Capsize Drill

[Steam Flyer]

This past Monday, a small class of high school students... and 3 newly-minted sailing coaches... met me at our local rec center pool with a Laser.

Goal- teach these kids, none of whom had any real sailing experience and most of whom had never been aboard a boat of any kind, how to safely handle a small boat capsize.



We literally start with teaching them how to get in the boat. Actually, no. We start with 3 or 4 class sessions with boats on trailers in the parking lot, where they learn to rig the boats, the words for all these funny boat-things, how to hoist the sails, and hopefully a little bit of 'boat sense.' 

The first two froze up. When these guys were afloat, they were terrified of the boom, and even more terrified of the boat leaning even a little bit. When it was obvious that they could not respond meaningfully in any way to any instruction, I pulled the boat over and coaxed them into climbing out. Less than zero point in putting them through the terror of a capsize. Two girls went first, and they did OK if a bit clumsily. They did not believe that I was teaching them the easy way, and had to experiment with a bunch of their own ideas. The next two followed instructions exactly, and it went like clockwork.

After that, I let the deer-in-the-headlights guys have another go, and they did OK. Every student performed the drill twice, once as crew and once as skipper.

Next week, sailing a real boat on the real river in real wind!!

- DSK

 

[PaulK]

Our Junior program does capsize drills too, but not in a pool. Having everyone see the earlier crews get it done makes it easier for those who are less sure of themselves. Practiced myself the last time we took out the 505.  Turtled. Would have been nicer if it had been warmer. 

 

[Steam Flyer]

Our Junior program does capsize drills too, but not in a pool. Having everyone see the earlier crews get it done makes it easier for those who are less sure of themselves. Practiced myself the last time we took out the 505.  Turtled. Would have been nicer if it had been warmer. 

We do it in the pool because it removes a layer of risk and potential confusion. Also, we don't have a fixed base.

The water around here is not deep enough to turtle any of our boats. So we have that going for us!

Definitely a confidence-builder on two levels... a deeper familiarity with the boat and it's workings and one's mastery of it; and also the specific skills of how to cope when things go wrong.

- DSK

 

[Ease the sheet.]

They did not believe you were teaching them the easy way?

If one was in 5'10", glasses and grey hair, she was obviously my wife.

 

[GTim]

I have capsized in tons of different boats just about every which way possible in my lifetime and it is always a good idea to be familiar. I recently acquired a Flying Squat and this summer I plan to flip that fat ass bad boy over to see just how bad it is. I will pick a nice day and also a day when my son is coaching the race team so if it goes pear shaped I have a tow in. LOL.

 

[Emilio Castelli]

Once you learn, it's important to keep practicing...

https://youtu.be/RAouoXdx5ZE

 

[craigiri]

I've never capsized - I think I need to practice a bit on my new rocket.

The other day I was tempting fate because it was blowing 12-15 but big storms were in the area. I stayed within 1/4 mile of shore and the storm was forecast to not hit us for an hour or two.

All of a sudden I could feel it - wind shifted instantly and 34 MPH (higher gusts) from the North - I was about 800 feet out so started in among the whitecaps instantly forming..made it into the shallows and got ready to slip off the boat (warm water so I just stand up and handle the boat).

My mistake was sliding off the lee side - the boat just went right over. But I was standing there (not on the boat). 

Still, I got a little practice on righting it (really easy on Rocket). Now that I've done that much I can see that I should do it a couple times in deeper water. I'm not sure what the potential dangers are on a sunfish type boat (do people get hit by the masts, etc?). 

Once I get this down, then I will practice a real capsize - that is, one caused by sailing in conditions which are strong. That is really what I need because if I want to have fun getting this Rocket on plane I need to not fear a 20MPH constant breeze. I know most sunfish are not sailed in that, but it would be neat to learn to do so.

 

[ortegakid]

Try sailing an IC, took me a year to be able to not capsize every sail, then another to not with kite up. Very rewarding now, and any other boat is a cakewalk.

 

[Steam Flyer]

Try sailing an IC, took me a year to be able to not capsize every sail, then another to not with kite up. Very rewarding now, and any other boat is a cakewalk.

Nothing hones the reflexes like living on the edge of disaster!

- DSK

 

[Xeon]

This past Monday, a small class of high school students... and 3 newly-minted sailing coaches... met me at our local rec center pool with a Laser.

Goal- teach these kids, none of whom had any real sailing experience and most of whom had never been aboard a boat of any kind, how to safely handle a small boat capsize.

View attachment 505026

We literally start with teaching them how to get in the boat. Actually, no. We start with 3 or 4 class sessions with boats on trailers in the parking lot, where they learn to rig the boats, the words for all these funny boat-things, how to hoist the sails, and hopefully a little bit of 'boat sense.' 

The first two froze up. When these guys were afloat, they were terrified of the boom, and even more terrified of the boat leaning even a little bit. When it was obvious that they could not respond meaningfully in any way to any instruction, I pulled the boat over and coaxed them into climbing out. Less than zero point in putting them through the terror of a capsize. Two girls went first, and they did OK if a bit clumsily. They did not believe that I was teaching them the easy way, and had to experiment with a bunch of their own ideas. The next two followed instructions exactly, and it went like clockwork.

After that, I let the deer-in-the-headlights guys have another go, and they did OK. Every student performed the drill twice, once as crew and once as skipper.

Next week, sailing a real boat on the real river in real wind!!

- DSK

Don’t you teach them the theory of using the wind first and teach them to sail round a simple course in a heavy old training boat ( wayfarer or roto moulded tub with an instructor on board ) before you do capsize drill . Your way seems to put the cart before the horse. 
I don’t know of anywhere in the uk that would teach you to sail this way round . 

 

[Steam Flyer]

Don’t you teach them the theory of using the wind first and teach them to sail round a simple course in a heavy old training boat ( wayfarer or roto moulded tub with an instructor on board ) before you do capsize drill . Your way seems to put the cart before the horse. 
I don’t know of anywhere in the uk that would teach you to sail this way round . 

Nope.

Several reason why I put the lessons in this order.

1- it reduces the number of unfamiliar things they are trying to cope with at once. They sit in the boat, they know it can tip over, they gain some familiarity with the working parts of the boat and the terminology, if they are afraid of tipping over then this gets them over that.

2- Sailing requires focusing on wind direction, capsize drill doesn't. I haven't been telling them "wind direction, wid direction, wind direction" incessantly and then put them in the boat for capsize drill and say "OK forget wind direction."

Kind of like the same reason I teach them to STOP before I teach them to tack.

Works very well, most of them time.

- DSK

 

[Xeon]

It’s just you cannot teach a proper capsize drill with out known why the wind go you there , how the wind works on the capsized hull and what to do once you have go the boat back up. 
That why all the RYA official courses in the uk don’t do it your way..

But it’s not a criticism, it’s much more important that your are training and bringing kids into the sport. 

Keep up the good work . 

 

[Bored Stiff]

Where I come from this would be frowned upon.  The mantra here is to get kids out on the water as soon as possible just having fun, and to not even start teaching the basics until several sessions in.  Get them enjoying mucking about before learning the jargon and technicalities.  Very few kids will the remember (or care for) the name of the vang if they’ve never had to use it.  Only if the weather is unsuitable for sailing would we not get afloat as soon as possible.  
I mention this as a counterpoint, not a criticism.  It is interesting to see an alternative approach.

 

[Steam Flyer]

It’s just you cannot teach a proper capsize drill with out known why the wind go you there , how the wind works on the capsized hull and what to do once you have go the boat back up. 
That why all the RYA official courses in the uk don’t do it your way..

But it’s not a criticism, it’s much more important that your are training and bringing kids into the sport. 

Keep up the good work . 

actually, yes. You can in fact teach sailors a "proper capsize drill" if they know literally NOTHING about actually sailing the boat.

I've been doing it this way for about 12 years, after fumbling about for a few years before that with other peoples' curriculums which waste enormous amounts of the students time trying to get them to grasp 15 things at once. The way I teach it, in 5 days of ~ 4 hours with the boats, they can learn to sail competently from rigging it up to and taking it out, to simple right-of-way, to docking and unrigging & putting everything away. The basic premise is, teach only one or two things at time, minimize the amount of things the student has to deal with that are mysterious and un-named.

Boat tips over, they know exactly what to do. They stay calm. It's been tested by fire and works.

Where I come from this would be frowned upon.  The mantra here is to get kids out on the water as soon as possible just having fun, and to not even start teaching the basics until several sessions in.  Get them enjoying mucking about before learning the jargon and technicalities.  Very few kids will the remember (or care for) the name of the vang if they’ve never had to use it.  Only if the weather is unsuitable for sailing would we not get afloat as soon as possible.  
I mention this as a counterpoint, not a criticism.  It is interesting to see an alternative approach.

Well, one big difference is that my goal is to make the kids into sailors. Whether or not they have fun is immaterial.... most of them do, because it's an active sport and they're doing it as a peer group.

"Sailing as soon as possible" leads IMHO to resisting actually learning to actually sail, by which I mean being in command of, and in control of, the boat. They want to "have fun" by drifting where ever and jumping off for swimming etc etc.

Of course, I cheat. I make a game out of showing off how well they can control their boat at every stage of learning, from "which way to I push the tiller, again?" to "if I put weight a bit forward and tighten the outhaul, we can point better." The role of the instructor is to give the student info and set the stage for them to gain the skills. It's a lot of work; it's actually more work than the "fun" curriculum where the instructors do all the work rigging up etc for the first week. So, I don't expect it to catch on.

- DSK

 

[Xeon]

So glad your right and every other qualified dinghy instructor in the western world is wrong . 
 

The phrase’ my aim is to make sailors and whether they have fun is immaterial’  says it all 

If child doesn’t find a sport fun they are not going to continue doing it as a adult . 

 

[Steam Flyer]

So glad your right and every other qualified dinghy instructor in the western world is wrong . 
 

The phrase’ my aim is to make sailors and whether they have fun is immaterial’  says it all 

If child doesn’t find a sport fun they are not going to continue doing it as a adult . 

I don't care if they continue doing it as an adult. Nor did I say that every other dinghy instructor is wrong. I said, if the goal is to produce SAILORS, then my way works quite well; especially if time with the students is in short supply.

Is sailing fun? If so, the kids from my program can be turned loose with boats, to sail or not as they choose. They only need further supervision or instruction for more advanced learning like navigating or repairing laminated structures

- DSK

 

[Rasputin22]

My sailing instructor was none other that Henry Sprague who had recently won the Congressional Cup and Finn Gold Cup. He knew how to teach us Navy brats to capsize our Coronado 15's. If the Santana winds were roaring and us kids couldn't take the C-15's out in those howling winds Henry would rig his Finn and put on a real show reaching and jibing back and forth in front of our little NSC clubhouse in Long Beach at what seemed impossible winds! 

    Henry is known to this day and Super Henry in the Finn world.



Nice read here about Henry

Racing a boat singlehanded is different from any other kind of racing. There is, among other drawbacks, no crew to bawl out if something goes wrong or a race is lost. The singlehander has to handle the sheet, raise and lower the centerboard, steer the boat and keep an eye on the competition all by himself. Meanwhile, he is likely to be hiked out over the water like a circus aerialist balancing on a high bar.

Currently, the best singlehander in the country is a tanned 17-year-old from Newport Beach, Calif. named Henry Sprague. Henry showed his prowess recently when he beat 18 other topflight singlehanders from Canada, Florida and points east and west during the 10-race O'Day Trophy series sailed off Long Beach on Alamitos Bay.

"Henry's a heavy-weather sailor," said those who had sailed against him in the past. "He used to go best in light air, but now he likes it to blow." Sprague bore out the morning line by faring dismally, for him, in the first three races, sailed in moderate winds. Then he got the blow he was looking for, and while his competition battled to keep their boats under control and right side up, Henry scudded around the white-capped course in the fourth and fifth races like a puff of blown-off beer foam. The following morning the wind disappeared, and Sprague got a 15th. "See," said the experts, "he can't make the thing go now." On the final day, however, Henry scuttled the touts. Although the air was again light, he came through with a first, a second and a fourth in the last three races. That was good enough to give him a 1¾-point margin over his nearest rival, Earl Elms of San Diego. "I checked every tiny detail in the boats I used," said Sprague, rubbing a large brown toe in the sand, "and that seemed to do the trick for me."

The boats Sprague referred to (in many national championships each sailor uses a different boat for each race) were Finn Monotypes, the world's largest and now its definitive singlehandling class of sailboat.

Not too many boats can be successfully raced by one man. There are little training boats for children like the Optimist Pram and the Sabot. There are the more sophisticated boats like the Elvstrom Jr., O.K. Dinghy and Moth. The most aristocratic of all the singlehanders is the International Decked Sailing Canoe, a delicately balanced needle-shaped sloop, whose skipper-crew is constantly beset by the exhilarating feeling that he is hurtling to oblivion aboard a seesaw traveling at a high speed. But the Finn has taken over from them all, especially among young, athletic sailors like Henry Sprague.

The Finn is a slightly more docile, sawed-off version of the Canoe, designed for the 1952 Olympics by Sweden's Richard Sarby. It is a 14-foot-9-inch cat-rigged racing machine that carries 108 square feet of sail and has been clocked over a measured kilometer at the fantastic (for a single-hulled sailboat) speed of 24 mph.

One of the main reasons the Finn performs so well is its single, highly flexible mast that is completely unencumbered by any sort of stays or other standing rigging. Because it bends at the helmsman's will to make the sail flatter in high wind or give it more belly in light air, the mast gives the Finn a good range of aerodynamic efficiency. Sprague and other Finn owners spend hours selecting the best mast for the conditions they expect to sail under. It has been found that a bending mast frequently favors a lightweight sailor, while a stiffer mast is better suited to a heavier singlehander such as the 175-pound Sprague, since his weight makes up measurably for the rig's reduced flexibility.

Way out and way over

There are problems in racing Finns that one doesn't normally encounter in other boats. "Running downwind some first-time Finn sailors let the sail out too far because there aren't any stays to stop it," grins Sprague. "The result is always the same. The boat goes faster and capsizes quicker."

The cause of the trouble is the top of the sail which curves around the head of the mast, pressing it unnaturally to windward and making the boat roll with wild abandon. Before the novice singlehander can figure out what to do to damp the roll, he is in the water with a new problem: how to get his boat right side up again. During the O'Day series more than one competitor performed spectacular capsizes as he rolled over to windward. Weight is a particularly important factor in Finn sailing, since the skipper cannot recruit a heavy crewman to make up for any lack of his own.

Like most planing boats, Finns do best when sailed as nearly upright as possible. And the hiked-out weight of the skipper is a prime factor in maintaining this balance. This requires strong leg and stomach muscles since the skipper may spend hours stretched out over the water with his toes hooked-under a hiking strap. Paul Elvstrom, the Olympic Finn champion, gets into tone by putting his feet under a dresser, then leaning back 25°, while he reads the morning paper.

Finn skippers resort to a startling collection of tricks for adding extra weight. Sprague can add a good many pounds to his total quite simply. "I put on eight sweatshirts," he says, "two sweaters, two pairs of socks and sometimes a pair of football pants." The football pants have padded knees which cushion the jolt he gets as he drops to the bottom of the boat during a violent jibe. To soak up additional poundage, Henry, looking like the Michelin tire man, jumps into the drink.

Strategies such as these form bones of contention that Finn sailors like to chew on. Generally, the argument rages between the heavyweights and the lightweights. As one bantamweight at Long Beach wistfully put it, "What's the difference between wearing eight sweaters dunked in water like Sprague and a nice life preserver with a 15-pound hunk of lead in it?" But Henry Sprague seems less concerned with winning arguments than with winning races. The gamesmanship he applies to this purpose was well illustrated at Long Beach during the break between the sixth and seventh races of the series.

"I took a 15th in the morning that really se me back. I was up against it, and I had to finish high up in the fleet to hold off the others in the last four races," explained Sprague. "I needed wind, and I didn't think there was nearly enough around." So Henry stalled.

Hoping that the wind would pick up in the afternoon to favor his ability to go in rough stuff, Sprague sailed over to the committee boat just before the start and complained that the boom on his boat was broken. It obviously was. "Take the spare boat," shouted the committee. "I don't want it," yelled back Sprague. While Sprague moved in slow motion, all the time looking upwind to see if the breeze were increasing, the boom was replaced. Still no breeze. The boom operation completed, Sprague let his boat drift far downwind from the line as he busied himself coiling lines like an automaton. Finally, he sailed back to the committee boat. "I need time to tune up," said Henry smoothly, and the race was further delayed. When the race finally was over, Henry finished a healthy fifth. Afterward Sprague said of his delaying tactics, "Any Finn sailor in my position would have done the same." And on the Alamitos Bay Yacht Club beach there were few of his defeated rivals who would deny it.

 

[Steam Flyer]

If you don’t care if they continue sailing and they don’t , then your not producing sailors are you ? 
 

Depends on your definition. Can they actually make a boat sail from Point A to Point B, including rigging it up and putting it away and following safety regs in between? That is my goal, to give the kids the knowledge & skills to function at an independent/adult level, as SAILORS. And secondarily, to give them as much of this kind of experience as the program has time to provide.

Seems to me that with supervised "fun" programs having been going since the middle 1980s or so, and sailing numbers plummeting that whole time, putting "fun" as the top priority is not really working well to keep the sport going.

- DSK

 

[Xeon]

Depends on your definition. Can they actually make a boat sail from Point A to Point B, including rigging it up and putting it away and following safety regs in between? That is my goal, to give the kids the knowledge & skills to function at an independent/adult level, as SAILORS. And secondarily, to give them as much of this kind of experience as the program has time to provide.

Seems to me that with supervised "fun" programs having been going since the middle 1980s or so, and sailing numbers plummeting that whole time, putting "fun" as the top priority is not really working well to keep the sport going.

- DSK

But you not producing sailors are you ? All you are doing is producing children that know the basics of sailing but never want to do it ever again . 
 

SO THEY ARE NOT SAILORS .

I’ve sailed for 32  years because it’s fun . If you had taught me basics of sailing I would never have got in a boat again .

I will not comment again because it’s a waste of time because you know your right , like a poor man’s sailing Trump .