Dinghy Sailing

[Ex-Calif]

Well - Saturday we did a soft launch of our clubs dinghy sailing ladder. We were beer drinking and instead sitting down I got roped into figuring out how to help get more dinghy sailing going.

We have these Access 2.3 dinghy's which are great for complete novices, disabled sailors and drunks (just kidding) - Access Dinghies - About the boats

Anyway - I put forth the idea to have a ladder - like a squash ladder - to do one on one match racing and get more poeple out. So last week We got 9 people out in the rain and no wind and 2 kts of current. About 6 extras showed up - mostly kids and we launched into the channel for an hour and drifted slowly toward the south China Sea.

The rescue boat kept an eye out and before someone got riun over by a supertanker all the wet rats were gathered up by their painters and towed just upwind and up current of the beach so we could salvage our egos by actually sailing onto the beach.

Interestingly the race was a complete bust but the event was a great success. The kids that went asked when we were going to do it again and the adults that did it are trying to figure out how to make them sail closer to the wind and how to rig a spinnaker chute.

So much a success that we are doing another trial on Sunday.

[Sail Dumaguete]

old sailors never die, they just get a little dinghy.

[Hud3]

Great idea, Dan, and it seems a really good way to get the kids into sailing. I looked at your link. Are those boats set up for handicapped sailors? It seemed like some of the features were there to accommodate people with impairments of some sort.

[Ex-Calif]

hud - Yes they are set up with a joystick and single sheeting with outhaul for disabled sailors. They are unsinkable and non-capsizing. The biggest problem is no one can lift the dagger boards they are really heavy - LOL.

Our club is pretty active with disabled sailors. Our disabled sailors (Sailability Sailors) have been practicing for the olympics and they are off to Qingdao (sp?) for September.

We hope to get this thing launched and functional so when they return we will actually see if it makes sense to compete in the same ladder.

We are actually doing what I would call "bracket" racing. We will divide the sailors into boxes of 5. In a month you have to race all 4 sailors in your bracket. If you win your bracket you go up a box. Last in bracket you go down a box. We are trying to see if this format makes sense. They are short races - if you have a little wind - and we should be able to knock a race out in 20-30 minutes.

As far as the kids go, we nag them to go sailing and they sort of hem and haw about it. When they saw the adults gearing up they were all over it. I reckon we do too much armcahir sailing on anyway so we oughta get this thing going.

Last Saturday it took about 2 hours to rig nine boats, go sail for 1 1/2 hours and derig 9 boats. Piece of cake.

[imagine2frolic]

You can't start them young enough!

[SkiprJohn]

Very nice! Good luck on your program. We're doing the same thing here with Sunfish.
JohnL

[Ex-Calif]

Finished up the J24 series on Saturday - see separate post - and Sunday we tried the dinghy thing again.

Planned a 2PM start off but showed up to rain and no wind. I think God hates dinghy sailing - LOL.

We will give it the college try again next Saturday and see how it goes.