12 of the other RYA keelboat squad members for the first training weekend this season aboard the tp52, John Merricks II. We had a very positive two days sailing, being able to keep the boat under control, most of the time. We were fortunate enough to be joined by a couple professional sailors who were able to teach us all a lot, especially my self. Even though this is not the type of sailing I enjoy the most, it is still very exciting and definately worth while, due to how much I learnt.

For this week, I am working aboard a newly launched Class 40. The boat is being measured later in the week and then it is sailing to Germany. So, it is going to be a busy week where I should learn a lot especially about the measuring and testing of offshore racing yachts.

The sailing season is now rapidly getting underway with more and more boats on the water and racing each weekend. My main aim for the season, is to get my Mini Transat campaign up and running. In the meantime I am aiming to get as much more short handed and offshore sailing as I can by competing in the RORC races as well as hopefully the double handed fastnet. We also plan to attend many more match racing events with the hope of improving our ISAF ranking and going to some higher graded events.

Sam