The first starts for our FNO junior sailors

Every week in the sailing season, our club runs three training sessions for the juniors in the club - Friday Night Oppies (FNO), Sunday Morning Oppies (SMO) and Sunday on the Tides.  Overall there is about 120 juniors in training, and a huge number of volunteers who instruct, provide patrol boat cover, and perform many other jobs to make it happen. 

This year, I'm the SI for FNO fleet, and also instruct the 'Start Racing at Slipper' group.  These are children who have passed their RYA Stage 2 and are looking to get involved in some racing with their peers at the Junior Regatta in a couple of weeks.  This week, we looked at starting, and I promised to put a video of their starts online.  So here is the first one, this is the first ever start for these sailors and they did fantastically well.

After lots of practice, here is the last start of the day.  Check out the competition at the pin end of the line, when Haribo's are involved those sailors are epic.

 

 

This group clearly has talent, when one of them becomes the next Ben Ainslie this footage will be gold dust.