Finally some real sailing... drill, umm not so good

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This coming Saturday, 12 May 2012, we have a Regatta and you are invited! (link)

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 After a couple of weeks of bad weather have kept us in the classroom, but today saw some action in the Javelins. It's started to turn hot, days in the 90s are upon us but this afternoon a nice SouthEast breeze, 70F, sunny, and a fleet of boats to sail... what more could you ask for?

Some of us have learned to sail CLOSE-HAULED better than others.

The drills for this afternoon's session- sail around a triangle with one leg straight to windward... practice docking using the buoys... practice timing runs & accelerating, such as might be done at the start of a race... is this too difficult? Apparently so.

 One of the boat teams had little difficulty sailing around the triangle they weren't great but did OK. One never managed to figure out how. Two of the boats managed not-completely-terrible docking but none did a good docking and none practiced at more than one buoy (gosh, does it matter whether the buoy is upwind or downwind?) At this point, the coaches on the water were almost ready to give up.

Instead, we decided to drop back to the basic of basics... the good old "baby duck" drill (link). In getting lined up, we had a near-collision and a lot of trouble figuring out how to follow the coach boat. Once we got going, it wasn't so bad.

Here is the Baby Duck drill, except the boats should be a little closer to gether and more in a straight line.

Do these guys actually know how to steer? You can't prove it by their performance in this drill!

Alright, at least now we are all going in the same direction, on a consistent point of sail, and not getting stuck in irons all the time... now let's try to show we know something. How about STOPPING? After all we have a very good lesson (link) on that topic.

The whistle sounds, the coach signals STOP, and the boats all.... zoom past with deer-in-headlights looks on the skippers faces?

Well, after a couple of tries, the cadets did sort of OK. It was a poor performance but we're running out of time.

Every lesson should end on a positive note. We don't really have one here, there were more collisions and more obvious examples of skippers totally forgetting lessons they have already practiced successfully. This is not funny, the sea cannot be 'dumbed down' for people with short attention spans.

Wait, there are some positive notes... the motor on Coach King's RIB ran pretty well today. We have a regatta coming up this Saturday, so we don't have to wait until Monday to prove we can do better.

... posted by Assistant Coach Douglas King