Starcross Yacht Club (SYC) developed and ran a series of structured race training sessions for junior sailors in the south west over the winter of 2021/2022. Attendees came from a number of clubs in the region, with visitors from as far away as Falmouth. The results were so significant that they’ve been planning an even bigger regional programme for the coming winter season.
credit A Paley
The programme was designed to maintain and then improve the young sailors’ skills and keep them developing over the winter, when many don’t sail at all. A total of 12 one-day sessions were run, basically once a fortnight between November and April. As SYC’s Peter Solly explains, one-day events work best: “We ran each session on one day, rather than a weekend, so no-one had to stay away and find accommodation, and that worked really well. We put the parents on a rota, so that we had people running the galley and the rescue boats, and we deliberately included women on the water and men in the galley – it was a good opportunity to get non-sailing parents involved in things they don’t usually do.”
Most of the sessions saw the juniors split into two groups, one for the less experienced sailors who were relatively new to racing, and the other for the more experienced and competitive youngsters. Two RYA coaches were hired and ran most of the sessions. They were supported by the large team of SYC’s own RYA Race Coach L2 members as well as the parents. This gave a very high instructor to sailor ratio and enabled excellent one-to-one support on the water.
The programme was a great success. It massively improved the children’s sailing because they kept making progress, and sailed in some much more challenging conditions. In addition, the regularity of the fortnightly sessions really helped to keep the momentum going. As a result, they didn’t have to relearn everything in April, and summer sailing conditions didn’t faze them at all. There were striking individual successes over the summer, and all the youngsters made significant strides – all very different to what often happens when they’re off the water for a six-to-eight-month period over the winter.
credit R Greeves
For winter 2022/2023 the regional junior winter training is developing further, and being organised under the banner of SWYSA (South West Youth Sailing Academy). It will involve sessions at several different clubs in the region offering different sailing conditions. The programme will also incorporate the RYA Regional Training Group for the Tera class.
Peter reports that while focusing youngsters on the rules is harder to do in the summer when they’re keen to be out on the water, it will be a really useful topic to cover in the winter when they’re on the shoreside and don’t want to be sailing for quite so long in the cold.
The sessions will be fleet specific, so that the children will sail separately, with separate coaches, in each class. “There is certainly a benefit to a consistency of boats, to make the racing more interesting and fun,” says Peter. “These sailors are the future of our sport. They need to be motivated. Being able to teach them to race and be satisfied and do well the following summer is a great way of keeping them sailing.”
https://www.starcrossyc.org.uk/
https://www.facebook.com/swterasquad/
