After many days of constant strong winds, we woke up this morning to a perfect day for training our volunteers; sun shining, sky blue, a steady North Westerly at about 6 knots and a pleasant temperature.
Wilma and Helen arrived early with the food, and set to work cleaning the equipment needed for our training session today. We set up a couple of chairs in the Accessible Parking area, to save the spot for Alan, and slowly our trainees started arriving.
It was so good to see new volunteers Kath, Indiana, Penny, John L, David, Ryan, Liam, Sharyn, along with helpers Michael, Vince, Caroline, Alan, Jim, Josh, Tony, Denis, Ken, John B, and Ros. Just a short welcome session, then we went straight into a discussion about the people who generally come sailing with us, and some of the things we need to be able to do to have a pleasant day on the water.
After morning tea, we all went downstairs for a lesson from Denis in rigging, and why it is important to get everything right the first time. There were 20 intent faces watching while he rigged the first boat, then, with the help of the experienced volunteers, we rigged 4 more boats, including Alan’s little 2.3 with the brand new sail and took off across the bay, experienced sailors taking the learners.
Vince and John took out Charlie’s Chariot, to oversee the event and soon discovered that the radio has an intermittent fault. This was soon remedied by using Vance’s phone, but is just another thing to put on the list for David W to deal with when he arrives home.
In the meantime, Helen and Wilma were upstairs setting up lunch for the weary travellers on their return. Wow, what a fantastic lunch, they really outdid themselves this time.
It didn’t take long to get everything put away neatly, with Caroline’s eagle eye watching to make sure everything is in its correct place, and everyone helping to wash the boats and complete the de-rigging to Denis’s instructions.
A great Training Day, and several new people trained to make all of our sailing days easier. Well done, team Manly.
