Good afternoon everyone! This is Coach Sophia and I have the pleasure of giving you all the update on our last day of Session 1 of Summer Sailing Camp. In addition to being the last day of Session 1, it is also the summer solstice. So, I hope you all enjoyed the looongest day of the year because your sailors definitely made the most of it out on the water!
The Mercury Mentors learned all about racing today. They reviewed the starting sequence and went over the different types of race courses. Once the sailors made it out on the water, they each took turns steering the boat by themselves for the last time. They also spent time on the sand bar due to the extremely light winds we had in the morning.
The Beginner Optis used all the skills they’ve learned in the past two weeks to sail an actual regatta! Coach Kenna and Coach Chase set up a start line and a windward leeward course (what many of our sailors call “the sausage course”). The starts were run off of a 3 minute sequence where the goal is to cross the line right at GO in order to race their competitors to the finish line. Race scores were taken all day to simulate the mounting pressure that one can experience when sailing a real regatta. Congrats to Gabe on being crowned champion!
The Green Fleet started off learning about the importance of using a line sight. A line sight is a marker that a sailor can find on land that tells them exactly where the line is. Sailors can get line sights by setting up leeward of the Race Committee boat on a close-healed course and looking down the starting line toward the pin. The kids also had a kinetics race in the morning which involves rocking and pumping your boat in order to accelerate to gain momentum. Congrats to Brooke on winning! In the afternoon the breeze filled in nicely from the southeast which allowed the sailors to work on their roll tacks and sail trim on the upwinds as well as their kiting technique on the downwinds. I’m proud to say that the sailors improved immensely over the course of the two weeks and I couldn’t be happier.
The 420s did a distance sail today. They sailed a looong upwind through the channel towards Lake Sylvia. Since it’s Friday, there were lots of boats cruising through the intracoastal. The heavy boat traffic really helped the sailors work on their tacking technique. The current was also ripping out towards the ocean which made the upwind extra long because they had to fight it all the way up. Once they reached the top of the channel they sailed back downwind, but this time they were sailing with the current instead of against it. This makes time pass a lot faster.
