Blog » Brilliant clubs organising brilliant things - Part 1

One of the things I absolutely love hearing about is clubs doing great things locally. So every once in a while I get to hear something that really warms the cockles of my heart. I've just heard of one new one and one doing a repeat. I'll start with the repeat and then move on to the one I knew little about before today in another blog.

The repeat though is Draycote Water Sailing Club. You may remember the post I did about their combined Feva/29er training a while back. That was firmly in the context of developing a more cohesive double handed junior pathway. Now some clubs will be doinig the same but with 500's instead of 29ers but either way it is a brilliant initiative. What Draycote did this time was look down the other end of the spectrum and looking at those youngsters who one day may wish to be in Fevas. So they held joint training for Teras & Fevas. I gather that the weekend was chilly but good! (that seems to have applied quite a lot over the winter!). Here is the report from Draycote's Andy Weeden:

RS Feva and Tera open training at Draycote 20^th & 21^st February.

28 junior sailors arrived at Draycote from clubs as far apart as Bartley, Rutland, Rudyard Lake and Shropshire to hone their sailing skills under the guidance of Jon Lewis, assisted by Phil Walker. The theme of the week-end was “leaking boat lengths”, a term used to demonstrate how a number of small mistakes added up to cost races. Saturday morning started with a brief and then out onto the courses where coaches watched individual sailing skills before offering advice on specific areas of improvement. Lunch was followed by a video de-brief before more specific areas of coaching were set up.

Sunday morning started with snow, which made getting to the club the first challenge of the day. The brief for Fevas looked at the roles of helm and crew within the boat for each phase of the course and the importance of team communication towards a successful race. This was taken out onto the water for a short session which included the skill of gybe drops. The Teras had the costs of “crashing and bashing” in lost places demonstrated by on course incidents and were encouraged to seek clear water and clean air to maximise boat speed.

After lunch three back to back 20 minute races were run to consolidate the coaching during which a  improvement by all across the fleets were clear to see. The day concluded with a final de-brief and a chance to ask the coaches any final advice.

A big thank you, once again, to the RYA Volvo Championship Club scheme for financing some of the coaching, also to Jon Lewis and Phil Walker for some inspirational coaching and advice through-out the week-end, Simon Loveridge for organising and co-ordinating the week-end and of course to the parents for their support. If you would like to be involved in future week-ends for Teras, Fevas or 29ers please contact office at draycotewater.co.uk for details.