Back to School ROTTERs at Ripon Sailing Club
by Lucy Priest 10 Sep 11:59 BST
6 September 2025
Back to School ROTTERs at Ripon Sailing Club © John Young
The training team at Ripon Sailing Club have been very busy over the summer running RYA courses for both adult and junior members. As a result there was a bumper turn out of 28 sailors for the Back to School ROTTERs session on Saturday 6th September, with almost all of the club's junior training boats booked out for the day.
Fortunately several of the club's youth sailors had volunteered to come down and coach, which is always popular with the juniors as "parents are too boring". The Racing (red) group were therefore very happy to head off down the narrows to the North lake with two of the young coaches to spend the morning working on improving their roll tacks and working on start drills.
The Intermediate (white) group has grown so much that it had to be split in two, with Oppies in one group and Toppers and Teras in the other. Both groups were working on improving their upwind sailing during the first part of the morning session, and followed that up with taking turns practising how to come alongside the jetties.
The Beginner (blue) group began by practising their straight line steering and tacking, with the coaches occasionally strategically moving the marks to gradually encourage the group further and further upwind until it was possible to sail all the way across the lake to the island, and then all the way round the island before heading back to the club house for lunch.
After lunch the Racing group headed out for a bit more practice before joining the two afternoon club races, where ROTTERs in Optimists took the top three places in the overall results with the first adult sailor in fourth place. The Intermediate groups continued to work on upwind sailing, and particularly on trying to build consistency in their tacking, while the Beginners tried applying their straight line sailing and tacking skills to some independent upwind sailing, completing several laps of a short course. Several taster sails were also completed by new members, novice sailors and younger siblings, with the highlight probably being a 5yr old pirate crewing in a National 12!
After a quick snack break several of the Beginner and Intermediate Oppy sailors decided it was time for some capsize practice, while the Tera and Topper sailors preferred to keep sailing for as long as possible. After eventually persuading even the keenest sailors (and swimmers) that it was time to stop and pack up the pizza order was taken and the sailors headed to the club house to finish off the day with an evening of pizza and board games.