Found at: http://www.anguillaguide.com/article/articleprint/5728/-1/127/
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Excitement At The Anguilla Youth Sailing Club
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Big things are about to happen at the Anguilla Youth Sailing Club!
The Club’s new Instructor, Canadian William Ferguson, has unveiled plans for the immediate future which are certain to set tongues wagging all over the island.
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William Ferguson Instructor at the Youth Sailing Club readying new sailing equipment
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The Youth Sailing Club currently teaches Anguilla’s National Sport to twenty five students aged from six to eighteen years. It wishes to increase this number. Many students stop sailing with the club when they outgrow the little Optimist sailing boats so beloved for their ease of use. The Optimist is the perfect first sailing craft and more than half a million of them have been produced worldwide. They are used to teach children weighing up to 120lbs to sail. The club did not have enough boats for students to graduate to when they outgrew the little craft and so many stopped coming for lessons. The club aims to bring them back with the help of the arrival of several new craft. Ferguson is excited by the new arrivals, “In the next two weeks the club will double the fleet of boats. There will be 17 boats on the water, 9 Optimists, 4 Lasers and 4 420’s. This is a good variety that teaches kids well and is a combination of boats that a lot of sailing schools around the world have used.”
Ferguson enthuses the benefits of the various craft, “ The Optimist is a single handed introductory boat for small kids, then they can go through to racing Optimists; it is the most raced boat in the world. The skills you learn in an Optimist translate directly into a Laser. For the Racing Class I will now instruct from a Laser, because everything I do in a Laser, all the motions and the little stops, is exactly the same. Seventy percent of the sailors in the Olympics sailed Optimists as kids. The students will now be able to graduate to a fifteen feet long 420 before going on to a Laser. The 420 is a double crewed boat. The crew wear a harness with a hook and a little wire going to the top of the mast. They put their feet on the edge of the boat and their whole body leans out. It also has a spinnaker, a third sail to put up down wind. It teaches team work and double handed sailing. A good 420 sailor can go very easily into keel boat sailing.”
The arrival of the Laser boats means that for the first time the Youth Sailing Club will be able to offer adult sailing classes and more classes to older children, most of whom are local Anguillian, “very few of our students are expatriate children,” says Ferguson. They will enhance the afterschool programmes currently in operation. Adult classes, which start on 2 March, will run in blocks of four three hour lessons and will cost US$80 a month. With just three students to a class “it will be fun,” Ferguson grins.
The Spring programme will run from 31 March to 4 April. There will be a week long day camp with introductory sailing and a 420 racing clinic for older children. Ferguson continues, “For the first time we are going to offer the Starfish programme running from nine to noon Monday to Thursday, for children aged four to seven. It will be a marine introduction with swimming lessons, a chance to get out in a boat with an instructor and there will be a lot of constructive play. The idea is to get them on the water, get them used to it and get them comfortable with how the boat works without terrifying anyone.”
The Anguilla Sailing Association (ASA) Regatta in May is the main fundraiser for the Youth Sailing Club and is eagerly looked forward to by the Club. The ASA are looking to actively increase the involvement of local islanders this year and are planning steps in this direction.
Ferguson is also looking beyond the Regatta to the International Caribbean Optimist Championship in St Thomas between June 15 -22. He is hoping to send six young sailors. “This will be Anguilla’s first appearance at an international sailing event,” he states proudly. “Fundraising to get the children there has already started. We are actively involved in raising the estimated US$1800 we need per child to join in this wonderful event.”
It is clear that Ferguson and his Board of Directors at the ASA have taken on a lot for 2008. It will be exciting to follow the Club’s progress and see the ideas put into practice.
The Youth Sailing Club is located at Sandy Ground, www.sailanguilla.com/aysc.htm