Congratulations to our academy team for winning their class in style during the RCYC Summer Regatta. They also set a new speed record of 14.5kn, running in flat water. This is an impressive speed on a heavy 26ft yacht, especially with the bumpy SE conditions in the bay.
Obviously the speed record came at a price. The academy is one kite down and the next day the bracket on the main traveler broke.
Usually we do sail training at our academy in a rather controlled environment as we can choose the conditions we sail in.
Outside our sail training it is sometimes good to push the boundaries while racing. The whole crew had a great time in testing sailing conditions and gained a lot more experience. That alone is priceless.

I am very impressed how our students manage to get along as a random team on a regular base. The team for the Summer Regatta only came together shortly before the event and our students were forced to make it work on the boat with the available talent. Daniel Agulhas as the most experienced student and skipper of the team, was able to get the things together. They sailed well and they all had fun. There is nothing more important than this if you go racing. The trophy came as a bonus in the end.

A lot of our students were involved in other teams during the regatta. I was also very impressed that all competing boats had a strong youth content in their teams. A lot of them were not members of our academy and are coming from other sailing programs. It is great to see that the youngsters choose to enter the yachting scene lately. We should not stop to get more young people into yachting.

With all sailing events behind us in 2014, the students of the RCYC Sailing Academy have earned a bit of time off from sailing. Despite having almost 80 students in our database, it was actually still manageable to accommodate all of them for the sail training on a regular base.

In fact we never had to send anyone home so far, we were always able to give all of our students a ride. A big thank you goes to our senior students which acted as skippers and often as sailing instructors at the same time. It’s great to see that the more experienced students are willing to pay it forward what they have received. Howard Richman is our biggest supporter of the academy and is always willing to join our students for a sail. He was full of praise of our team after winning the trophy again.

As you read this, the academy has received a 2^nd hand Gemini RIB for the sail training as a donation from a kind individual. This will give our sail training a new perspective and we will be able to lay courses and do better coaching in general. We might have to invest in a new outboard engine for the RIB but end of the day it will be a good investment for our sailing program.

It is very important for our academy to cater for all our students. Despite bringing new people into yachting on a regular base, we must also promote the performance side of yacht racing in our program. The Lipton Cup 2015 will be the perfect platform to showcase the talent we have in our sailing academy. As the event will be organized and sailed from the RCYC, we will have an easy access to this prestigious sailing event without breaking the bank for expensive flights and accommodation.

We wish all our students and supporters a great festive season and happy holidays.