It is never a good time to suffer an injury or be stuck at home being ill. For the season ahead usually there will be plenty of time to make sure someone is on stand-by or similar but for the past two weeks, notice was so short that an outsider had to join the team. And worse, it was a he. So two successive weeks where “She Sails” became “We Sail”.

Saturday morning on the bike to the train station: freezing cold! Even more reason to train hard and to sail fast to stay warm today. Around 10 o’clock during the briefing at Waterland in Monnickendam we had our last cup of tea to start the training as warm as possible.

The game is on! Ahead of the first National Championship we schedule a weekend at our home-base Waterland for practice and to prepare the boat. We didn’t realised that our knowlegde and skills were so rusty. Five ladies busy with battens, baco’s, tension meters, buckets: probably a nice show for the other berth holders at Monnickendam!