“What if we asked the kids who drop out of sailing why they quit?” asks Neavin Sayre, three-time U.S. Boardsailing Champion, who works with Bic Sports. He asked his own kids’ friends why they left sailing. “They said, ‘Compared with XYZ, it’s not much fun. There are all these rules, all this pressure.’ They get enough of that in school.”
Last month at the U.S. Sailing Leadership Forum in San Diego, CA, Sayre made presentations on looking to other adventurous sports for ideas and creating “Un-Regattas” for variety and excitement. “If you look at other sports, such as surfing, skateboarding, or snowboarding, you’ll find that one percent of them compete. If you go to snowboard school, it’s much more about having fun, being safe… They’re not pushing racing. It’s working for them. More people are staying engaged. We need to expose kids to the sheer enjoyment of sailing.”
The Un-Regatta concept sprung from what Sayre had done windsurfing, such as using slalom courses. “These are renewed ideas that were successful in the past,” he says. Creating slalom courses (as skiers do, too) in lieu of windward-leeward race courses was one such idea to fun up sailing programs for kids and teenagers. He suggests adding challenges in between marks, such as standing up, capsizing, doing “wheelies,” doing 360s, and incorporating freestyle.
Among the different race starts he suggests are reaching or downwind starts, random starts within three minutes, capsize starts (everyone capsizes, then someone point to the first mark and says “Go!”), and a Le Mans-style start with sailors on the beach running to their boats.
Sayre on a windsurfer, as a sort of coach and master of ceremonies, and a dozen young sailors on O’pen Bics demonstrated these concepts for an audience of forum attendees. One of the most impressive parts of the demo to watch was the “expression session,” what Sayre calls the freestyle portion of the not-so-regatta-like spectacle. “This part is loosey goosey,” he says. “They do tricks in the spirit of fun.”
Those tricks can include balancing on one foot, capsizing your boat and doing silly bodybuilder poses, or as one brave California sailor did, placing your feet on the boom and balancing yourself as you do push-ups on the side of the boat.
Expression sessions can incorporate face paint, costumes, and even on-the water limbo contests. Anything goes. The only rule is that it must be fun. The one having the most fun wins. Such sessions may not be feasible on heavy-air days, but consider the possibilities on Chesapeake mornings in July.
“Variety is a huge component” to keeping kids excited about sailing says Sayre. Maybe one day they sail on O’Pen Bics; the next, they windsurf; then, they check out a Sonar. Young sailors at his home club “sail to the beach for a picnic, into the harbor for ice cream. They navigate around the mooring field. New things are cool and exciting. There’s adrenaline involved. Sailing needs to offer as much of this as we can,” he says.
To see these fun ideas in action, CLICK HERE.
If your club or camp incorporates creative, fun ideas for young sailors, we want to share them with readers. Let’s keep the conversation going. Shoot us an e-mail via [email protected] anytime.... and please send pictures of kids smiling on sailboats!
By Nicholas Hayes
