7 July 09 - First sailing lesson

First sailing lesson for Marie and Josh in Optimists. James is also coming to help rig and advise.

Interesting experience.

I put my boat in the water with outboard rigged as saftey boat [I am not licensed to drive the club safety boat] and use it almost immediately when Josh capsizes!

I had set them off tacking back and forth between two buoys, quite a distance apart at 90 degrees to the wind. My mistake...

The buoys I had chosen were too far apart and they kept drifting too far into the swimming area. Then when they had problems I had to go sort them out in the swimming area.

Not a good idea.

Nikkos then suggests two much closer buoys, and although not as exciting is much easier for first lesson.

Closer in you can shout advice more easily and keep them learning better technique.

Standing in the water there is salt water all over the lens of the camera, which I try [unsuccessfully] to remove. Still, you get the general idea of Marie and Josh tacking back and forth.

They pick up technique and Nikkos suggests coming back tomorrow...

but I'm off to on a short trip tomorrow so will have to be Friday.

Nikkos is out by the safety boat doing leg exercises - he had an accident playing football and they operated a few weeks ago.


What I learnt was that teaching sailing you don't need voice exercises - you get enough of that anyway!