We are so lucky that we have missed the cold front last week. Thursday and Friday we have seen heavy rain and gale force NW, but luckily all was over on Saturday morning.

15 enthusiastic students lined up to go out for a sail, as we did not have any luck with the wind the week before. Now that we have so many qualified skippers in our ranks, we will rotate the responsibility every week to skipper one of the training boats.

This will give all new skippers chance to slowly get into the role of managing the boat and the crew. At times it is not as easy as it seems to make the right decisions at the right time and to keep the crew working as a team. This is one more important lesson for our students on their way to become accomplished yachties.

Howard did volunteer to orchestrate the sail training on the water, which left me some time to get our new sail and equipment storage sorted out. Shelving and clothing hangers had to be installed, to keep this room more organized than the previous storage that we had. Once the shelving and hangers were sorted, the students helped me to get one of our steel cupboards moved to the new storage room. It proved to be a very heavy piece of furniture and we had to come up with a plan, to be able to move this thing.

Now we only have to install a dehumidifier in the room, to keep our sails and clothing dry.

Our Lipton team went out afterwards for another training session. I have to give it to the boys, they are really trying hard to get into racing mode for the upcoming Lipton Challenge. There will be a few hurdles to overcome along the way, but it for sure will inspire the kids to hold the prestigious trophy in their hands one day. Nobody does expect it from them this year, but it’s a good thing for them to have a long term goal in sailing. After all, our students are allowed to dream and the RCYC Sailing Academy will assist them to follow their dreams.

The RCYC has come up with a very solid Lipton campaign this year and purchased the fastest L26 boat. They have also the most experienced team lined up with it. As daunting as it might be for all the other Lipton Cup challengers, it is also a great chance to lift up their own game. The better the competition is in a sporting event, the more prestigious the trophy becomes over time. The value of the trophy is not the reason to fight for it. It’s the challenge to sail against the best teams in the country, which will motivate our young sailors and eventually will spiral their sailing career.

Greg Davis and Dave Hudson have already indicated that they will assist our academy team to get up to speed and I am sure they will help them if they run into technical difficulties or if they need a word of advice.

Graeme Benson has sacrificed his own Lipton campaign and is willing to assist our team as the team manager. With that kind of support our boys might even have a good chance after all.

Our Academy Lipton team has come up with a plan to raise funds for their Lipton campaign. They have approached retail outlets and sail makers to contribute to their campaign with some prizes. Over the next 3 weeks we will sell raffle tickets at the RCYC. The final Lipton Campaign Raffle will be held on the 15^th of August and the money collected for the tickets will be made available for their Lipton campaign.

Please support these youngsters with the purchase of a few tickets. They are really putting their heart and soul into sailing and it is well worth to support them along the way.

Chris de Kock, from YACHT & POWER SALES, has also come to party and is sponsoring a new main sail for our team. Thank you Chris. We will proudly display your logo in the sail.

In the meanwhile we had very promising talks with the directors of HOMESTEAD PROJECTS, www.homestead.org.za

This new cooperation will give our sailing academy access to new communities and could bring many young people into sailing who wouldn’t have had the opportunity otherwise. This is an exciting new project and we are looking forward to welcome the first group of youngsters on the 9^th of August.