This 5-week program sailed on our Force 24s is for kids 11 to 17 years who want to develop and progress their sailing skills learning to sail a small inshore keelboat.
Sailing with 3-4 other young participants and an instructor onboard. Catering for rank beginners through to the more experienced – a great program also for transferring Tackers Junior dinghy skills onto a bigger boat!
Boats, safety equipment and lifejackets are supplied and all instructors are qualified and experienced sailors themselves.
Wednesday afternoons – 3:45pm to 6:15pm – 4 or 5 weeks – courses run all summer (school terms 4 & 1)
We cater for sailors of differing skill levels. As a progressive skill program, the children will learn all of the safety aspects of sailing a keelboat as well as the seamanship skills required. The kids will rotate around the different crew positions on a keelboat, including skippering, learning to work together as part of a team. Eventually they will progress to learning to put up spinnakers!
The program is run on an ongoing basis, so if the kids are keen they can continue onto subsequent 5-week courses and continue to develop and practise their skills.
We want to work towards the kids being skilled enough to sail the keelboats without an instructor on-board. For those interested, this course can lead keen youth sailors into our Youth Squad Program run on weekends during Autumn/Winter . . . and maybe race in the Interclub Regatta against other young sailors from Sydney or even participate in our annual Newcastle Youth Keelboat Championship.
