During my summer holidays I was asked by Ewan Stirling (principal of Shetland sailing centre) to help out with the shooting stars start sailing program for young kids aged between 8-12. I was asked to help out for a week and 3 days. The sailing program was run at Delting Boating Club, one of the most northerly sailing clubs in the UK. Each morning started with a bus journey to brae at 7.30am. When I arrived at Brae, I went to the boating club to get the laser Pico’s ready for the kids coming so that all they had to do was go sailing none of the rigging or launching for the first few days. On the first day I met up with Kyle Murry, he was the senior instructor who works regularly with the sailing in the city team. Each group came either in the morning session 9.30-12.30 or afternoon session 1.30-4.30 each with up to 6 kids in a group on Monday-Friday.
On the Monday we focused on paddling and getting the hang with steering. To do this we had the masts in but rolled up the sails for stability. It was flat water so Kyle and I laid a course for them to paddle around. It was a race first one to get there go round the course 3 times and then head in to the slip way. That was what we accomplished for the first day.
On the Tuesday it was light winds, for the kids learning to sail it was perfect. I helped them launch the boats and told them to head out to the course just out side the breakwater they were all very capable to do this them self’s. While Kyle was in the RIB I was being put around the boats telling the kids how to tack properly and what way to go around the course. Once the kids understood what I was telling them they were all sailing the figure of eight course reasonably well.
On the Wednesday it was too windy to sail so we did a hour or two on tying knots like figure of eight, reef knot, round turn and two half hitches and bowline. By doing this we made funny stories to keep the kids amused by letting every child make up their own way of tying the knot or remembering other peoples rimes to help them. We then went over the parts of the boat got them to individually name it after I had gone over it with them. They were all very good at remembering the parts.
On Thursday it was very windy that day so we decided to do some shore based races. What we did was a rigging race to see who could rig the boat first correctly with no help. They did this in pairs. After that we made a Pico raft with three Picos tied together with a mast in the middle for clew less sailing they also paddled for more downwind speed!
On the Friday it was reasonable sailing weather so we set a training beat for the kids to practice sailing around. We then came ashore and left one boat rigged for the kids to do the capsize drill if they wanted to. After all the kids got changed we went to the clubhouse to do an award ceremony for all the kids as they all passed the course receiving a certificate of sailing stage 1