Youf Sailing

Well that turned out to be a wasted morning, I'd drawn short straw on rescue boat duty, but a bit of a nasty North Sea swell put paid to all ideas of chucking loads of kids in the Channel off Downs this morning, so I had a look around at what they sail and listened to some of their 'motivational' (means their eyes glaze over and they study the effect their toenails are having on their little rubber booties) team talks, then wandered down to watch another bunch of obvious pondies who were wondering why the dog they'd seen in the sea that had dived under the wave hadn't come up for air, it's a seal said I, they have whiskers as well.
Some other kids came up to me and politely asked if I was local, 'sort of' said I, 'how can I help?' kind of expecting them to ask about local sailing knowledge stuff. "Do you know where Subway is? Subway? no trains in Deal, 'use the zebra crossing' said I..
I'd helped brief Gemma/ Jenna (can never remember which) on how to deal with pondies that come down to sail in tide, so arrive with all their lay lines shot to pieces and how to deal with it in the various directions, then I had to sort out her kicker, the cascade was going block to block before the kicker was fully applied and she' had been having trouble pointing.

But the rest of the time I was simply marvelling at the organisation that had gone into the Event, Downs had certainly nailed it down, they have an even nastier beach than ours to launch from without obviously the predominantly South Westerly dump we get but today the wind was in the North with the forecast giving it shifting East which would be even worse, I said to someone earlier if it were my call I'd bin it off, then come lunchtime they did, wise decision.

There were already broken 29er masts in the boat park from the day before when the wind was a lot lighter, so light apparently they had to tow loads of boats in, I got shown a new knot (always a joy to learn something new)some Alpine Butterfly doo dah, (loop knots to put in the line to attach other boats to so we could tow four or five off one line.)

It's a brilliant thing to behold though, all those kids, all in teams, loads of boats, makes you think maybe the sport has a future after all..

Very uplifting.

Edited by iGRF - 22 Jul 14 at 1:49pm

Well it's coming round more North Easterly today and up around 16-18 mph so sunny but windy and cross off here. I wouldn't like to be the man that has to make the call today either, although they were talking about doing some other form of sailing which involved shipping them to to boats already on the water, no idea what that's all about but it sounded less problematic than getting hundreds of Toppers & Lasers through the break, not to mention the handicap menagerie.

If I had to deal with that number round here, I'd have to talk to the new guy down at the Varne, they've got more space and are trying to encourage sailing over there, plus in this breeze it's onshore and a much shallower access.

Edited by iGRF - 23 Jul 14 at 8:05am

We wondered that when we saw them yesterday, especially when we saw the launching method.

Originally posted by winging it So Graeme, are you saying you were wrong?  Again?

Originally posted by Brass  Two hundred or more kids actively and skillfully engaged in sailing:  what's not to like?