ON-WATER PRACTICE Setting Up On-Water Games and Activities
As a sailing instructor, you will spend the majority of your time each day leading water activities. They give students the opportunity to try a maneuver for the first time, bring their skills together and do what they came to do: sail. Water games and activities follow introductions/chalk talks and usually either a demonstration and/or a land drill. On-water practice has the most variables of all of the teaching methods (i.e., weather, sea state, open space, and that means they require a higher degree of planning and practice to achieve success.
Common mistakes when running water drills include poorly laid out courses, lack of specific directions, students’ inability to hear the instructor and lack of group control (resulting in wasted time chasing sailors around). Following are some guidelines to help make your water drills run safely, smoothly and effectively.
Keeping it Fun and Safe
For beginner sailors, have one focus skill for the day; make sure the majority of time within that game or activity will be spent practicing the skill.
For example, if your focus skill is tacking and you set a triangle with a short windward leg and very long reach legs, your sailors will spend only a short time executing tacks compared to a relatively long time sailing on reaches. This may be fun, but it is not helping your students learn tacking in the most efficient way. It would be better to shorten those reach legs so more time is spent going windward.
Assess the complexity; is the skill level and age of your students appropriate for many maneuvers/rules/directions? What conditions do you need for this drill to be successful?
E This should be identified in your written lesson plans as a reminder. For example, reinforcing jibing with a jibing slalom with young, first-year sailors would best be done in lighter to moderate air.
E Marks close together allow for more maneuvers (tacking and jibing) but also increase the interactions between boats.
E Marks farther apart allow more time for students to work on sail trim, body position, keeping the tiller straight, and boat balance.
Will the drill allow you to give sailors feedback?
E Some fast action or crowded drills, such as a game of football or the box drill, may require you to stay farther away from the group. If that is the case and you cannot give feedback during the drill, be sure to have a notebook with you to write down your specific comments for each sailor/team.
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