This year, training weekend took place at the lovely town of Langweer located in Friesland sponsored by Thymos. Here is the story of all the crazy things that happened:
On Friday afternoon, as we arrived at the harbour, we immediately realized that we had forgotten a crucial element of our equipment, a COOKING POT!!! So we had plenty of food but nothing to cook it with :(. However, while Birthe went to pick up the remaining members that arrived at the train station, she also stopped by a store to buy a pot. Maria and Rodin couldn’t wait to go sailing and decided they would take one of the Valks for an early “test ride”.
Later that evening, we set up the boat tents and reviewed the training program that was awaiting us for the next two days. We went to sleep knowing that the following day would be a busy, yet fun training day ahead of us.
As we woke from our beauty sleep, we put on our wet-proof clothes and gathered around for breakfast. Our skippers, Anne and Rodin, had planned for us to start the day easy and relaxed by reviewing some basic sailing skills; however, the weather had different plans for us. We hadn’t even been 10 minutes on the water and it started raining cats and dogs with unexpected gusts of wind hitting us constantly. We took the challenge head on and pulled through, thanks to which we ended up learning how to handle these types of situations.
That afternoon, the weather had calmed down, and we were able to sail at a much more relaxed pace. That gave us the ability to learn about some important sailing manoeuvres such as the “stormrondje” and the “man over boord”!
As the sun got lower and lower, we decided to head back to the harbour to prepare our dinner in our brand new pot! On the menu, was a delicious wrap with chili sin carne dish.
After dinner we decided to head into town because we had learnt the previous day that there would be a cute local village party with lots of music and lots of dancing! It was super gezellig :).
On the final day, we were already feeling much more confident in our sailing abilities. That morning we decided to strengthen what we had learned the previous day so that we would be ready for what was coming in the afternoon.
Tag sailing! The goal was to throw a ball into the other teams’ boat, each time the ball went in, the throwing team got a point, then the tagged team would have to chase after the other boat to try to score points themselves.
When we got tired due to all the action, we decided to head back to the harbour to pack up our luggage and clear out the boats. By the time we were done it was already time to leave. So we each did a final feedback session with the skippers where we realised that we had learned so much in such a short time, most importantly while having an absolute blast!
And thus, that concludes this years training weekend, where we left the small village of Langweer with some amazing memories!
