Slow learner

So no dumb questions, eh? Well now there might be. I have completed a beginner's sailing course (4 days over 4 weeks) and I did learn a few things.  I am now doing the level 2 course and I find that I really haven't got many issues - how to trim the sails in different winds, how to work the helm (a real mystery in terms of directing the others and what they should do when) what to do when and where and so on. I find the teaching methods used don't really work for me.  I need to understand, do it, go over the theory as to why, re do it, tlak about it again, do it again and so on. But I find I am being yelled at to do x or y as if I am already supposed to know. I possible am, as the others in my course (6 students altogether) mostly seem to know. I plucked up courage to ask the last time I was on the water - why did we do that? and while I got an answer, I felt that the answer was given in a way that I should have known it already. I'm not unintelligent but I didn't learn to sail as a child and I am finding it really difficult and might actually pull out of the current course. I enjoy what I have done but I hate feeling incompetent. I'm good at knots and I think from what I have seen so far of navigation that I will be ok at that too, but the actual sailing is starting to not be fun because I feel very inadequate. Any advice would be welcomed. Helen

And of course, as you already have done, is ask the question on here.

Alternatively, Bin it off, yottie types do try to make it seem far more complicated than it really is, and learn to sail in it's purest form by having windsurfing lessons.

At the end of the day, all it is, is a bit of cloth filling with the wind, driving a floating platform along, there's a bit of wood at the back to steer it with, you can go with the wind, across the wind and depending on the sort of floaty platform quite close to the direction from which the wind is coming.

I fully understand how you feel, they still do it to me and I've been sailing one thing or another for near on forty years now, don't let them put you off, just modify what type of sailing you choose to learn, then progress from there. Like I said, bin it and learn to windsurf, much more fun and nowhere near as many yottie t**sers..

Thanks pondmonkey.  I'll have a look at the book and see if I can find others on Amazon. Tonight I've been thinking well I'll just can this course but I will rethink and maybe finish it and just be a pain for the instructor for the rest of it by keeping on asking why. That said, he's not a bad instructor and had loads of experience in long distance sailing bu teaching is really an art. I do hate the tendency of the blokes to do whatever it is I am trying to do for me (I snapped at one in the end and I said I wanted to learn how to do it). They want to get the job done, but it is a course and I want to learn.

I have to say that going out on a 10 metre boat in 40 knots in the cold on Saturday was a test for me.  I wasn't scared though but did curse like a real sailor as I helped pull the mainsail down so we could sail on the jib. It wasn't easy.

Yes, the yelling at learners is counter productive, and the instructor SHOULD show you exactly how it works before the event. It is stupid and dangerous not to do so, especially if you are going out in 40 knots of wind.