Principal's Summary from Chris Joyner

2009 has proved to be yet another highly successful year for Lyme Regis Sea School 

SUMMER COURSES 2009

The Intensive Week Summer Courses were very popular, with all Youth spaces taken by the end of January. All six Intensive Weeks took place run by our very enthusiastic team of Instructors led by Sophie and Joe.

In all, over 110 young sailors and 35 adults, run with a team of 25, took part in the courses over the six weeks. This represented one of the largest years that we have had. The weather was not good but despite that everyone enjoyed themselves and the standard of sailing of participants improved enormously.

Feedback from all the students has been very positive with many intending to book again next year and some have taken steps to continue their sailing by becoming members of Lyme Regis Sailing Club.

NEW RS Fevas

Two new RS Fevas were purchased at the start of the year and have proved very popular with the Instructors and students. The manageable size means that they are capable of being sailed by competant young people in their early teens whilst the asymetric spinnaker makes for some exciting sailing.

The two Xenon dinghies were fitted with trapezes and have provided another aspect of training for the more advanced students.

The success of the Sea School is very much down to the Instructors whose hard work and enthusiasm has been tremendous. My firm belief is that the Instructors have to have fun themselves and enjoy the challenges. Without this they cannot possibly convey the balance of achievement and enjoyment that Sea School is all about. This year’s team managed that task admirably despite some very poor weather. Frequently I found myself going to ask the Instructors to do something, only to find they were doing it already. Their initiative has been tremendous, with all of them taking on the responsibility for many different aspects of the courses and forming a very professional team. They made my job very easy. 

On the training side, we ran an Instructor Course with Tony Wood as our Coach with Jonathan Dower, Rosie Mostyn, Dominic FitzGerald and Mathew Berry all becoming Instructors. All four of them worked through the summer and are now firmly established as part of the team.

New to the team as Assistant Instructors this year were Katy Coates, Josh Coates and Will Forster who worked extremely hard and will in time, I hope, go on to become full Instructors.

As always the Youth Section of Lyme Regis Sailing Club used the Sea School boats. This is a very large group of members and helpers whose organisation under the control of Nick Butler is extremely impressive. Many of the Sea School Instructors help with the organisation and it provides an excellent training ground for young sailors who aspire to becoming Sea School instructors. The link with the Sailing Club and the Youth Section is very close and considerable work has been completed this year in formalising the arrangements and making them more apparent to everyone.

POWERBOAT TRAINING 2009

Several Level 2 RYA Powerboat Courses were run thanks to the hard work of PB Instructors Richard Finch, Jim Thomas and Barry Mc Gibbon. As always these were well received and enjoyed by all who took part.

INSTRUCTOR TRAINING 2010 - Go to INSTRUCTOR COURSES PAGE