Our "racing school" website is now LIVE! Click the link shown below in order to visit the website:
http://www.austinyachtclub.net/fleets/J-24/racingschool/
What is "Racing School"?
What is "Racing School" you may ask? Well, I'm glad you asked! :-) See below for "The Idea" behind racing school and to see how you can get involved!
The "Idea"
The idea behind the racing school is very simple: during a typical race day at AYC we launch the boats at 12:30 pm and we go racing at 1:30 pm, right? The idea for "racing school" is to launch the boats earlier (at 10 am) and teach students how to sail _prior_ to the AYC series races. Since we are launching the boats anyways, we might as well get to the yacht club a couple of hours earlier and teach people how to sail :-) The "racing school" concept was started by the J/24 fleet at AYC but lots of other skippers have expressed interest in helping out! And you can help too if you want!The beauty of the "racing school" idea is that those of us who hate mowing the lawn will have a great excuse to go to the yacht club earlier and avoid those pesky household chores :-) Errr... Did I say that out loud, or did I just type it? ;-) What I meant to say is that the beauty of this idea is that it gives us 2+ hours where we can teach students how to sail (and how to race) without throwing them into the confusion which can ensue during an actual race on their first day.
The "Racing School" features
Since I wanted to use "bullets" on this page (and since I wanted to use the word "salient" :-) here are the salient features of the racing school concept:- Introduce new people to the sport of sailboat racing
- Allow students to progress at their own rate, improving their skills over time
- Provide an avenue for beginners to learn everything they need to learn in order to buy a boat and start sailing!!!
- Allow established "teams" to practice together and to train potential new crew members
prior to actual AYC races...
- ...while still allowing established "teams" to continue racing the AYC series with their current "core" team
- Allow regular crew members to learn different positions (for example it is every foredeck's fantasy
to drive the boat while the skipper tries to figure out the pointy end :-)
- Allow skippers who may not have a full team yet to train new crew members and invite them to join the team
- Provide a pool of potential new crew members for the benefit of other AYC skippers who may need extra crew
- Provide an avenue for
overall improvement for all AYC sailors
by providing a format during which we
can ride on different boats and we can all share our collective knowledge...
we can all learn from each other, and this "cross-pollination" will make us all better
sailors and strengthen the camaraderie in our club! :-)
How does it work?
The idea is for skippers who want to participate to show up at 10 am on the day of the race (instead of 12:30 pm)... and then we can teach students how to sail from 10 am to 12:30 pm. All we need is one skipper and one experienced crew (as instructors), and we can have two or three students on board each boat (or 10 students on a J/29 :-) This gives 2+ hours of on-the-water instruction where new sailors can learn how to race. At 12:30 the boats come back to the dock and that is the end of the class. At this point the skippers will swap the students for the "regular" crew and they go back out for the "real" race... and if some of the regular boats don't have enough crew, then the students would be welcome to go out again and participate in the real race if they want...Win-win Situation :-)
We think it is a win-win situation. The "regular" crew shows up at 12:30 and they are happy because the boat is already launched and rigged :-) The students are happy because they got 2 hours of personal training... The instructors are happy because they got to sail an extra 2 hours starting at 10 am instead of mowing the lawn :-) And other skippers at AYC are happy because now there is a pool of "students" who are learning how to sail and can fill in when boats need extra crew.Promoting the sport of sailing
We think the "racing school" concept can help bring new people into the sport of sailing. As we all know, there is a huge barrier to entry into the sport in terms of knowledge required before being able to buy a sailboat. How does somebody new to sailing learn everything they need to know in order to become an accomplished sailor? If the sailing platform is a Laser or a Sunfish, it takes very little time before a complete beginner can be proficient and safe in the water. But it probably takes 30 or 40 days (60 or 80 hours) of sailing experience before somebody new to the sport can learn and practice all the skills necessary to be able to sail a larger sailboat... and as we all know, the learning curve never ends, and all of us learn something new every time we go out on the water :-) We are hoping that the racing school can provide an avenue that allows beginners to learn everything they need to learn in order to buy a boat and start racing.OK, I'm sold! How can I help? ;-)
There's two ways you can help:- Spread the word amongst your friends: there's a lot of
people who would love to learn how to sail given the right opportunity.
If you know anybody who is interested in learning how to sail, point them to our website:
http://www.austinyachtclub.net/fleets/J-24/racingschool/
- Volunteer as an instructor: In order to have a successful school we need to have
boats and instructors. If you love sailing, and you enjoy teaching, and if you don't want
to mow your lawn in the morning (and you would prefer to go sailing), then we may just
have a position for you as an instructor :-)
OK, I'm sold! How do I sign up as an instructor? :-)
Thanks for asking! :-) We need both boat owners and assistant instructors. For a J/24 we typically like to have two instructors and three (or four) students on board. If you would like to volunteer, please send an email to the following address:austinj24racingschool@gmail.com
If you have a boat, please let me know the type of boat, the boat name, and how many students you would like to take. Even though the "Racing School" was started by the J/24 fleet, we have lots of volunteer instructors from lots of fleets, including:
- Ensign
- Hunter 28.5
- J/22
- J/24
- J/29
- J/80
- Pearson 31
- San Juan 28
- Southcoast 21
- Tornado Catamaran
OK, I'm an instructor, now what? :-)
By Wednesday prior to the race you will receive an email asking whether you are available as an instructor for the following weekend (sometimes at 10 am we will have to mow the lawn and we won't be available to participate as instructors :-) We also ask that students send an email by the Wednesday prior to the class they want to attend. This allows us to accommodate students according to the number of boats we have available.During a typical "Racing School" session you will show up at the AYC clubhouse at 10 AM and you will meet your students. You can then go to your boat and start sailing! Some students will be more advanced than others. In order to allow students to progress at their own rate, each student has received a "scorecard" with a series of exercises they need to perform. Once the student finishes all the exercises, they "graduate" from the course.
Sample scorecards for "Basic Sailor" course
For example, here is the "scorecard" for the "Basic J/24 Sailor" course... the course is not finished yet, but hopefully you get the idea:http://www.austinyachtclub.net/fleets/J-24/racingschool/syllabus/course_01_basic_page_01.html
The above course contains topics which are specific only to J/24s (such as cross sheeting using the infamous "Lopez" blocks), but a lot of the topics are just basic sailing (such as safety, life preservers, the difference between "tacking" and "gybing", etc.).
The idea is for students to be able to progress at their own rate. It is the student's responsibility to say when they think they understand a concept and have it "checked off" (in other words, it is not _your_ responsibility as an instructor :-) Shifting the responsibility to the students allows us to "scale" without any of the instructors becoming a bottleneck... at least that's the concept... it remains to be seen if it will work...
Ideally all fleets who are interested in participating in the program could create "scorecards" for their type of boat (for example the J/22 does cross-sheeting over the cabin top and does not use "Lopez" blocks, etc.)