Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Sailing Begins

We are up and sailing! After a chilly swim test for a few brave first-year sailors and registration on Monday, on Tuesday the weather held and we had a light breeze (0-5 kn) from the South building for sailors to get on the water. The instructors did a nice job of getting things moving and lots of smiles filled the morning. Safety, fun, and learning... just like advertised.! We had eight participants sign up for the first week and will be running sessions in the morning for the group this week.


On the water students reviewed and practiced the following skills and information: Safety & Guidelines, Basic Parts of a Sailboat, Boarding & Positioning, Rigging & De-rigging, Steering (Rudder-Tiller), Safety Position, Starts & Stops, Tacking & Jibing (Beam Reach - Figure 8 Drill). These will be skills we continue to work on throughout the week as we introduce additional skills and information each day to build sailor's water experience through the Step-Program curriculum. Our curriculum is derived from US Sailing instructional guidelines - click here to learn more about the framework for Island Sail instruction.

We would love to h
ave students & their parents comment on the blog... to give us feedback about what they really enjoy or what they hope we will do more of or do better. Click here for directions on leaving comments. We are hoping that you will share your thoughts and ideas - "Share in our growth."

SPOTLIGHT: More news to com
e, but we had someone from the Island stop in Tuesday afternoon and offer to make a a generous offer to donate a 19' sailboat. This is exciting news and will provide us with additional opportunities for Island Sail participants.


3 comments:

Challenged Blogger said...

It is great to see Island Sail off to a great start, and to know that we have Mark at the helm. I had a chance to talk with three of the instructors-in-training yesterday, and each reports that they think Mark is great and feel they are getting a lot of useful tips about preparing and maintaining the equipment and how to teach the younger sailors.
The prospect of a 19' boat being donated is very exciting. It would allow the program to take larger groups of kids out at one time, provide an opportunity to generate some income down the road by offering evening or picnic sails for adults, and offer another option for working with the schools.

Deb Flagg said...

The news about the donated sailboat is fantastic! This gives us the ability to re-institute programs like the Sea Urchins and to test the waters for other group activities.

One suggestion: Our IIT's are itching to go beyond what they learned last year, and really like the fact that they are learning how to use the motor boat. How about a team/skills building activity for all the instructors where they go out in the larger boat and sail together ...

Karen said...

I am quite excited that we have the option of a bigger boat to add diversity to the program. How wonderful that people on this island think of our program as a resource they choose to support with donations like this.

We have discussed two topics that folks could help with. The instructors and IIT agree that cubbies to store towels, lunches etc would be helpful. It was decided that milk crates could be used as a resource for creating cubbies. Anyone who has a milk crate connection is urged to come forward!

The other topic is the teaching of compass and GPS navigation. If anyone has small compasses or hand held GPS inits that we could borrow for a great foggy day activity we would love to hear from you.