With Brian Phipps for more experienced helms Stewartby Water Sports Club Teach-in : Summer Series
Saturday 9th - Sunday 10th April 2011

‘C’ grade trainers arrive at their course with a bag of ideas, a few shock and awe tricks, spout their stuff and leave; ‘B’ grade trainers ask what the trainee wants to learn, agrees, and runs with same agenda they’ve been using for the last ten years. ‘A’ grade trainers blend what the trainees say they want with what they already know the trainees are going to ask for and what is possible. If any need to check this, attend a police speed awareness course. ‘A+’, then, for Brian Phipps - craftsman, author, Mr Windsport, and good egg - who led the April training course at Stewartby for the Association. We, seven trainees, were invited to say what we needed; Brian already anticipated pretty much what we would say, and he brought together the broad themes of race tactics, boat tuning, and boat handling into a package that attended to the key points: confidence on the race start line, skills at the race marks, boat speed up- and down-wind, and so on.

I’ve had a 25 year break from boat sailing and with very rusty skills, outdated knowledge and shaky confidence, I have it all to learn again. Others had varying experience; all were good sailors leaving me at the back for most of the weekend, but I learned – as Brian intended – from those around me and from his measured encouragement: ‘The sail won’t go out if you’re kneeling on the mainsheet!’ We’d brought our boats and arrived on Thursday and Friday at Stewartby, a friendly, informal little club, welcomed by club committee member and Dart sailor Mark Norman, who co-ordinated, operated the gate, arranged and managed, drove the rib, got the curry, and had a friendly word with everybody. The weather was wet-suit warm and cloudless with light winds and puffs just enough for a capsize if we tried really hard.

We learned that at Olympic level, 75% of the success pie chart is boat handling, and tuning and tactics are the remaining 25% - a good reflection of what we’d asked for at the beginning. Brian took us through on-water exercises to focus on boat handling for control at the start line, timing to start effectively and very short-circuit racing. We had twenty or so short-order starts over the two days, with focus on defending the start position, rounding up and down wind, managing boat speed for best gains and sailing to race rules, all of which brought tactics into the key issue of confidence and competence in boat handling. As Brian said, we could do the weekend again and still learn a great deal from it, and he wowed us with a short session on tuning, servicing, changing mast rake on the water. Much of this is in the Catamaran Book and tips on the website, but like juggling, there’s only so much you can learn from the book.

‘What one thing have you learned?’ We all referred to our initial request. I needed to say ‘the whole works’, but as tail-end-Charlie, I scrambled up one response and kept quiet. Driving home, my respect for Brian’s training grew. He was positive and encouraging, his criticism constructive, and if my co-trainees got as much from the weekend as I did, we had very good value for the cost of the course. My thanks go to Brian Phipps, to Mark Norman and Bob Carter for making the training happen, and also a big ‘thank you’ to my co-trainees for your tolerance of my limited ability and observance of the racing rules.
John Oakshott, 14th April 2011