A couple of weeks ago TCDYC put on a sailing seminar focused on new cat owners who wanted to improve their boat handling. We did a class room session on Friday evening, talking through the anatomy of basic manovers such as parking, tacking and gybing. On Saturday we did an "on the water" session, doing a series of drills to practice the skills covered in the class room. On Sunday we ran a fun distance race of around 18 miles from the dike to red fish island and back. Entry in the distance race was included in the seminar fee - a nominal $20, but we also opened it up to others for $10 and set off some fast spinnaker boats with experienced skippers an hour after the slow boats, started - so the newbies got to be in the lead for most of the race.

The whole event was very popular - with many of the participants asking us to run another seminar in the near future.

The idea of having a seminar focused on basic skills to provide a link into racing is something I'd been thinking about for a couple of years. Getting basic boat handling nailed is key to having fun on a cat - when tacking, gybing and righting after a capsize are a struggle its easy to be put off the sport on a single breezy day. We had 15-20 mph winds at time during the on the water seminar on Saturday, so capsizes were frequent, but with two chase boats on hand to offer advice on righting (and occasionally some extra weight to help out) folk were very comfortable in these conditions.

We set two buoys perpendicular to the wind for the first exercise, and got people to lap them. This gave them a chance to reach a little, but also forced them to tack and gybe.

The second exercise was on a windward/leeward short course - which helped people with more tacks and gybes as well as learning how to sail efficiently up wind and down wind.

We also got people to practice beach launching, parking and how to get out of irons and do a tack from a parked position. Before each exercise we did a briefing on the beach and during each one the instructors on the chase boats would bark advice and encouragement.

We also did a fish fry + bonfire social event on the Saturday evening which went well. All of us involved in the on the water coaching found the experience a lot of fun and very rewarding - a nice change from just tearing it up on the local circuit regattas.

Chris Green