Experiences on learning to sail

[danielt63]

Originally Posted by pamakela

Hi,

I am currently in the process of designing a concept for a sailboat (and/or a service related to them), and one of my goals is to make sailing easy to approach and easy to learn.

It seems to me that many people get the sailing bug because they happened upon a cheep boat and then want to take it out. The boat they get is often a dinghy and not necessarily a good platform to learn on. So some sort of "training wheels" that could be used for several different types of boat might be useful. The biggest fear new sailors seem to have is capsize, so something that helps prevent capsize and doesn't cost a lot of money would probably appeal to this sort of sailor.

How about bolt on ballast for dinghy center/dagger boards?

[Knave of Hearts]

Hey Pamakela,

If your wondering about what was or wasn’t easy for people learning to sail, I’m fourteen, and have it fresh in my mind! I got my permit not so long ago, and yesterday my dad and I took the boat out just to make sure the engine was working, and because I now have my permit, he let me drive.

We got to the channel and, to my horror, only three of the normally present ten channel buoys were there! I was totally frozen and my dad was below deck. I decided to take the same route my dad had driven many times before, but because the waterlevel had recently gone down, I ran aground!

I forgot to mention that at this time the Fathometer needed “work” (it was totally not working, probably from a recent thunderstorm) and this leads to the moral of my tragic experience: FATHOMETERS PAY! If we had taken more precautions to prevent our electronics from getting fried by lightening, things might have worked out better. If you ask me, electrical protection is one of the most important things for larger boats.

[Knave of Hearts]

Wait sorry, i meant to post that somewhere else SO SORRY