Sail Training Program - Can you help?

[StuartX]

Hello everyone,

TLDR: We’re a group of sailors who meet once a week to train. Each week we focus on one topic. This is how we are designing our training program. We'd love insights and ideas on how we can make it better !

Sail Training Program Principles [Draft]:
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Open: Peer co-learning: Anyone welcome, so long as they have something to share, the desire to learn. We’re not a sailing school, it’s a group of people who want to keep learning and sail at peak performance.

Focused: Every week we pick a topic, the most qualified/interested member for that topic prepares the training session for the following Saturday and may share videos/tutorials in the week. (Maybe a mid week meeting, or sail session too). If you come on Saturday, do your homework and show up on time.

Document: We will document the key learnings of every training. On each session someone will be designated to taking notes or a video, so new members can just watch it. Over time we will build comprehensive SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) for boat, roles, manoeuvres, trim etc.

Learn by Teaching: New members who join will be assigned a “veteran” who will run the new member through the previous trainings, using the notes/videos. The goal is consistency in procedures, and learning by teaching.

Committed: I, as the boat owner, commit to making the boat available every Saturday for training. Once I have a crew who knows the boat, even if I am not available I may make the boat available for training so long as a "boat captain” is available on the day. Other members may bring out the group on their boat. Members who join have an interest in learning and contributing on a regular basis.

Roles: On each training, every member has specific role. Navigation, Helm, Trim, Pit, Bow etc. Not generalists. But we will rotate, bearing in mind different levels of experience.

The goal: become a group of all rounded sailors, developing SoPs and optimal performance for S/v Ikigai, but able to move onto another member’s boat, with shared conventions, adapting and learning on that boat. Boat owners benefit by having a team who work by the same conventions. Members get to sail on more than just one boat.

But not too structured: Processes emerge through trial and error, so leave space for emergent learning.

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At the moment, I'm planning on drawing on these 3 resources:

The “Systems Sailing Playbook" and video tutorials developed by Wally Cross for Quantum Sails, which I just discovered. I have not fully explored it but it seems an amazing roadmap to optimal performance. If you havn't seen it, I encourage you to take a look.

The RYA Yachtmaster syllabus, which some of us in the group have done, regularly reviewing and doing drills on all aspects we learned when preparing for the exam but don't practice as much as we should.

The experience and insights of our members as well as specific curiosities and interests we may want to explore.

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So, these are my ideas, we are just getting started with the program, If anyone here has pointers to systems and programs or ideas in general, I’d be very grateful !

And of course, if you visit our part of the world (we're in Sardinia, Italy) and the above resonates, you're welcome to come sailing with us.

We just set up an Instagram account to log what we learn each week, if you're interested: @sailingikigai

Stuart
Thanks/Ciao

[LittleWing77]

This is an absolutely fab idea!

The only thing I would suggest is to check your insurance. You would need some sort of coverage similar to if you were racing the boat, I imagine, although I don't know anything about the schemes in Italy.

Your proposed plan falls into a bit of a grey area because if you told your insurance company that you were using the boat for "sail training", all sorts of commercial requirements would be triggered, starting with the master of the vessel required to have an RYA Yachtmaster with a commercial endorsement. (This is based on requirements in England), as well as such things as, for example, a required safety briefing being done for the crew each time before leaving the dock.

Overall, though, what a great way to raise the collective knowledge of your sailing group and work on things that no one much likes to spend good sailing time on - such as man overboard drills, or docking exercises.

Best of luck,
LittleWing77

[StuartX]

Thank you for the feedback, and thanks for raising the concern on insurance. I'll check with them, but my guess is we are ok: It is in fact just a normal day out on the water, but instead of just cruising, we train for specific drills each week.

p.s. the first week we whre so many we needed 2 boats out (due to covid distancing), after a week we have 6 boat owners looking to join and about 35 people looking to crew of experienced sailors looking to spend more time on the water with some structure and sharing knowledge! I could not even imagine it would be so popular, but it turns out we're all looking for the same thing! and there's no commercial interest, not a specific club involved, just open and collaborative!

Ciao

Originally Posted by LittleWing77

This is an absolutely fab idea!

The only thing I would suggest is to check your insurance. You would need some sort of coverage similar to if you were racing the boat, I imagine, although I don't know anything about the schemes in Italy.

Your proposed plan falls into a bit of a grey area because if you told your insurance company that you were using the boat for "sail training", all sorts of commercial requirements would be triggered, starting with the master of the vessel required to have an RYA Yachtmaster with a commercial endorsement. (This is based on requirements in England), as well as such things as, for example, a required safety briefing being done for the crew each time before leaving the dock.

Overall, though, what a great way to raise the collective knowledge of your sailing group and work on things that no one much likes to spend good sailing time on - such as man overboard drills, or docking exercises.

Best of luck,
LittleWing77

[LittleWing77]

How fantastic, Stuart!

Thanks for posting the update.

Warmly,
LittleWing77