16/10/12 - Sailing Petersburg OEC

16th October 2012

Sailing - Petersburg OEC - Simon

We had force 3 winds in morning and then no wind in afternoon. It was dry all day.

• Today I want to learn how to pick up a mooring.
• How to do a man over board drill.
• I want to perfect coming along side too.

Today Simon took us out to do some man over board drills. We checked the forecast and he said that we needed to get out on the water as soon as possible because the wind was meant to die down in the afternoon.

So we went out straight away and Simon got us to first pick up a mooring because he said if we can do this then we will find our man over board drills much easier as they are practically the same method.

This was good to learn and was very similar to coming along side in the way that you need to turn head to wind in order to stop to pick up the mooring.

We were then each given a buoy to throw over board and then go and save. We took it in turns doing each of these tasks. We had to do it over and over again until we got it perfect and we were not allowed to swap helm & crew positions until Simon had seen what we had done and said it was ok to swap.

In the afternoon, Simon played a really fun game with us. He had a heap of tennis balls and sponges in the RIB and he threw them all out randomly. It was then a race, myself and Liz against Stacy and Kevin to get as many objects as we could using all the skills we had learnt during the day.

The wind was really dying down at this stage and Liz and I didn’t have the ability that Kevin & Stacy had, so they won hands down. But it was really good fun and is definitely something I would use myself if I ever get the chance to take a group out sailing as their instructor in the future.

Playing the game with Simon was really good fun. We hadn’t played any games with Brian, so it was cool to have a different instructor for a while to show us a different instructing technique. I would definitely prefer it if there was more fun put into our sessions with Brian.

A highlight of the day was definitely the homemade Birthday scones that Liz made for Matin's Birthday today! They were amazing and we had a great lunch with a nice cup of tea!

Enjoying nom nom Birthday scones!

I really enjoyed today’s sailing, there wasn’t exactly a lot of wind but Simon managed to keep us all interested. I don’t know if I was kept interested because I have improved my sailing skills and was better at sailing with less wind or if Simon just made the session interesting and fun.
I managed to pick up a mooring quickly and was pretty good at collecting a man over board by the end of the day. However, these are things that can never be practiced too much so I am looking forward to going over it again next week with Brian.

Environmental interest of the day...

Today I saw fish jumping on the lake, this could mean he was being prayed on, or he needed more oxygen. It was in quite a weedy part of the lake so maybe there oxygen levels were low there due to eutrophication.