2007 SEASON - Principal's Summary from Chris Joyner

2007 has proved to be yet another highly successful year for Lyme Regis Sea School 

SUMMER COURSES 2007

The Intensive Week Summer Courses have been very popular, with all Youth spaces taken by the end of March. Initially only five Summer weeks were planned to give everyone a break in the middle of the summer - but these filled so quickly that a number of regular members living locally had missed out - so we decided to run an extra half sized group targeted specifically towards local young people.

In all, over 100 young sailors and 40 adults, run with a team of 22, took part in the courses over the six weeks. This represented one of the largest years that we have had.

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

NEW TOPPER XENONS

The two new Topper Xenon dinghies that were purchased at the start of the year have proved invaluable, allowing returning students who had completed all the basic sailing courses to learn new skills. The new Topper Xenons provided exactly what was needed, having a sizeable asymmetric spinnaker with good performance and providing a target to aspire to.

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 Duncan West as our Coach with Joseph FitzGerald, Harriet Butler, Tom Auckland and Kit Fortescue 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 Nicky Williams, Christian Forster and Matthew Berry 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 2007

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.

2006 improvements

Boats purchased

One Wayfarer, a Laser, two Toppers and one Pico added to the fleet
Safey equipment:  buoyancy aids replaced as required; three new radios; .

Equipment purchased

3x Wayfarer Mains
5x Topper sails
2x Laser radial sails
2x Wayfarer jibs
2x Wayfarer genoas
3x Pico sails
3x Topper sails
Various booms, tillers and rudders to renew and replace.

2007 improvements

Lyme Regis Sea School continue to upgrade and expand their fleet.

Boats purchased

Two new Topper Xenon dinghies have been purchased to enable students to learn new skills, especially spinnaker work.

The Topper Xenon is a hiking asymmetric dinghy with a hoop
main and a centreboard. Plenty of room and again the now
popular gnav kicker system, and inboard tanks provide  plenty of sitting area in light winds, also some stowage boxes.

Helping to provide control launching and recovery or single handed sailing is a jib furler.