Sailing- It’s not a toy, but…

by Jardine Media on 3 Feb 2009 It was meant for the kids but the Dads couldn’t keep their hands off it. It was large, expensive looking, glossy and attractively high tech with a massive colour digital display. It was also bloody good fun. While a queue of small children became steadily more irritable in the background, their parents pushed the machine’s buttons, gripped its tiller and sailed towards a digital horizon with tongues firmly clamped between their teeth. What am I talking about? Middle Harbour Yacht Club had a Virtual Sailing Simulator at the club on Sunday and the adults were enthralled.

John Mooney from Virtual Sailing, the company which supplied the simulator, said that the beauty of the machines is their versatility: they’ve been used by everyone from young toddlers learning to sail right through to elite sailors looking for detailed data to help improve their performance.

‘It is great for teaching to sail, for sailing when there is not enough wind or too much wind. It is good for correcting peoples’ (technical) faults…It’s got a multitude of uses. We use it for physical fitness testing…’

‘We can recreate the situation that you get out on the water. We can recreate it here in the laboratory and we can have a really good look. We can look at hiking postures and see why someone is getting a sore back, and all sorts of things.’

The simulator can be rigged up to ultra-violent diodes on a person’s back to check the curvature of the spine, essential for maintaining a safe hiking position, as well as a heart rate monitor to supply fitness data. If you’ve noticed that the tiller tends to wobble when you get tired, the simulator can collect accurate data on how much your steering deviates and when it starts, useful for top sailors trying to identify weak spots in their performance.

As the MHYC parents found, the sailor controls the machine in exactly the same way that they would sail a normal boat: there’s a tiller for steering, a mainsheet and body weight to alter the angle of heel. The only thing it doesn’t have is someone to throw buckets of water on you. The simulator can be set to a number of different levels, from life-threateningly hung-over to amazingly proficient with accurate simulation of the following classes: Optimist, Byte, Mega Byte, Liberty, 29’er and Laser 4.7, Radial and Standard.

The sailing simulator was one of the star attractions at Sunday’s launch of MHYC’s 2009 Junior Sailing Development Program. The other star attraction didn’t come with a tiller attached but was no less enthralling: Olympian and windsurfing ace Jessica Crisp. Crisp and the highly regarded Olympic sailing coach Victor Kovalenko are two of the high profile trainers that MHYC has recruited to nurture their existing talent and to provide inspiration for their rapidly growing junior fleet.

With the Sydney weather its glorious best, families enjoyed the complimentary bar and beach BBQ while their kids raced around in Optimist and Feva dinghies, paddled in the clear aqua water and generally got extremely sandy and wet. After the event the carpark was full of worried looking fathers, the joy of the Virtual Sailing simulator long forgotten, hovering next to their cars and exhorting their youngsters to ‘get as much sand off as possible before getting in.’ And if Carl Crafoord, MHYC Rear Commodore Elect, has anything to do with it these kind of car park conversations are going to become routine.

MHYC had its last formal trophy competition for kids in the 1999/2000 season and so Crafoord was recruited to revitalise the club’s junior sailing program. One of the first things he did was to introduce Tackers, a ‘learn to sail’ program which utilises Optimist dinghies. After the success of the first Tackers program, when more families turned up than were places available, MHYC brought more Optimists and introduced the higher level Tackers 2 and 3. Crafoord is proud to announce that Mitch Short, one of the kids who graduated from the first Tackers program, ‘went on to win the green fleet at the NSW Optimists; he was a novice and he won his division after this ten week course.’

After Tackers was introduced, Crafoord and MHYC Commodore Martin Hill decided that the next step was to try and make sailing a formal part of the sports curriculum for local primary and secondary schools. They met with Mosman Council and found enthusiastic support in the form of Councillor Warren Yates. Yates was keen to support community initiatives and thought that MHYC’s rejuvenated youth sailing program represented a great opportunity for local schools.

‘One of the most wonderful things about Mosman is you have so much water and so many opportunities for sailing, and many sailing clubs…this initiative means that the next generation will be even more able to access that wonderful opportunity. This program…is designed to give every child in Mosman schools the opportunity of learning to sail.’

Nine year old Alec Brodie would certainly agree that sailing is a great thing for school students to be able to do. Alec and his dad Hugh were at the MHYC on Sunday to admire the sailing simulator and support the launch of the club’s 2009 junior sailing program. Alec started sailing two years ago and now owns his own International Optimist Dinghy named Quoka and is hoping to progress to the NSW State Championships being conducted at MHYC on March 28 & 29.

When asked what he liked about sailing, he looked thoughtful and then replied ‘I don’t know, it’s just fun.’ Which pretty much sums it up.

For more information on the MHYC 2009 junior sailing development program contact the club on (02) 9969 1244. Participants in the Tackers program will receive a voucher from Signature Portrait Studio valued at $275.00

www.mhyc.com.au

For more information about Tackers and Optimist dinghies:

www.oziopti.com.au

For more information about Feva dinghies:

www.lasersailing.com.au

http://rssailing.com.au

For more information about the sailing simulator see:

http://www.virtualsailing.com.au