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Published: March 2nd 2007
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Our assesments for becoming insructors start next week. We have one day to work on everything we need to work on, then we have pre assesments on Tuesday, meteorology and mavigation laectures on Wednesday and then full on assesments in dinghys, motor boats and seamanship and some written stuff oh yeah and a presentation and self assesment. Oy! I can now see why USSailing qualifications are worth shit to anyone else. Level I was 4 days of a joke. I'm ready to go on seamanship, dinghy sailing (minus getting around a triangle rudderless! That's wicked hard especially if I get matched with an incompetant crew!), motorboat. The self assesment, I've got to work on keep a balance of I know everything and beign humble. And the presentation, ok get this. So yesterday we were given topics for 5 minute presentations. Mine was being the first to the winward mark, whichi s a FUCKING HUGE topic to fit into 5 minutes, he let me go to 7 minutes in the end. But I drew a course in the sand and had people following a path to the windward mark, did some chalk talk and interactiveness with the people watching and when I
the Dingoes
Georgie, John, Stevo, Bella, Jen and me Was done, everyone was shocked. After everyones, we had to go around and say something the person did good in the presentation and everyone had so many good things to say, not jsut bullshit to complete the task. Then even Neil chimed in, he's the instructor, and said that he has had every kind of coach on the planet, including Olympic coaches and they didn't make my topic as clear in months of training as I did in 7 minutes. Even he learned something from it. I was on my ass with happiness. Everyone was so excited to get on the water and try things out that I talked about and kept saying what a great coach I must be at home and what I will be in the future. I didn't even hear see anything for the next 30 minutes. I was on cloud 9.
This course really is everything I hoped it would be and omre.. the instructors realy are amazing and to get a job being one of them is next to impossible. They literally get 40 applications a day when they don't have any job postings up. One of the yacht masters who just finished
John
Instructor John his course got offered a job with them as soon as he was done, then didn't even accept applications. Wow. I really am getting something out of the course, though it may not be how to sail a dinghy or drive a motorboat. I'm getting the meta out of instructing and coaching.
I did my 10 minute presentation yesterday. My topic was "An introduction to racing", so I came up with a good story, which was the story of the moment I knew I wanted to race dinghies forever. It was when I was about 11 years old at the Junior Olympics. There were about 80 some boats there and I decided I was gonna bang the left side of the course and see what happened. that means I sailed way off to the left side, tacked once and headed for the first mark. I came up to the first mark in 7th place. the rush of that was so incredible, looking back and seeing 70 some boats. I knew I wanted to learn how to do that every time instead of just guessing. That story got everyone so nostalgic and into what I was talking about. then I
A Pelican!
Just like in Finding Nemo! broke out a quote: "racing dinghies is like running through a maze in the dark where the walls keep changing." - Ashely Love. Made that quote up, but I think it's quite descriptive. Whoever runs the fastest and makes the best decisions as the walls change wins. that's why racing is great, becuase no two races are ever the same!
So first I did a talk on how to run the fastest, i.e. boat maintnence, boat handling (including manuevers like tacking, jybing, 720s, spinaker hoists and drops, mark roundings), boat speed, including course, sail, centerboard, balance and trim,
Now that out boats are "running"/sailing the fastest, I went into a talk on what walls are on a course and how they are constantly changing: Other boats and their wind shadows, the no go zone sailing upwind with headers and lifts, then finally starts and laylines with favored ends and current.
Then to wrap it all up, I got everyone around the table, gave them carrots, set up a starting line and a winward mark with water bottles, I was the wind, did a truncated starting sequence and they had to make their way up wind with wind shifts and wind
Neil
Instructor Neil! shadows from the other carrots. IT was a blast!! Everyone was shouting "starboard"! and "Bouy room!" getting all into it, climbing over people to get their carrot across the table, haha.
There was our instructor, Steve and there was the coowner of Flying Fish, so all of Flying Fish which has training schools in Turkey, Greece, New Zealand, everywhere. Their mouths were literally hanging on the floor when I finished. They were so blown away. Another student was assigned to debreif me and he's got a bunch of sailing experience. He just sat there stunned for a second and then said "You're crazy! and brilliant!" he also commented on how enthusiastic, knowlegable and engaging I was. He couldn't find anything bad to say. Then the owner of Flying Fish, Andy Faircliff, started to talk and could not say enough. he talked for about 15 minutes. He said there was so much information in that 10 minutes, but what made it work was the orginization and manner in which I presented it. He was taking notes the whole time on my orginization ideas on this topic to use in his instruction to others. He kept getting on the verge of saying
the loft
relatively clean... this was the best presentation he's seen and kept using things that I did as good examples, saying how confident, accurate, orginized, engaging, the list goes on and on I was. Energy like this did Flying Fish's advertising for them, my presentation was what Flying Fish was all about, etc. etc. There were only minor things I could have changed, like using different color markers like I did for line bias and wind shadows for my lay line chat. that was pretty much it.
I'm on cloud nine. Wow.
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