Coyote Point Yacht Club Youths Get One-on-Two Sailing Instruction

Latitude Ambassador Gerry Gragg stopped in a Coyote Point Yacht Club recently and was delighted to find two young sailors getting some one-on-two sailing instruction. Gerry reports below.

At the core of every successful youth-sailing program is the connection between instructor and student. A quiet, light-air Saturday morning at the Coyote Point Yacht Club (CPYC) provided a perfect setting for this match of a college-age instructor and two boys aged 10 and 12 to begin this learning process. The instructor, Tristan Ludvig, has a US Sailing Level 1 certification, and is a student at Cañada College, while the two boys, Keenan and Brandon, are sons of CPYC members.

The class began with a whiteboard session covering the points of sail and the appropriate sail trim required for each, followed by a computer simulation that allowed the boys to test their trimming skills, much like a video game played at home.

After the 20-minute classroom session, Tristan took the boys outside to gather their life jackets, the sail/rigging combination for the club’s Opti prams, and lastly the centerboard and rudder for the prams, which are stored in racks out on the nearby docks. Teamwork was used to get the boats off the racks and onto two-wheeled carts to facilitate launching the boats.

Square knots were used to secure the sail to the mast, and then each boy stepped the mast, installed the centerboard, and secured the rudder in place before breaking for lunch.

The on-water session had Tristan coaching from a motorized inflatable, while each boy sailed his Opti on a windward/leeward course set up by Tristan using a large orange inflatable mark to windward, with the inflatable marking the starting line. It was good to see these young sailors mastering the relation between mainsheet trim and rudder position in these small boats, an essential first step to becoming an accomplished sailor in larger boats with more complex steering and trim requirements.