Sunday Training

Solid training numbers of 21 juniors on a Sunday with many sailors away doing winter sports and other things. Good signs for the upcoming seasons. Great to see Murray Duthie, just back from regattas in Europe, displaying his hiking technique.

Also, some keelboats were flying by on their last Winter series race.

Training Update

The winter program allows some sailors to consolidate their skills from summer which leads to questions about being ready to advance into the next development squads. I’ve had a number of great conversations with Parents wanting advice on the progress of their children and advice on their short-term and medium-term development opportunities. Please feel welcome to have a chat with me or your coaches. We have a dynamic syllabus with milestones to help their development.

With Westsail just around the corner and registrations closing 16 Sept, we will be providing pre Westsail training to our Bronze fleet sailors from 4 Sept with the other fleets to help them all get ready for this great camp.

Whilst on leave at the 29er Worlds, I’ve had a few fresh ideas which will make their way into the summer programs. We will be running a few tests on some of these concepts very soon.

It’s part of a continual development cycle where we can introduce new concepts as soon as possible to accellerate learning potental.

As a practical example, all of our sailors learn on day 1 the correct posture for tacking which is the same as an Olympic Gold medal tacking style used in all classes such as the Laser.

There are also technicques and lessons that took decades to evolve which we can start teaching early on. This is a very special opportunity and why we need to keep an open mind and why it’s so important we learn from our sailors and coaches pushing the learning boundaries.

Also in the week I have discussions with Flying 15 class reps on their training options; more parent discussions both at junior and youth level to plan their child and family options.

Plus, meetings with WAIS and other yacht clubs and class associations to see where we can collaborate better.

Busy Bee

Thank you very much to those that contributed their time for a great turnout at the first Busy Bee, which was led by outgoing and incoming T&D committee chairs Alan Sharpe and Tim Beck.