Hi Everyone! I’m coach Calli and I will be writing the post for today. It was a great day of sailing for us. There was wind the whole day and plenty of sunshine.
The Mercury Mentors had another swim test today. All the sailors each got a band. The bands are green, yellow, and red. Green means you can swim any where in the pool without a lifejacket, yellow means that you can swim in the shallow end without a lifejacket, but need it for the rest of the pool and red means that you need to wear a lifejacket at all times while in the pool. The group was split in two, while the swim test was going on, and half of them went sailing in the Mercury and then switched half way through the morning. It was a great introduction to the boat. They also learned about boat parts and will review this curriculum every morning!
Beginner Opti’s practiced being towed in the morning and afternoon. We always start with a nice, long towline to get all the kids accustomed to steering the boat. While we are towing we play the tennis ball game. The tennis ball game is when the ball has to make it to each opti all the way up the tow line to the coach boat. If they drop the ball, then the coaches get a point, but if it makes it up to the coach boat then the kids get a point. It was great to see just how comfortable they all got steering the boat when they maneuvered to get the tennis ball
Green fleet with Coach Joey and Sam did upwinds with tack on the whistle and follow the leader. Follow the leader is when all the boats get in line behind the coach boat and then follow them and do tacks when they turn. They did this drill all the way to the cove. In the afternoon they learned about starts. They practiced a 3 minute start and learned about the whistles that go with each minute.
The 420’s worked on sailing upwind also. Their upwind was more focused towards reading the telltales. This helps when sailing because the telltales will let you know when to make minor adjustments with the rudder to help the boat go faster. The wind is always changing so that means the boat should be altering with it. In the afternoon they did a long upwind with coach Chase sailing in the boat with them.
RWB clinic with Arthur: They split into fleet and team race groups. In a week and a half they will be competing in the Opti National Championships in Gross Point, Mi. LYC is the 3X defending Team Race National Champs and hopefully trying to make it 4. The younger sailors focus on the fleet racing event, so they continued to work on boathandling and technique. Later in the afternoon a seabreeze pushed through from the south-southeast and the whole clinic got together for a couple practice races to finish out the day.
