Dinghy Forums.

[Mark-1]

I had a question about the detail of the kids RYA training syllabus.

It's the sort of thing the Yachts and Yachting Forum used to be ideal for, with a large number of UK Dinghy Sailors. It appears nobody has posted since November! Has it died? Quite shocking if it has.

I'd be tempted to try Sailing Anarchy but I'd always thought they'd have mainly American forumites.

So where is the best forum for UK dinghy related questions? (Rather than Dinghy cruising which YBW has covered IMHO.) I suppose I could hunt around facebook.

 

[Sandy]

My first port of call would be the RYA, or if you have a local sailing club with a strong cadet section speak to them.

 

[Mark-1]

You mean like my own club's Junior Training whatsapp group which gets a lot of instructor traffic and I'm admin of?


It might just work.

(Seriously, thanks. I have no idea why I didn't think of that. although it perhaps looks a bit "pushy parent".)

I'm still intrigued about what happened to Y&Y Forums and it would be really nice if the RYA training in general provided a lot more detail of syllabi. (I had to google that.) "IRPCS" as a topic could mean anything from 4 years at University to 5 minutes of a spotty teenager mumbling in front of some power point. (I suspect it's the latter.)

 

[DanTribe]

Unless you are comitted to a particular class, I suggest you investigate RS Tera [single handed] or Feva [2 handed]. The Associations run training and competitions on a regional basis and get big turnouts and parents seem to enjoy the community.
In general every class obvously promotes their own boat so are a bit insular regarding choices.
In my experience the RYA tends to be a bit doctrinaire, "do it my way or not at all" [probably unfair]

 

[Mark-1]

Unless you are comitted to a particular class, I suggest you investigate RS Tera [single handed] or Feva [2 handed]. The Associations run training and competitions on a regional basis and get big turnouts and parents seem to enjoy the community.
In general every class obvously promotes their own boat so are a bit insular regarding choices.
In my experience the RYA tends to be a bit doctrinaire, "do it my way or not at all" [probably unfair]

Our Dinghy Club use the RYA Youth Scheme as a sort of framework to get the kids together to dick about and have fun in boats. In that sense it's excellent and I think the "less keen" of my two kids might have her interest maintained by becoming an instructor. So we're pretty committed to sticking with it. I'd agree the training itself is flawed in many ways.

I'd just like to flesh out the detail behind some of the rather vague headings in the logbook so I can (slightly) pitch the day to day sailing we do to support upcoming training.

 

[oldbloke]

Although the Y&Y site is pretty moribund there does seem to be a reasonable number of people still checking in so it might be worth having a go. You could post it here and see what happens.
Seems to me that a lot of forums are fading away, the novelty has worn off

 

[Minerva]

Although the Y&Y site is pretty moribund there does seem to be a reasonable number of people still checking in so it might be worth having a go. You could post it here and see what happens.
Seems to me that a lot of forums are fading away, the novelty has worn off

I suspect it’s more due to Facebook now being effectively a forum aggregator using the “groups” functionality.

Why log on and use multiple different forums on different websites when you can just join however many esoteric groups you’re interested in and have them all come up in your feed in one place?

Forums across the internet are fading as a result; no one can match Facebooks’ R&D spend.

Shame about the y&y forum through. Used to spend a lot of time on that forum when I was dinghy sailing

 

[Minerva]

I note on the Y&Y website there’s not even the option to subscribe; is the magazine even still printed these days? I’m pretty sure it used to be big, biweekly and very popular at the turn or the millennium!

 

[Mark-1]

I note on the Y&Y website there’s not even the option to subscribe; is the magazine even still printed these days? I’m pretty sure it used to be big, biweekly and very popular at the turn or the millennium!

It was massive. Big feature of my childhood. Bob Fisher, "On the Wire", seeing if my name was in Clubs and Classes (it never was).

...and Yachting Monthly had the White cover border with the lino feel.

Nostalgia, sigh.

I'm not surprised the mag has declined but the forum seemed totally relevant. I'm staggered that hasn't kept a keen following. If there's a facebook equivalent I can't find it.

 

[oldbloke]

There were a few flat earthers who thought they were righteous conclasts, the actual experts got bored with talking to a brick wall and being abused so they gradually left. The controversially hot fed up with being banned and went to Facebook and started "The Pin End". As it is a private group and I couldn't be bothered signing up I don't know how healthy it is.
I don't go into the lounge very often ,but I think something similar is happening there. Hopefully a critical mass will remain here.

 

[dunedin]

I suspect it’s more due to Facebook now being effectively a forum aggregator using the “groups” functionality.

Why log on and use multiple different forums on different websites when you can just join however many esoteric groups you’re interested in and have them all come up in your feed in one place?

Forums across the internet are fading as a result; no one can match Facebooks’ R&D spend.

Shame about the y&y forum through. Used to spend a lot of time on that forum when I was dinghy sailing

Yes, I think most youth dinghy stuff is now on Facebook. Certainly seems to be in Scotland.

 

[ShinyShoe]

OK.

1. Yacht and Yachting got absorbed into Sailing Today at the start of COVID and went from 30:70 to about 5:95 dinghy to big boat. I assume the fora has headed the same way. The fora had been dying for a long time.

2. There are numerous Facebook places. RYA instructors have a group in our region.

3. IRPCS for Youth Scheme -
The Syllabus is covered in more detail in some of the RYA books. But essentially it's:
Port-Starboard
Windward-Leeward
Overtaking
Sail over Power - the myths and the practice (big Vs small, restricted to channel etc)

I don't think buoyage is covered. Certainly not below Stage 4. Nor lights etc.

A lot of it may be taught afloat depending on conditions.

 

[Mark-1]

OK.

1. Yacht and Yachting got absorbed into Sailing Today at the start of COVID and went from 30:70 to about 5:95 dinghy to big boat. I assume the fora has headed the same way. The fora had been dying for a long time.

2. There are numerous Facebook places. RYA instructors have a group in our region.

3. IRPCS for Youth Scheme -
The Syllabus is covered in more detail in some of the RYA books. But essentially it's:
Port-Starboard
Windward-Leeward
Overtaking
Sail over Power - the myths and the practice (big Vs small, restricted to channel etc)

I don't think buoyage is covered. Certainly not below Stage 4. Nor lights etc.

A lot of it may be taught afloat depending on conditions.

Thanks that's an incredibly useful post, although point one is a bit depressing.

 

[dancrane]

I wish I could offer something encouraging. I'd like to understand why anybody, let alone everybody, thinks Facebook is anything like as good as a dedicated forum.

I bought an Osprey dinghy in 2013 (yawn, sorry) and for a few years thereafter the Osprey Sailing owner's forum certainly supplied extremely useful, very specific advice and information about the class. But in the last five years, whenever I asked questions, I could return six months later to find no-one had been in there since.

At last a chap who (I think) intended to be helpful, said "it's all on Facebook now". Where, on Facebook, I asked. No answer. I assumed he must mean the Facebook Osprey sailing group, but all I could find there was an endless scroll of glossy ads for upcoming and past race-meetings and their subsequent reports. There's now absolutely no relevant back-and-forth about maintenance, sailing techniques, fittings and practicalities, between the very folk who sail the boats, and who had formerly discussed them in detail. How the heck did that replace a well-attended, informed group on an established forum?

EDIT...
Thinking about it makes me remember my days of uninformed wondering in the 80s and 90s. Occasionally I'd be excited to find an article in Yachting Monthly that covered a question in my mind, but in general, I was in the dark because I knew nobody I could ask...

...whereas, since the advent of internet, everyone with an opinion on boats (including some who really do know) contributed to fora like this, and its tens of thousands of pages on every subject afloat, represent a fabulous resource to the new sailor and the experienced.

Can it be possible that now, because of an idiotic widespread obsession with Facebook, we're creeping back into the darkness I knew last century, where there's no clear-cut place online for detailed discussion of practical sailing subjects, only to be found ageing in lost forum threads?

Support your boating forum!

 

[ylop]

I don't think buoyage is covered. Certainly not below Stage 4. Nor lights etc.

Basic bouyage should be covered by stage 4, and I think crossing and following narrow channels. Lights are not, but they should know that there are a set of rules that explain lights. Remember it’s not a dayskipper course - if your sailing area has bouyage by the time they get to this level most will already have picked it up. If you are on inland waters then it might be new.

 

[Mark-1]

Basic bouyage should be covered by stage 4, and I think crossing and following narrow channels. Lights are not, but they should know that there are a set of rules that explain lights. Remember it’s not a dayskipper course - if your sailing area has bouyage by the time they get to this level most will already have picked it up. If you are on inland waters then it might be new.

The youth sailing log book list the subjects so topics are clear (Bouyage is in stage 4). The bit that seems to be missing is the detail of what they actually need to know. Bouyage doesn't concern me because it's pretty limited but "Understanding the ebb and flow of tide" could mean anything from PHD level to "The tides go up and down and along bit". I'm not even sure "ebb and flow" is the right term - it's more a phrase people use in prose than a thing boatie people say. ...but that's another issue.

As luck would have it ShineyShoe told me what I really wanted to know which was the syllabus for the IRPCS stuff. Like tides that could have been anything from 3 weeks close reading of Cockroft to a spotty DI handwaving in front of a whiteboard. As described it sounds like common sense and my kids can handle that, especially if it's assessed on the water rather than verbally. (Although the boy, 7yo, interprets Rule 12 as meaning if he sees his sister *anywhere* on a port tack when he is on Starboard he can gleefully hunt her down and ram her. A reasonable and imaginative application of rule 12 in my view which should gain him a lot of extra marks during assessment.)

Funnily enough counting light sequences and relating them to charts seems to be endlessly fascinating to kids so perhaps it should go on the syllabus. Mind you it's probably quite boring in a classroom rather than in the real world.

I sound like an RYA training fanboi, I'm really not, but if that's the chosen vehicle used to get them together with other kids on the water then I'm not going to complain.

 

[dunedin]

I wish I could offer something encouraging. I'd like to understand why anybody, let alone everybody, thinks Facebook is anything like as good as a dedicated forum.

I bought an Osprey dinghy in 2013 (yawn, sorry) and for a few years thereafter the Osprey Sailing owner's forum certainly supplied extremely useful, very specific advice and information about the class. But in the last five years, whenever I asked questions, I could return six months later to find no-one had been in there since.

At last a chap who (I think) intended to be helpful, said "it's all on Facebook now". Where, on Facebook, I asked. No answer. I assumed he must mean the Facebook Osprey sailing group, but all I could find there was an endless scroll of glossy ads for upcoming and past race-meetings and their subsequent reports. There's now absolutely no relevant back-and-forth about maintenance, sailing techniques, fittings and practicalities, between the very folk who sail the boats, and who had formerly discussed them in detail. How the heck did that replace a well-attended, informed group on an established forum?

EDIT...
Thinking about it makes me remember my days of uninformed wondering in the 80s and 90s. Occasionally I'd be excited to find an article in Yachting Monthly that covered a question in my mind, but in general, I was in the dark because I knew nobody I could ask...

...whereas, since the advent of internet, everyone with an opinion on boats (including some who really do know) contributed to fora like this, and its tens of thousands of pages on every subject afloat, represent a fabulous resource to the new sailor and the experienced.

Can it be possible that now, because of an idiotic widespread obsession with Facebook, we're creeping back into the darkness I knew last century, where there's no clear-cut place online for detailed discussion of practical sailing subjects, only to be found ageing in lost forum threads?

Support your boating forum!

I think you are outside the target age group for youth and junior dinghy sailors. Information for them is on platforms they use (not those for aging YBW-ites)

 

[dunedin]

The youth sailing log book list the subjects so topics are clear (Bouyage is in stage 4). The bit that seems to be missing is the detail of what they actually need to know. Bouyage doesn't concern me because it's pretty limited but "Understanding the ebb and flow of tide" could mean anything from PHD level to "The tides go up and down and along bit". I'm not even sure "ebb and flow" is the right term - it's more a phrase people use in prose than a thing boatie people say. ...but that's another issue.

As luck would have it ShineyShoe told me what I really wanted to know which was the syllabus for the IRPCS stuff. Like tides that could have been anything from 3 weeks close reading of Cockroft to a spotty DI handwaving in front of a whiteboard. As described it sounds like common sense and my kids can handle that, especially if it's assessed on the water rather than verbally. (Although the boy, 7yo, interprets Rule 12 as meaning if he sees his sister *anywhere* on a port tack when he is on Starboard he can gleefully hunt her down and ram her. A reasonable and imaginative application of rule 12 in my view which should gain him a lot of extra marks during assessment.)

Funnily enough counting light sequences and relating them to charts seems to be endlessly fascinating to kids so perhaps it should go on the syllabus. Mind you it's probably quite boring in a classroom rather than in the real world.

I sound like an RYA training fanboi, I'm really not, but if that's the chosen vehicle used to get them together with other kids on the water then I'm not going to complain.

Your original post was about dinghy sailing, "not dinghy cruising".
Surely therefore navigation lights are an irrelevance for 99.99% of dinghy sailing (the 0.01% used to be the Southport 24 Hours race)? Even buoyage mainly ignored in dinghies unless a mark of the course.
Different skills are key - basic sailing of course, sail and boat trim, but also righting after capsize, paddling one handed to get home etc.
Some appreciation of tides useful in many waters, but not all - and in most places doesn't need much more than knowing times of HW and which way the water goes before and after. (I used to race Mirrors in a place with 5kt tides, and never bothered with much more- soon knew to tack very close inshore against the tide.)

 

[Mark-1]

Your original post was about dinghy sailing, "not dinghy cruising".
Surely therefore navigation lights are an irrelevance for 99.99% of dinghy sailing (the 0.01% used to be the Southport 24 Hours race)? Even buoyage mainly ignored in dinghies unless a mark of the course.
Different skills are key - basic sailing of course, sail and boat trim, but also righting after capsize, paddling one handed to get home etc.
Some appreciation of tides useful in many waters, but not all - and in most places doesn't need much more than knowing times of HW and which way the water goes before and after. (I used to race Mirrors in a place with 5kt tides, and never bothered with much more- soon knew to tack very close inshore against the tide.)

All true, but so what? There's a club within walking distance of my front door with a great atmosphere and their chosen vehicle to get the kids together on the water is the RYA training and I'm happy to go along with that whether it's 'useful' or not. The kids also have ad hoc sea weed fights and jump off the pontoon which is equally irrelevant to dinghy sailing. It's better than sitting on the sofa watcing mindless Youtube videos.

 

[dunedin]

All true, but so what? There's a club within walking distance of my front door with a great atmosphere and their chosen vehicle to get the kids together on the water is the RYA training and I'm happy to go along with that. The kids also have ad hoc sea weed fights and jump off the pontoon which is equally irrelevant to dinghy sailing. It's better than sitting on the sofa watcing mindless Youtube videos.

Absolutely 100% agree with that. Skippering your own Optimist amongst a bunch of similar age is brilliant fun - and far better than a passenger on a bigger boat.
Just was commenting on the references to buoyage, lights etc - these latter won't feature, and won't be missed.