Ripon Sailing Club kickstarts their Summer Race Training
by Fiona Spence 3 May 2019 18:31 BST
28 April 2019
Coaches and crew at Ripon SC Kickstarter © Gail Jackson
Ripon Sailing Club kickstarted into summer on Sunday 28 April with eighteen members taking part in a revised initiative to encourage newer sailors to start racing. Historically the club has run Youth & Junior race coaching early on a Sunday morning but this meant adult members were unable to participate and enjoy a supported entry into dinghy racing.
This season, a re-vamped Kickstarter series is being organised and twenty members (four adults and sixteen youths/juniors) sailing a range of boats from an Optimist to a Supernova attended a morning of basic race coaching and two short races before joining in a single lap of the first afternoon main club race. Points from the coached racing and the club racing all combine into the Kickstarter results at the end of the season.
Club Youth & Junior Sailing Secretary & Coaching team member Fiona Spence explained: "we wanted a reassuring and friendly way to introduce our less experienced members into the fun that is club racing, so we've re-vamped our coached race series to incorporate some race training and short races on a Sunday morning to focus on a key aspect of racing (mark rounding, starts etc) and then to encourage members to venture into club racing, a single lap of the first afternoon race also counts towards the kickstarter series points. The volunteer coaching team at Ripon is sharing the delivery of the race coaching each week and will either support the Kickstarters in the afternoon club race via a coach boat or join in too in their own boat! This week focused on the basics of understanding the course board and learning where the start and finish lines were."
Regular racers arrived early to help the Kickstarters get rigged and be friendly faces around the dinghy park and everyone lunched together, leading to new acquaintances and starter friendships. The coaches this week elected to join in the afternoon race in their own Mirrors and ended up triple-handed as some of the younger juniors and pre-sailors got involved and wanted to join in too!
The club race results team is currently scratching their heads over the many handicap sums and average lap calculations that are going to be needed to work out the results for this series but this is small price to pay for encouraging so many new sailors into the racing scene.
The next Kickstarter round is on Sunday 12 May and we hope more of our newer sailors will join in with the series for the rest of the season and enjoy racing regularly at the club in the future.