Day 5 of Five Star training saw us do an out and back from Soldiers Point around the Stacks, taking turns to do leadership, have a play in the race at South Stack and generally have some fun.This was followed with us returning to Anglesey Outdoors to sit out in the sunshine, summing up our week and making our development plans with James. We then had one to ones with James reviewing what we had written and anything else he could identify to help us from our week of paddling together. Certainly from my perspective there were no surprises and I now have a clear set of objectives to put in place, before I put in for my assessment. James seemed to think 5 star was certainly achievable for me.
I have to say not having been coached by James before, I really liked his teaching style. He is an excellent coach and is very well informed. The week was physically quite hard, not helped by me camping, but I learnt so much from fairly big ideas to very small details - such as changing the small clips on my towlines to much larger no-nose karabiners, which make those rescues all a bit smarter with a lot less fumbling.