94. Sailing - Women's RS:X - Windsurfing

Event: Sailing - Women's RS:X - Windsurfing
Date: 27th April 2016
Location: Alton Water Sailing Club 
Cost: £25 each for 3 hour lesson 
Rules:  The target time for the Olympic course was 30 minutes for points races and 20 minutes in the medal race. The organisers choose the route from various course configurations. The boats have a dagger-board and sail of a specified size, and their are designed to allow windsurfing in low and moderate wind.

   

The Event:

Result:

Olympic Gold Medal, London 2012: Marina Alabau, Spain. 

Comments:  
Sarah: Arriving at Alton Water, we were greeted by the wind buffeting over the surface and after last week's lesson being cancelled due to lack of wind, we were faced by another cancellation due to too much wind. We persuaded our instructor Guy to give us a shot at windsurfing, although we were absolutely dreading spending three hours in the freezing water. I wasn't particularly looking forward to this event, and it came as a complete surprise that windsurfing turned out to be one of our most fun, laughter-filled sports! We were both pretty terrible, but in the best possible way. It took us the whole session to stand comfortably on the boards. I eventually managed to glide somewhat clumsily over the water doing some simple turns. To get to that stage, we repeatedly fell in the water again, and again, and again. Rather than be frustrating, it was just very funny and thankfully our wetsuits and new super-warm wetsocks did the trick and kept the cold out until the very end of the lesson. I would definitely do this one again! 
         
Ellie: If you had told me at 7.30am when I got up that I'd be in Alton Water most of the morning I would have gone back to bed and ignored any calls from Sarah especially as there had been snow in Essex the day before! As it turned out, the sun was beautiful, the water refreshing and windsurfing was one of the most enjoyable watersport so far! After less than 30 minutes I was very in to this event, giving a running commentary throughout my efforts to get upright and we'd already started changing the terminology, calling the up-haul cord the U-Haul. It takes a lot of core strength and balance to get on your feet and travelling and I'm very pleased that I managed to stand up on the board - the travelling I did was only towards the water but, as Sarah says, that was actually really funny. It was very nice to just float on the board and kick your legs and watch the other person get on with it too! This is a sport I doubt I'll ever become remotely proficient at but it's one that I'd have another go at without any need to get better.

93. Canoe Slalom

Event: Canoe Slalom Women's K1
Date: 2nd November 2014 + 16th April 2016
Location: Lee Valley White Water  
Cost: £50 each
Rules:  In heats each competitor has two runs of the slalom course. The fifteen athletes with the best time qualify for the semi-finals, where they get one run of the course each, with the best ten progressing to the final. The course is a timed-run down a white water course with natural hazards and eddies and between 18 - 25 gates. Red gates must be tackled upstream, green gates downstream. Touching a gate adds two seconds time penalty to the run, and missing a gate completely is a 50 second penalty.

   

The Event:

Result:

Olympic Gold Medal, London 2012: Emilie Fer, France.

Comments:  
Sarah: Over the course of the Challenge we've been lucky enough to work with some amazing clubs and have received the help of some really dedicated, kind individuals who have helped us achieve what, at times, has felt like the impossible. We try to arrange as much as possible ourselves, but for the trickier events we do rely on people being kind enough to help us out. You may notice that there is a small gap of 17 months between the two parts to this event; officially making Canoe Slalom our longest event to complete! We first visited Lee Valley White Water Centre back in November 2014 where we were given the chance to try our hand at the slalom course; the boats are really zippy, and controlling the turns and completing the course was lots of fun. But we wanted more! We wanted to experience the white water for ourselves, which it turns out is incredibly hard to arrange. The club said they would help us out, but unfortunately months and months passed with numerous unreplied emails and no progress, which was all a bit frustrating. We finally accepted defeat, and booked ourselves on to a pretty expensive 'Hotdog' session as a way to get on the white water. I would say it was worth the wait, but in fact it was horrible! We were on the Legacy loop and spent more time in the water than out. The boats were incredibly hard to control, and unfortunately we weren't given much guidance on how to correct the boat when it turned to the side (which resulted in an instant dunking). Falling in to the white water is as scary as it looks; you get pulled around and just have to go with it and rely on the buoyancy aid, but there were repeatedly moments of panic when I went in. I'd definitely had enough halfway through the lesson, and was glad when we made our way back to calmer waters. I'm definitely glad to have this out the way, and look forward to never doing it again!   
         
Ellie: As Sarah says our Canoe Slalom event is in two parts. Our non-white water experience was in sharp contrast to our white water 'hotdog' day. I felt it was hard enough to control the slalom canoes around the legacy course without the hindrance of turbulent conditions - the boats respond to the lightest of touch and even sitting at an angle will send you in a different direction to the one you think you are heading in. Navigating through the hanging gates needs a lot of mental agility as well as physical as you need to think ahead to meet gates at good angles to take you though to the next.
Our time on the white water was through Lee Valley's experience days and people actually do this for fun. Don't get me wrong - I was fascinated by power I could harness during the rare times we were afloat and working with Sarah is always enjoyable but staying in the boat was very hard. Once I'd realised that we wouldn't be able to control ourselves for long I also felt enormous responsibility for the safety of myself and everyone else too... Falling out of a boat in white water is terrifying. I don't think I could explain well enough but I'm still dreaming about it 5 days later. Despite the safety tests and briefing we were given I wasn't able to recall anything when I was being dashed around and submerged for, what felt like, minutes and that caused me so much panic. With 15 minutes of our session left and a particularly fearsome dunking fresh in the memory I was happy to call it an event well and truly ticked off and to never, ever do anything like it again. Good luck to you if you choose to do this with your leisure time!

92. Sailing - Women's 470

Event: Sailing - Women's 470
Date: 7th April 2016
Location: Alton Water Sailing Club 
Cost: £25 each for 3 hour lesson 
Rules:  The Women's 470 is a two-person dinghy and has a spinnaker and a trapeze, making teamwork essential. The competition runs over eleven races, with a 30 minute target-time for medals.

   

The Event:

Result:

Olympic Gold Medal, London 2012: Jo Aleh & Olivia Powrie - New Zealand. 

Comments:  
Sarah: Sailing buffs may notice we're in the same boat as the Elliott 6m for this event. The good old sturdy Bahia is not a 470. 470s are high-performance boats, and only a fool would let us loose in one of them. The Bahia was perfect for us, and we zipped through the water. I started to understand the connection between moving the tiller in different directions and controlling the main sheet depending on the strength of the wind (check out those sailing terms!), and began to feel a bit more comfortable in the boat. I was mainly very happy to sail for three hours and not go in for a swim!  
         
Ellie: In this session I was able to sit up on the side of the boat giving me so much more room. I also tried my best to look where I was steering rather than at the controls in my hands. I dread to think what will happen once we're let loose in boats on our own or when we get to try Wind Surfing but now we have retained some more of the information about the weather and the discipline of Sailing we'll stand a much better chance of not getting (too) wet!

91. Sailing - Women's Elliott 6m

Event: Sailing - Women's Elliott 6m
Date: 7th April 2016
Location: Alton Water Sailing Club 
Cost: £25 each for 3 hour lesson 
Rules:  The Elliott 6m is a three- person boat and the competition runs in a match-race format, consisting of round-robin quarter-, semi-, petit- and final rounds. The top eight crews are seeded in to the quarter final. The target course time is 18 minutes.

   

The Event:

Result:

Olympic Gold Medal, London 2012: Tamara Echegoyan, Angela Pumariega & Sofia Tor - Spain. 

Comments:  
Sarah: We visited Alton Water last October for our first sailing lesson. It was all going swimmingly until I capsized the boat and gave us all a dip in the cold water. As a result, I felt quite nervous returning to the boat and desperately didn't want to tip us all in again. The water was freezing today, so the prospect of going in was even worse. It was much windier than when we last came out, but luckily our instructor Pat knew where to head for some sheltered water. He patiently explained how to spot gusts on the water and talked us through performing a tack (turn) and quickly had us sailing across the lake. There is a lot to remember in the boat, but it eventually started to sink in (hmmm, maybe best not to mention sinking!). During each tack I remained convinced I was going to send us overboard, but I did eventually find myself slightly less nervous than when we started.  
         
Ellie: Sailing is a very odd mix of serenity (when you're not in charge of the boat) and franticness (when you're responsible for keeping everyone dry) and after this lesson I felt that we were slowly moving towards serenity all round! It's really satisfying to be able to read when the wind is coming in and what that means for your boat and sails. I was also pleasantly surprised to see that I retained some information about what bits of the boats were called.... #Boom