school Holiday program

Below are some fantastic reviews from our sailors Maddie from level 3 and Matthew from level 4. Both sailors participated in the school holiday program up at Manly in April. Read on to find out what Maddie and Matthew learnt during the program and how much they enjoyed it! 


MADDIE:
It was an extremely fun holiday sailing camp. Everyone enjoyed themselves. We all had a go in a variety of different boats; such as the Hobie Wave, RS Feva, Laser 4.7 and the O’pen Bic. It was a fantastic three-day programme.

On Wednesday, the first day, it was blowing around 20 knots, gusting over 25. Everyone capsized but we all enjoyed it. On Thursday, the wind wasn’t as strong as Wednesday.  First we did short races, to get everyone together and ready. We then did a destination sail, around to Stanmore Bay then back to Manly. On Friday, we started with some racing, we then did some follow-the-leader. It got really windy when we got out of the bay, some of us had a hard time staying upright, however it was great for our learning.

I really enjoyed this holiday camp, and I know I wasn’t the only one. It was a great learning experience for everyone.


MATTHEW:
In the first week of the holidays we had our sailing camp. We had sailing sessions every day and 3 gym sessions over the week and some speeches on rules, weather and science of sailing as well. I was sailing the Laser Radial with seven others during the week and the rest of the level 4s were sailing Bics, on the first day we went for an hour sail in the morning then derigged our boats and hopped into a shuttle bus.

We arrived at the Navy base and we went for a mud run. The mud run wasn’t your usual mud run, we had to jog for 1 or 2 kilometres in wetsuits and booties then we had to go across this estuary that the ground was entirely made of super, sticky mud. The mud went up to and past our waists in some places and it sucked at our legs and boots. All while the Navy men were telling us to get a move on and never sit down. By close to the end some of us were literally pulling some team mates along. Once we were out of the mud we were all exhausted. But that wasn’t it, after a quick break and some water we had to run back to the Navy base. The best bit about it was jumping off the wharf close to a Navy boat. We all agreed that it would have been one of the hardest things that we have done in our life.

The next three days consisted of a gym session, then sailing session, lunch then another session on the water. Us laser sailors had Mike Bullot who won Laser Radial Open Worlds and Youth Worlds in 2001 and competed at the Laser Worlds 5 times and his best placings were 14th and 17th.  We also had Hamish Pepper who has competed at the Olympics four times! Twice in Laser where he got 10th and 7th and twice more in the Star. We really enjoyed having them coaching us and we all improved heaps and gained lots of knowledge from them. On Friday we had racing and competed in 6 or 7 races. We did shorter races in the morning and then we did longer races in the afternoon.
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The week was great fun, hard work and we all learned and improved heaps though and wouldn’t have been nearly as good without the awesome food that was cooked by the ladies in the kitchen. We had burgers, hot dogs, macaroni and cheese, soup, Hot milo, fruit, baking and more.