I return to a topic which always engages me and makes me think of my times in sailing schools, or sea scouts as a pupil and later as an instructor, course leader and team coach .....on a voluntary basis it has to be said.
There are many different styles of teaching the same curriculum. An old aquaintance of mine who was a sports psychologist, used to teach kids by pretending to just be an extra helper, and fooling around a bit asking what things like that stick there might do while out in a wayfarer with three or four kids under 10 years old. He would always include " the sail is all baggy, not much use that eh? What can we do about it? " which is a wonderful way of getting kids to pick up the obvious and learn by discovery, experiment and initiative.
You could cover all sorts of styles of teaching, from the tough megaphone from the rib on a wet day, to dressing up as pirates and going on a treasure hunt in boats for sweeties. However there are some principles of sailing which must be taught, it is just that I tend to stray a good deal from the traditinal sequence of skills, and I disagree with the way so much jargon is used, but also I abhore all the dumming it down too much. Everyone expects to learn some nautical terms and not be patronised.
Here is the kind of order then as a bit of thinking out loud exercise I would build any sailing course for any age, and in fact more or less any ability up to junior national champion level which I have coached to:
1.. Wind Sense
When ever I set out for a sail, in the car or walking down to the dock, I try and relax and empty my mind and look for signs of the wind and any weather shifts which may be literally on the horizon, or clues as to what may happen to the wind. Usually I will have been on the weather web sites and windfinder.com the day before, and I often like to leave it at that and use my own wind sense on the day to judge if the weather forecast is accurate and if so at what phase we are at in the sequence of the day.
Teaching wind sense need not be very technical, although for an adult or late teen course and especially winter evening work shops or lectures, meteorology is a worthy topic in some detail.
Wind sense starts then with plain and simply where the wind is blowing from and how hard it is blowing. We are lucky in the UK to use the beaufort scale because it is a very good graphic way of memorising wind states, if not the actual stregnths, from the what is visually apparent of course on the day. Also relating to the shipping forecast and inshore waters weather it then conjours up an instant mental image of conditions for the experienced sailor, and a resilting cascade of small decisions and further questions. Will it really blow up that hard in this estuary? We'll have a reef and a number three and see how it goes then. We will need extra clothes and some warm soup in a thermos to avoid trying to use the galley. We will need a really bent mast and shortened forestay in the dinghy championship tommorrow.....
For kids and adults it is just as fun to ask for hands out as to where the wind is blowing from, and for adults *n. hemisphere) turning your back on the wind and the left hand out is another visual explanation of the low pressure centre when sailing in anticyclonic conditions. On days with force 3 or more, it is usually pretty apparent but maybe you can begin to ask how much it is varying in direction? Where would we sail with the wind behind us? Can we sail straight into the wind? Flags are handy, have at least a birgee up a mast before you start if not a nice club ensign up the on shore flags display. In light airs, it can we worth asking where the wind is showing itself, and helping folk out with some rough pointers on the idea of signs on the water, or smoke and so on.
Wind sense is also about using our five senses, sight first, but also sound, sense of warm-cold and even smell. I remember many a wind shift was accompanied on its leading edge with either the smell of silage from farmland, or guano (gull crap) from rocks or navigation marks. So always get people to shut their eyes and feel the wind on their cheeks, through their hair, on the back of their hands or on a wetted finger ( which is not as good as the sense on the cheeks imho!!)
This is something we do on the land to begin with, but always come back to it when teaching out on the water. The fundamental for new beginners is that the helm should always sit on the windward side of the boat, explained as with the sails pushed out by the wind to the other side. Quite a lot of adults are bad at this actually, maybe they have come from boats with high booms and wheels. Make em sit out on the deck too, not on any inboard benches or the cockpit floor.
From just the first two minutes then of any course, we have engaged the pupils with the idea of Wind Sense, and we can embellish that with the age old quest to sail the seven seas, and the wind being our only source of powerr.
The next theme is straight on from this and is although it may sound basic, this is applicable at all leves of sailing.
2) Being Master of the Wind, Not Mastered By the Wind
Wind sense leads us right into how we are going to exploit the wind, and how we are going to master the conditions in order to make headway.
For new beginners in clement weather, this means explaining the points of sail. There are only three of them in essence, so dont dumb down just call them beating, reaching and running.
Beating and tacking up wind can be likened to zig zagging uphill which any troop of boy scouts who have been on a mountain path, or adults who have driven in the alps will understand. I still use the term "uphill leg" for a laugh when racing. I also use 'downhill' and of assy's slalom ski course for running or sailing effectively DDW. The metaphor extending to " it can be easy going, but the unwary can stumble and have the nastiest of falls possible"
This is taken on land and very well illustrated with the use of a boat rigged up on a trolly and a smaller model boat set up on a kind of placat, you can DIY then, lots of fun, or actually having another instructor out in an oppie or whatever sailing off the quay or pontoon.
Usually for a first day out in the summer we can just help everyone rig with medium set tensions and outhauls etc, perhaps flattening more for the lightest of crews, and it is important to go round and help everyone just get it right for their weight without explaining it.
If there is either more or less wind than is ideal, then of course we can explain the concept of flatteing the sails to let either the heavy wind skuff over it, or to stop the light wind being killed dead in its tracks along the curve.
Very light days can find better use for swimming tests between pontoons, or towing the boats out in a string and letting them use the rudder without even a mast in sometimes. Basic Capsize drill can also be done without a rig, just get then to sit on the hull and then use the centreboard to right the boat. For wet suit clad children or adults, this will let them feel their bouyancy works, and by seeing lots of others happily jumping in and swimming, and truteling boats they will break down their natural fear of the water and more importantly of capsize.
It is also before you go out to discuss what might be a good plan for the sail. For example if you know the wind will die with the sun going under the yard arm, then ask them what usually happens of a summer eve here? Should they plan to not stray so far from the club in order to be able to come in if the wind dies? Or is there bags of wind forecast within the duration of the session?
Where could they best go for an A-B tour along the coast, given reaching is the fastest point of sail?
How long might it take to tack up wind to reach the tip of the island ?
Finally for older students we can talk about combining all three points of sail in a route aka the course, of course. This takes a bit more abstract thought but introducing this early will pay dividends for the fastest learners in particular, who get the whole point and start to use Wind Sense very soon on, and become fleet leaders which is very inspiring (occaisionally irritating to others! they need to be reeled in sometimes) and rewarding to see as an instructor.
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I make a pause here for emphasis!!!
Wind Sense And the Principles of Mastering the Wind are very fundamental to all levels of sailing, and the more your pupils realise this for themselves, the better the sailors they will become.
Up to this point the course participants have maybe not set foot on a boat.
These two guiding principles form not only part of the days briefing but also the end of days learning lessons ie debreifing.
When coaching keel boats I try to have a debreifing and often it only works when I have not been on board and I can come on as a pain in the neck, but help catalyse thought on performance and how the 'cards the wind dealt' were played out for better or for worse on the course or with boat handling and tuning underway, or from how the rig was set up for the day which is often crucial in one design sailing or boats with carbon rigs in particular.
These two principles guide sailing from the absolutte beginner to Larry Elisson, Russel Coutts, Julian Bethwaite and Ben Ainsley. Veritable fortunes are spent on enhancing wind sense and prediction, and how to squeeze performance in terms of mastery. In essence that is sailing as a physical sport and a design development process.
I note that some students are really good at boat handling, sheet-tiller coordination and footwork from quite early on, or if they have come from previous courses yet often seem very happy to go fast and do manoerves well, while not really seeming to get the point of where they should be going. But the ones who develop wind sense can run rings around them when it comes to racing towards the end of the course or season. They are the ones who stop following all the spinnaker boats into an impossible header to the next mark, drop the kite and tight reach around the whole fleet. They are the ones who tighten the kicker, outhaul and cunningham before the new bigger wind hits them. They are the ones who understand the Windward-Leeward course or the olympic triangle by second nature after a few seasons, and then can start to really understand the wind shifts and wind strategy.
These two principles are intertwined and inform most all of the rest of sailing in terms of technique, strategy, planning, and most of all safety which I usually take at the stage of having a boat rigged and paraded through the points of sail on a trolley on dry land/
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3) Safety
Safety is something which is under stressed by some schools, while completed taken to over kill by the helmet clad, litigation neurotic schools.
Health and Safety gets a bad name from some idiots in the press who never have worked anywhere near something more potentially dangerous than a walk down to Oxford Circus. The UK authorities seem though very glad on over interpreting HSE rules and European standards, such as banning conqor fights, and on having risk assessments for opening the box of cotton wool to wrap themselves in. The opposite is true here in Norway, where there are far too many assumptions about kids having nouse, or being used to being in and around the water. A happy balance must be struck, and documentation made available to inform schools and instructors and guide them in making risk assessments which are always best in the head of the instructor at the time the hazard presents itself. Risk assessments and involving third party emergency services are good for larger events, new schools, new types of vulnerable or unruly pupils and so on. Some very good standard school, season, lesson and route risk assesments are often available from the club secretary or the national sailing body as either a generic fill in the blanks, or as a framework for building a very specific risk assessment and emergency action document.
In principle for sailing I have mentioned the two concepts here. Hazard and Risk.
There are two main hazards in sailing
1) Being hit by the boom in a gybe, head injury incurred
2) Being trapped under the boat or other object and drowning
These come from dozens of health and safety debreifs or fatal-accident-enquiries and are thus written in stone aas the two that really need to be thought about and tackled.
The other main hazard which may present itself is any health problems amongst the class, or things like hypothermia in duration events or cooler weather.
Nuclear power is of course very hazardous, or indeed nuclear warheads are probably the biggest hazard on the planet. However the risks of there being a melt down or explosion have been thought about, tested by proxy and established form accidents over the years, such that risk assessment has guided risk reduction, even though the potential Hazard is large. There are very few nuclear accidents these days. The hazard is there, but the risk is mostly percieved amongst the public.
In sailing then there are these two over riding deadly hazards. These must be taken seriously in every stage of teaching and rescue preparativeness. The next stage, victim evacuation, safety for the rest of the fleet and medical assistance or hospitalisation have also to be thought about seriously. A new instructor or volunteer should simply ask the club for their risk assessment and emergency plan in relation to the sailing school. If they do not have one, then they should be kindly asked a good many questions to see if in fact there is any awareness of what can happen and how to get kids especially to medical attention quickly. The RYA and the NSF here in Norway are pretty good at helping out, and there is an accreditation scheme, plus insurers in the UK are more up front about expectations to secure liability cover for the club, events and sailing school courses.
Teaching Gybing and the Risk the Boom and the Risk of Involuntary Gybe I was very lucky in that the first decent sailing school I went to refused to put tell tales on the sails, and quite often took birgees off the boats on purpose. They wanted to ram home the importance of wind sense on the water by using the roughest measures first ie the jib backing, letting the sails out until they luff a little, hardening up until the sails rag and so on. In terms of gybing, they taught to watch out for the lazy wandering jib in a two sailed boat, when it starts to play dead around the foredeck. They taught you how to just luff up a little, and sit on a very broad reach rather than a dead run when in a single hander as a beginner.
For more advanced sailors it is more about that YOU control the gybe, NOT letting the gybe CONTROL YOU ! (with the crew on the ball if not in a single hander)
Accidental gybes also relate to wind sense and keeping an eye over your back shoulder to see what is coming. I hear many people talk of a big wind shift and a nasty chinese gybe on the race course, but of those who claimed this who I actually saw during their accident, they were all running too deep for the shifty conditions anyway, and shoould have chosen the gust to gybe on rather than getting hit by a veering gust as they were setting up for the gybe. There are some shifty harbours and weather phenomenom but a clued up sailor and more importantly, you as dear teacher, should know about these and take actions accordingly such as informing people about it, or even avoiding running with the wind in the session.
A lot of modern boats with high aspect, long battened rigs or indeed old pigs like snipes and wayfairers dont like gybing and need a lot of coaxing anyway, but this is the point about teaching decisiveness and determination in a gybe, choose the moment, set up, and force the main sheet, kicker and boom over while ducking out the way and being ready to catch the harden up effect on the new heading when the sail catches.
I would go so far as to say that gybing should be taught before tacking but then I would contradict another basic ahead of us.
Avoiding gybing is then worth teaching BEFORE you teach tacking.
Being trapped under the boat/ quick comment. For single handed fleets, any boat which is turtle should be visited by the rescue boat if the crew cannot immediately be seen. Same for double handers or more, count the heads. Also for double handers, teach them to give a hailing wave as soon as they are not sure if the other crew member is ok or not ie they cannot see them or know they are maybe trapped.
One final comment about running safe courses, a big deal is actually defining and enforcing the sailing areas boundaries for the session or indeed entire school. In windier weather these should be made smaller, not larger such that a whole fleet of capsized boats can at least have their crews all seen as safe within the two minute zone of death as it is called by many, ie all safe, okay or any issues deal with them first., In a sqaull situation with most of the fleet turtled then head count and signs of life first, stopping remaining boats sailing, and then getting the crews into the rescue boat are the priorities before actual capsize recovery takes place. Masts can be fixed or replaced, dead children can't.
4) Getting Started....and Getting Stopped
Literally getting started. How to sheet in and get going on a reach. But hold up here!!!! Teach them how to stop immediately!!!! This is so vital yet I cannot actually count the times at sailing schools I have taught at that kids go off on a reach and just keep going and then start get worried and so to hug both the tiller extension and the main sheet and thus fall off and capsize. I have not to this day seen that the RYA or NSF have really thought about this every day occurance.
Stopping up is so important in sailing, whether racing or cruising.
Here is why
1) Build confidence in the helm and amongst the crew that there is a high degree of control !
2) Is emminently useful in the following situations
a) coming up to moor, anchor or go alongside
b) Coming up early to a start line.
c) waiting for other boats to get out of the way and avoiding collision thus.
d) stopping up to then fix somethign in the boat or just take a breather
Getting started then means about getting out, going along on a reach and then luffing up and letting the sails rag in essence. You can joke a little on land by asking where the breaks are on a boat..always good for a laugh amongst absolute new beginners.
I then teach the old RYA "basic safe" or simple heave to, where you position the boat just about as high as on a beat, and then let the sails rag (flutter sorry, ragging=slipping out sails until they just flutter in the wind) . This takes a bit of explanation, but generally is from reaching, a little luff and sheet in and then once on the move, sheet out and come to a hault. Sitting more or less head to wind is usually a net result of kids luffing too hard, so dont get annoyed with anyone, just go up to their starboard bow in your rib, talk to them, rotate their boat onto a tight reach while making sure they sheet out, and the making them sheet in and then out again until they see that they can start and stop at will on this type of course instead of being locked in irons.
Later on I still like to teach crash tacking to properly hove to, in order to hold a safe position usually while fixing something or checking the crew is not injured or the like. This then also lends itself to teaching them to back the jib to come out of head to wind "in irons". Refer to single hander texts on rowing or raising the bow out of head to wind.
Starting I usually teach as with most any book with reaching away from the shore, stopping or at least slowing down by slipping the sails out and then turning the boat quickly through the wind ie a tack without calling it that, to then point the bow back to point A. Often best to let one boat go at a time for new beginners of all ages, while the others wait on the pontoon ie great to use just one boat to have a degree of control and teaching under way for everyone.
5) Luffing Up and Bearing Away
I teach then how to luff the boat up from a reach to a beat, and how to fall off.
One of my best ever teachers was Derrick at Tighnabruaich. He saw I was coming from keel boats back to dinghies, and was a bit of a bear on sheets. He instructed then on the hand cleating technique (they sawed off all the jam cleats from under the main blocks at the school!! ) from main sheet to hand on the tiller
" In light winds you need only the one finger on the main sheet to secure it.
As the wind builds you only need two, and in stronger winds and after reefing you only need three of the four fingers.
This is because you use the coordination of steering to release the load on the sheet and make the best progess"
Now in competition, some boats do need to be hanked on hard and the jamming cleat used as an aid to getting enough leech tension on, but in pricinple he is very right and this is borne out on the high performance nineer boats which sheet right from the boom without any cleat, just a ratchet block.
So luffing up is best taught as steer first, sheet in, steer some more, sheet in, and then get a sense for how high you can sail on the wind for the conditions and how much pressure there is on the sheet.
Down the line this also informs how much pressure there is on the rig for the sailors and then how the rig can be depowered before sailing and during the sail or race. Also in a subequent blog I will discuss finesse in sailing, which includes the opposite in light winds, sheet first, follow with the rudder to luff up.
To this day I still like to avoid cleating the mainsail when I can in most any boat i sail!
Bearing away in dinghies or small keel /sports boats should always be taught with an emphasis on rolling the boat a little to windward, ie over your back, from day one, as the feeling for this and the security in doing something actually counter intuitive, will then be something which can be built upon later, not something which is alien and scary. I have seen some very promising Europe sailors who lacked confidence in rolling the boat to bear away, because they did not get this drill properly when they were in beginner's boats.
It pays to teach both luffing up and bearing away as a series of small manoerves with a pause eac time the sheet is let out or taken in respectively. In that way sheet control and coordination to helm is at first separated, helm sheet to luff sheet out helm down to bear away. In fact I myself need to go out next season and practice this way!!!! In essence a full harden up ie leeward mark, or bear away ie top mark, is just a smooth roll of the different freeze frames, with sheeting and steering then seamlessly coordinated.
6) Break It Down
Back then to a more guiding principle for the rest of the manoerves in sailing.
Breaking down movements and making them repeititive is a big theme for me, as you can see above with starting and stopping, luffing and bearing away, which I make dinghy sailors do a lot of in practice starts and follow the leader exercises.
The same is true for all subsequent manoevres. For tacking and gybing, the ground is so well covered in graphic text books and RYA on line video clips that I just do not want to waste time on them. Suffice to say that breaking it down into
1) Decision to manoevre
2) Anticpation of outcome of manoerve
3) Inform crew
4) All settings right to go
5) Entry
6) critical midpoints
7) exit
8) assertion of correct course and sail settings
As you see there is a subtle racing oriented foreplay here. You see you may want to manoevre, or need to. You then need to look at where you will end up on the new tack or gybe. Does this fit your strategy? Do you really need to tack, can you go behind to stay with strategy? Wll this be a temporary repositioning, which will need to be corrected for with another one?
You can actually see that the road map above is equally applicable to cruising in fact as it is to sailing up to the windward mark in a fleet of 100 lasers.
Breaking things down also applies to two other areas of mental preparation
firstly the different phases of a race or route. Visualising what sub components there are and how these can be tackled, and what might influence your choice or determine the outcome of your choices.
Secondly breaking down what went wrong. It can be in a manoevre, you know you are slow out of tacks, break it all down again, perhaps you are slow in and slow through in fact!??
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In this little blogg I hope I have given you some ideas, pointers and even a little tool kit in approaching teaching a course. It may seem very new beginner oriented, but if you think carefully the same points above can be used at all levels of sailing.
One area whcih does not quite fit into my principles here, but was touched upon in luffing up without a main sheet jam cleat, is sailing with finesse. As in all sports I can think of, making motions smoother and making them flow into one another is tantamount to mastery. In martial arts and sailing, finesse actually becomes infantessimal and demands many hours of practice to remain consistent and many years of dedication to make gains in.
Finesse and Mastery will be the subjects then of a future blog on actually learning sailing, and maybe with only small element of teaching sailing in order to learn, which has parallels once again to martial arts.
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