How things change

After our light winds practice at the weekend I was left reflecting on how things change.

The boat was split, half experienced, half inexperienced. We started with basic trim upwind. I had intended on working on acceleration practice but with light winds and cruising sails up quickly scaled back to tailing, grinding and basic helming, getting people into new positions.

Downwind we practiced free flying the spinnaker with people trimming who hadn't been through this before (nor had much experience trimming) and pulled off a dozen gybes.

A year ago we were happy to do two.

Then we doused (mexican) and went upwind a bit again.

Next came a tack set.

And another mexican douse.

Then a gybe set.

And a windward douse.

So three sets, three douses, three different set types, all crisp and fast, two different douses also crisp and fast beyond a small matter of the hatch hot being open ready for one of them.

The hatch was the only major mistake.

A year ago we'd have managed a single hoist, a couple of gybes and would have considered ourselves lucky to not wrap the spinnaker hard on the forestay.