Manly's pathway to progress
by Mark Jardine 26 Nov 2024 12:00 PST
Moonen Yachts - Skipper Daniel Turner - Club Championship / Crews Trophy © SailMedia
The Manly 16ft Skiff Sailing Club is a success story against a background of dwindling support for youth sailing in Australia. With no Australian team at the last two editions of World Sailing's Youth Sailing Championships, the aspiration to choose competitive sailing over the plethora of other sports and pastimes is diminished, but the Manly club is fighting against the tide... and winning.
The club has a very clear strategy of developing and nurturing sailing talent through their pathway, with the goal being for them to become future 16ft Skiff sailors. Their vision is to be Australia's leading sailing club, with a fleet of 90 skiffs and over 1,000 people experience sailing each season.
Michael Childs, Commodore at the club, stated, "The club's priorities are very clear,to facilitate the growth of 16ft Skiff sailing in our community. Naturally, part of that is the pathway and I think what we do well is we have a sailor's full journey into that senior division covered. Capturing them very young in the Manly Junior class (a very engaging, exciting, fun introduction into sailing, but also forgiving) progressing through into Flying 11s, and then into some more high performance sailing with the 13ft Skiff. We think this pathway facilitates sailing development, but importantly, allows our kids to have fun, be challenged, whilst naturally moving them towards that senior skiff division which is ultimately our mission statement, to grow 16ft Skiff sailors."
There's no better way of quantifying the success of a pathway than looking at sailors who have gone through the system, and Sally Darmanin has first-hand experience of this: "I've had three kids who have gone through the 4 boat pathway, starting in early primary school, and still sailing into their thirties. We're not generational sailors, we just came in through a friend and got quite involved in the juniors, getting more friends to come in. Since you've always got two on a boat there's options for generations to sail together, then they bring their school friends in. We've found that having a "big kid" in the boat gives the novice the time to focus on exactly what they need to do and learn their role in a really caring environment. That's the beauty of the Manly 16s."
Graham Biehl, Manly's Sailing Manager, reinforced how the double-handed sailing formula works so well at the club, "Starting off in double-handed dinghies allows you to come into sailing with a friend, enjoy your time in the boat, and also be a little less scared as you've got someone there to do it with you. We recently kicked off a new learn to sail program at our other club that we own, which is the St George Sailing Club. After evaluating all of the different learn to sail platforms that were out there, be it Opti, Sabot or other classes in Australia, which are traditionally single-handed boats, we worked out we already had a double-handed boat here, the Manly Junior. Let's just pare back some of the sails and make it easier.
"We did a little bit of testing through the late part of winter, and came up with a stripped back sail plan that's mainsail only, similar in size to the Opti and the Sabot, and we're successfully putting two kids in this purpose-built two-handed boat. As their skills develop, we put on a jib, and then we add a spinnaker, then we add the bigger mainsail. So far, they're loving it, because they get to go with the friend that they want to learn to sail with. It just starts off this lifelong love for sailing with your friends, which is what we're all about."
The sailors are coached, with different strategies in place for those who are looking to compete at a high level and those who are more recreational. Some of the kids thrive under high pressure coaching, while others just want to have fun.
"When we look at how and when children are coming into our fleet, and more broadly into sailing, they're not all coming in at the same stage or age. Some might be coming into the Manly Juniors very young, others might be coming in a little older, some might not have any experience, others have already had some exposure to sailing." said Michael.
The Commodore continued, "All children are different and are looking for different things, some of them are going out there and all they can think about is beating their friend. Others are just enjoying being out in the water and catching that sailing bug. We're trying to facilitate it all; so there is training and development available if you want to take sailing a little bit seriously but equally we are creating an environment for our juniors where they can just go out there and have some fun with their friends."
With so much going on at the club, structure is needed, and sailing manager Graham described what goes on when: "During our sailing season we've got four days of organised sailing. On Tuesday afternoons we've got our Manly Junior training with two coaches on the water for that. Wednesday afternoons have Flying 11 training, also with two coaches. On Saturdays, we've got the 13ft Skiffs and 16ft Skiffs racing - we don't have any coaches on those days - and on Sunday we've got Manly Juniors racing in the morning, and then Flying 11s racing in the afternoon. We do provide coaches on those days because even though it's racing, it's also a learning environment. The club is so supportive, and the coaching is free to all the enrolled kids; they just have to turn up."
At the moment all the boats are privately owned, but the club is looking at options for club-owned fleets to try and improve the accessibility of sailing further, as Graham explains: "I'm from the US, and we're starting to implement a bit more of a club-owned program at the bottom level with the Manly Junior (MJ) as people don't stay in the MJ long enough to warrant purchasing a boat, and I think that the newest MJ in Australia is maybe six years old - no one's building them at the moment. There's this awesome opportunity to grow the class, both at Manly and also regionally, and we are hoping to lead the way by financing these club-owned boats to allow people to come and sail with us, with no major investment in buying a boat, worrying about storage, anything like that. Just come and sail."
While Australian Sailing may have made the decision not to field a team at the Youth Sailing Championships, Graham sees the Manly pathway as very different to the global youth pathway classes, "Regardless of the decisions that Australian Sailing make for their youth programs, this has been our established pathway for a long time, and our classes don't necessarily align with the Olympic pathway per se.
"We've often been able to capitalise on the sailors who may not be wanting to go down that pathway, and acknowledging that there is another route that is a little bit more about community and fun, and not always competition-focused. We see Opti kids completely burned out of sailing by 14 or 15, and they often don't make the next step past that, but we don't tend to have that issue. We've got kids who will sail Manly Juniors, Flying 11s and even 13ft Skiffs all at the same time, really just having fun on the water, but still being competitive and learning along the way."
The two clubs are financed by very successful restaurants, where the majority of members aren't sailors, but understand the club's objectives as Michael describes, "The club has a very successful Bistro, and that provides the majority of our revenue. Looping back to the comment before, the club's sole purpose is to grow 16ft Skiff sailing in our communities, and so any profit which we make is there to ensure the longevity of the club, the future of sailing, but also to help people enter and importantly, stay in the sport."
The club uses SailMedia to film their racing, which is then streamed in the Bistro, as well as reels of the junior sailing.
"It is a restaurant, but we don't lose sight of what it is that makes the club a sailing club. With the boats being sponsored, it's a great way to advertise to your local market as well," Michael explained.
Graham expanded on this by saying, "We view the media as being a really important part of making the sailing financially viable. A large portion of the profits that we make from our restaurant business are spent on what we call prize money, and that's just simply money that we put up on offer to teams who register and sail with us. It's accrued over the course of the season, and they can therefore take out advances on that prize money to help them refurbish their boats, buy new boats and replace equipment.
"The media is the other half of that. The skiffs have never traditionally been sail number type boats - they've always been sponsored or had some kind of logo. It's an important advertising platform for us. We've been able to find some small sponsors at times, for different events, due to the media coverage that we have to offer. So we think it's a really important piece of the picture."
Could this work at other clubs? Graham thinks it can: "I'm very impressed with this model, and do believe that more clubs should adopt it. It may not necessarily have to be exactly our model, but it is definitely something that I can strongly suggest and advocate for. I mean, we often see at other clubs that, they may have a fantastic learn to sail program and are able to transition their kids into Optis, for example, but then post Opti sailing, they've got this massive gap, and then the kids kind of don't know what to do.
"If you adopted another boat as part of that transition program, you might be able to hang on to the kids longer, rather than struggle to understand why they're leaving and doing something else. I think that this is something everyone should take on board and seriously consider. Coming back again to Michael's comment, our club's constitution and the reason why we exist is just so strong it's hard to argue against it. When you have this sort of success from six to sixty years old, it shows that it works."
It really is hard to argue against success, and it was inspiring to chat with Michael, Sally and Graham at Manly 16ft Skiff Club, a true sailing success story.
Mark Jardine
Sail-World.com and YachtsandYachting.com Managing Editor