Sailing School

For approximately 35 years, our club has run a sailing school which has moved from strength to strength over this time. The Sailing School started with a group of friends joining together to teach their children to sail and the school has grown since to be recognised by the RYA. The maximum number of students so far on one course is 98.

Involved in the school is a large number of volunteer instructors and helpers. Several of the instructors teaching in 1999 started as juniors, at the age of 8, learning to sail on the very course which they now teach. With this group of younger instructors is a group of more mature and, in many cases, long-time stalwart volunteers. It is because of this continuing support that the school has been able to survive and flourish.

To support the instructors, we are very lucky to have had the services of an incalculable number of volunteer helpers who have covered everything from cooking in the galley, loaning boats, first aid, fetching and carrying fuel and tackling other functions too numerous to list. All this help is so important as without it, those on the water would not be able to give so much time to the children, our students. I would like to take this opportunity on behalf of all past and present principals of the school to thank everybody for their continued loyal and unstinting support.

Because of the RYA's recognition of the Sailing School, we have been able to extend tuition into the more relaxed and less aggressive syllabus covering the cruising side of sailing. This has contributed to ' the growing numbers of juniors taking part in the Sailing School and, hopefully, increased students' enjoyment of sailing.

We find ourselves in the happy position of having many of our juniors obtaining higher standards at a younger age than previously so, for the next millennium, we are hoping to extend yet again towards the higher certification for those interested in racing by preparing them over an extended period of years for their blue badge award. I believe that this will allow the next generation of juniors to move towards becoming instructors, if they so wish. In parallel with this, we find that we need to create an extension to the RYA course for our cruising group. For the foreseeable future, the syllabus for this will be created and maintained by our own establishment.