9:40 PM Fri 20 Feb 2009 GMT
So you don't know anything about sailing, but some friends invite you to the local yacht club one Saturday, and you go along with a feeling of trepidation. After all, the public image of a yacht club is some kind of rarefied den, an unapproachable sanctum reserved for the wealthy, the well connected or the just plain 'eccentric' (in other words totally nuts, but able to afford quality health care). When you get there, people are using a language you don't understand: the words kite, boom and port no longer have their plain meaning and this causes you some distress. After all, you're used to a kite being a small diamond shaped triangle of material, port being a traditional compensation of the festive season and boom being a comic book explosion noise.
You have a nice day, strange as it is, and you enjoy looking at the water and the boats which seem to be covered with literally thousands of ropes, oh dear, lines. Your friends kindly take you out for a sail, where nothing seems to happen for ages then all of a sudden the boss (um. skipper) is yelling something about an 'attack'. While you're looking up in the air for low flying aircraft, everyone else is scrambling around on the slippery deck, then there's this giant bang as this huge metal pole whistles by overhead and someone yells 'boom!' 'Yep' you think to yourself 'they must have read the same comics.'
Suddenly the floor goes from one angle to a completely different one, and in the heat of it all you spill your beer and watch it run down the deck in a different direction than before.
This happens a few more times and everyone, despite using words you have no comprehension of (sheet, transom, halyard, companionway) seems genuinely friendly and appear to be making an effort to help you understand the mysteries of the sea. But it's all a bit much, you have this feeling that perhaps this is the kind of stuff you need to learn as a kid or not at all, and the next time they ask you to come sailing you make some excuse.
Sailing is complex, the language necessarily arcane, and high level skills are required to master it (courage, determination, patience, physical strength and acute visual and sensory observation to name but a few). Although many people who begin sailing as adults go on to become great competitors and eminently competent seamen, and women, it's generally accepted that it's easier for those who start as children. This leads me to the point of this article: the problem with falling rates of youth participation in our sport which eventually leads to scenarios like that described above.
 | Optimist program instruction sessions starting - OziOpti |
Steve Bond from Ozi Opti, the Australian manufactures and distributors of the Optimist dinghy, believes that making sailing a school sport is an important way to address the declining numbers of young sailors. Since introducing his Tackers program, a 'learn to sail' course which utilises Optimist dinghies, Bond has been reaching out to local schools and trying to make it as easy as possible for them to bring classes to his headquarters in The Boatshed on Albert Park Lake, Victoria.
'The number of schools that have come down here to do Tackers programs is rapidly increasing, with more than 50% of the APS (Associated Private Schools including Scotch, Geelong, Xavier, Melbourne Grammar) now participating.'
'By offering a simple, easy to get to solution on Albert Park and by providing boats, it has made it very easy for the schools, who in the past have struggled to come to terms with yacht clubs and how they work.'
The Tackers program means that the classroom teacher effectively becomes a co-ordinator whose role is to get the kids to the Lake, keep them there and get them home again after the lesson. Tuition is handled by specially trained instructors, OziOpti supplied the facilities and the boats, and as Bond puts it 'sir doesn't have to be a sailor'.
The Tackers program is in the process of being rolled out nationally, with NSW clubs like Middle Harbour Yacht Club keen to connect with local schools and thus improve the strength of their youth fleets. MHYC recently launched their 2009 Junior Sailing Development Program, which includes the Tackers curriculum, and are now offering sailing as a sport to five local schools.
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Mosman primary school students will begin sailing in the club's fleet of twenty OziOpti 'Tacker' training dinghies while secondary school students will experience the fun of racing around the harbour in RS Fevas. With highly regarded Olympic coach Victor Kovalenko using MHYC as a training base, gifted youngsters will be able to see their role models in action, and hopefully be inspired by them.
'A number of schools in Sydney have adopted the RS Feva not only to provide skills training for schools teams racing but also offer exciting sailing that is building club fleets' enthused Bond.
MHYC is not the only club to use Bond's Tackers program to help rejuvenate their junior fleets. In an exceptional turnaround, Mornington Yacht Club went from having literally no junior members three years ago to having a member:
'who did the Tackers program two years ago and then purchased a GRP boat last season into winning the green fleet regatta at the Optimist Nationals in Mandurah earlier this month..And at the recent RS Feva Nationals at Woollahra Sailing Club, Sam White from Mornington Yacht Club who did Tackers just three years ago, got one of the first OziOpti GRP boats soon after and crewed with his cousin, Byron White to win the 2009 RS Feva Australian Championships, not a bad three year stint..'
It's necessary to join the dots when it comes to the vexed question of revitalising youth sailing: today's happy kid in a dinghy is tomorrow's club member. In the process of becoming an adult, the kid will drag his or her parents along to the yacht club, and at some point they'll probably collapse exhausted on the club's sundeck, drink coffee and read the papers while junior sails- which is revenue for the club. The kids will also encourage their friends to try sailing, which means potentially more members for the club and more revenue from the friend's parents.
If you introduce sailing as a school sport, clubs will do their best to keep the costs down and the program simple because they want to encourage this cycle and build their sport. If all school kids have the chance of trying sailing, this will diversify the type of families that come into the club environment, which is good for the club as it gradually breaks down the public perception of yacht clubs as slightly mysterious and sometimes unfriendly enclaves.
Bond is critical of clubs that prioritise their revenue streams and infrastructure needs above the development of a youth sailing culture:
'Let's face it, in some cases, the club committees are more interested in the bottom line, they think they're just running a business and forget about the members children, grand children and their cousins, etc. The stronger clubs in twenty years time will be the ones that look to the next generation of members and one of the best ways to do that is to adopt a 'Tackers' type program, and now'.
Although there is debate about the best way to teach sailing, and which junior boats to use, Bond believes that the Optimist dinghy and the RS Feva are the best options. He affectionately describes them as 'boats in boxes' due to their simplicity, the fact that they come with everything you need to go sailing, plus being affordable, low maintenance and parent-friendly. He commented that he is a great fan of the concept of the level playing field, and prefers working with boats that are easily traded and which hold their value.
Then there's the added bonus of both the Optimist and Feva being ISAF recognised classes, providing a clear pathway to international competition for talented youngsters, which in turn provides role models for tomorrow's kids, and so the cycle continues.
For more information about the Tackers program and Optimist dinghies:
www.oziopti.com.au
For more information about the RS Feva:
www.lasersailing.com.au
rssailing.com.au
by Jardine Media
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