Pre-season training & welcome week

During April the Juniors hosted a number of pre-season events for different sailors across the class. These included external coaching for the junior instructor team, a practice session where the instructors had a chance to try out new games and drills they wanted to introduce this season and a welcome week for our new regatta sailors.

Junior instructors practising games to use in Chipmates sessions this season.

Recognising that our junior instructors will spend much of the season coaching others rather than receiving coaching themselves, we arranged for coach Andy Kerr to come and run a training session for them. It was well-attended by the junior instructing team who enjoyed the time together as well as the opportunity to receive some targeted coaching to improve their own sailing.

The following week, our team of AIs and DIs returned to the club, each with a game they had prepared and resourced in order to try it out on one another. Games included buddy sailing, shark in the water, rudderless sailing, bin bag racing and all sorts of other activities aimed at improving different aspects of boat handling. Lots was learned during the session, not least about everything taking longer than expected and the value of preparing boats for ‘tag’ before launching.

We were delighted to welcome twenty families to the regatta fleet welcome week in mid-April. It was the first time we have run a session like this, offering new-to-Chipmates members who are already able to helm a single-handed dinghy an opportunity to get to know the club before the first full Chipmates session. It was also week 1 of 3 in an RS Vision for our block 1 beginners where 2/3 of them are helmed by an AI before moving to single-handers on week 4. This is a new model we are trying because we have so many beginners signed up for the season.