SEBAGO SAILING- 2011 basic sailing course

Here's a report on another successful basic sailing course for small boats. Congratulations to all the participants! This year, our chief instructor Holly had just completed the US Sailing Small Boat Instructor course, bringing a new level of professionalism to an already superb level of instruction.
As usual, we combine classroom instruction with "on the water" drills, pairing each student with an instructor. Our water drills out in the bay are accompanied by two rescue power boats. The second boat has proved invaluable, both in terms of safety and in maintaining close contact with the students. Further, we can load instructors in the power boats, rather than landing on the beach, while the students are doing their solo drills. We start out in the classroom and on land.

Holly demonstrates sunfish rigging.

Severn practices the tiller hand exchange.

After the lecture and land drills, we launched the boats and headed out to the bay. Because of the bridge construction, we are doing a lot of towing. On Saturday, we had a stiff east to southeast breeze coming in with the flood, so towing was an absolute necessity going out. We also had some pretty dreary weather, and were chased in by a good sized thunderstorm, but not before everyone had done a good bit of sailing. It was way too wet to worry about the camera that day, so there are no pics from the bay. On Sunday however, we had it easy, launching in a very light north easterly with the last of the ebb. Most of the sailors sailed or paddle/sailed out of the channel. Our wind switched south (don't we love that) and gradually filled in to a max of 7 or 8 mph. Perfect conditions for learning! We set up buoys, anchored the two safety boats, and everyone sailed solo for a couple of hours.

Lee and Oscar sailing, with Holly, Tracy, and Matthew in the skiff.

John and Severn sailing.

Laurie sailing.

Oscar on a reach.

Lee with good tiller form.

Rounding the mark.

When everyone had enough tacking, jibing, reaching, beating, and running, it was time to practice our capsize recovery drills. All the students were successful, which is not always the case!

Former kayaker, Quint, demonstrates recovery from a turtle. This constitutes a "roll".

Climb on, Laurie!

I'd like to thank the students, Laurie Bleich, John Thomas, Severn Clay, Oscar Aarts, Laura Segal, Quint Klinger, Lee Von Kraus. And the instructors, Tracy Kornrich, Justin Steil, Chris Bickford, David Cripton, Holly Sears, Bob O'neil, Jim Luton, Matthew Peverly, and Mark Rand.