A rambling sort of idea coming….

Like many clubs, the main sailing club at Datchet has seen its dinghy and keelboat fleets in strategic decline. However they have done a simply brilliant job of growing their K1 keelboat fleet and now have 22 boats, all pretty new. Suddenly it’s the largest K1 Club in the country. Now the two biggest social groups in the Clubhouse over coffee are Radio sailors and K1 sailors!!

I was browsing through my shore-side photos of last week’s Marblehead rankings. You only have to look at our crowd to realise that encouraging new blood into radio sailing is a major strategic challenge for the Sport in general. In ten years time, frankly we shall all be mostly laid-up or gone. Game over. Ten years isn’t long. We need to at least focus on replacing radio sailors who have to retire, then move on to attracting a new generation.

It often seems to me that some UK radio sailing clubs have this topic cracked. Datchet is blessed with the most friendly and supportive fellow members that you could find anywhere. At least half of why I sail there is the warmth of the people. But is there more to do, somehow?

In my dark moments it always seems to me that whenever we get visitors for a championship the average age of attendance goes down!! So in some UK regions, radio sailing members have been working on this…. In Australia, I follow the Youtube channel for the Wynnum Manly Club. Have you seen that ?? – they put a huge amount of effort into making entering the sport more easy, less fearsome, deal with beginner issues and so on. Super!

https://www.youtube.com/@wynnummanlyradiomodelyachtclub/videos

With my Flying Fifteen partner Howard, we have both been trying to make the transition to radio sailing. We find there’s quite a lot of new things to learn (!!). Plenty of fear of embarrassment getting in the way!! The barriers to entry are pretty high.

Aside from the terrific DF95/65 product getting hold of a boat is pretty challenging in itself. Then there is the issue of finding more ways to simply get started – learn to sail a course without hitting marks… or other boats.., get boat handling basics right etc. The standard way is “come and join in”, but lets face it, this can be daunting…even off-putting for some. I notice that SailboatRC has a one week kind of course in Croatia, which starts with a navigation race – just sailing around the buoys.

At Datchet there is so much support, and especially knowledge. available to help. Even the supply of new boats is being tackled. Gradually we are moving towards a picture, of “if you want a new boat to sail here, we can get you one”. Amazing.

It reminds me that last Saturday, a great keelboat racing friend called for a long chat. Despite his big boat collection, he also has two IOMs, plus is building a woody. He tells me that he likes taking the two IOMs out for friends and family social match racing… mainly I think to get his young kids into radio sailing. (Good!) In parallel, I’ve decided to get a second Marblehead so that when friends sounds like they would like to try radio sailing, I have a simple way to have a two boat day with them and have some fun.

I’ve been wondering about race formats for two or three learner competitors to have fun and embarrassment-free fun, safely on their own. Two boat racing and simple knock-out type racing springs to mind.

My keelboat buddy says that when he takes family and friends out for 2 boat IOM fun, there is always one big challenge. One of the two boats on the water is always dominant. It just makes it boring for the other skipper. Sometimes it is that one boat is naturally faster, but more likely one skipper is notably more experienced than the other. Quite often they simply race to a windward mark and back, or a simple windward leeward one lap race. The big innovation that they fell into was that at every turning mark, whoever is the lead has to do a 360 turn. He said that simple idea has just been magic to keep the second (and first) sailor motivated.

I have two or three friends who I can tell would like to “have a go”. When we add the N+1’th boat to the family fleet, I shall give this idea a determined try. Perhaps the friends can then also give me a feel for what a Club Course titled “Learn to Radio Sail” might actually look like. The Club has a big “Learn to Dinghy Sail” program each year and loads of kids (and some adults) have a try. Maybe the parents might like to try radio sailing when the kids are “out there”.

One step at a time though….