Good busy

[rfrance0718]

I didn't have enough to do so I've taken on a new project. Our club has had a Junior race team for at least 50 years but we never had Optimist Prams. Now we do. We are a really small club and we were doing well to have a sailing school, High School Sailing and our 13-18 year old sailing team. But I had coached at another club that had Optis and the kids who started racing at 8 or 9 years old were already experienced by the time they started sailing Lasers or 420s. No one else had stepped up, so I added a hat to my collection.

Getting started, I knew of one kid who might be interested and heard that maybe a 2nd was a possibility. The club had bought a couple of boats a few years back, so I realized that it was now or never, and I announced that we had launched. I figured that having 2 kids would make a good inaugural season, but fate had other ideas. Now, only 4 weeks in, we have 6 kids already in the program. The kids have raced in 4 regattas, and last week all 6 raced on Lake Erie. Pretty cool.

How?

As it turns out one of our Laser sailors had sailed Optis at another club and he had a little sister ready to take over his boat. Another kid, from another Columbus club, had already been racing Optis and his family joined our club to be part of the team. My one prosoect's dad went ahead and bought a used boat, so we had 3 kids with their own boats and  We had 2 more using our club boats. I bought a starter boat and donated it to the program. Within a single day, another kid jumped into that boat and sailed his first regatta last Wednesday after just 3 weeks of sailing!

Kids are at a 3 day siminar this weekend with pro coaching. I'm taking a break.

Meanwhile I've made good progress on Oday projects, and Friday I pulled my buddy's Presto 30 up to Lake Erie and it's now at its dock. Boat trailed easily behind the F150 and launching was easy as well. First time raising masts and rigging, so we took some time working that out.

[Doug SC]

Kudos on passing it along and taking on the lead. It's a great way to get started with sailing at a young age.