Transforming Youth Sailing - A Youtube Playlist

RS Feva: Endorsed by the Fédération française de voile, the
Royal Yachting Association, among other sailing federations
We all know about conventional youth sailing, with the Optimist, the 420, the Laser, sometimes the 29er.

But we all know too that youth sailing is in trouble in many many clubs around the world.

Solutions exist, and they are being tried in various locations.

A key is to diversify the equipments, particularly for sailors below age 15.  It's critical to provide more opportunities, to accomodate a wide range of physiques and weights, to address the desire of some sailors to do double-handed rather than single-handed sailing, and to provide more opportunities for learning core sailing skills through the diversity of platforms.

Some countries are making substantial efforts in that direction. For example, the first video features the 2018 French national championships for sailors under 15 - and the variety of equipments is significant. It includes several  single handed, double handed, multihulls and windsurfs. Several of those equipments are actually featured in subsequent videos in the playlist.

Several other federations have taken steps to modernize youth sailing, to make it more attractive to youth sailors, to make it affordable, to democratize sailing, and at the same time to make it faster and more fun.

There is lots of work to do in North America. The conventional paths are not really adapted anylonger to the new realities of sailing. At the same time, many clubs have already acquired one or several of these new platforms, but they presently feel left aside by the traditional way youth sailing is typically handled by federations. So reaching out to those clubs is important.

Most of the featured equipments are very affordable (except those in the last 2 videos). So they can be club owned. And all of them have international regattas, and plenty of opportunities for regattas at the regional level too.

Please feel free to provide feedback, to contribute your ideas, your experiences. This will greatly help for a detailed paper about this, in preparation, to provide guidance to clubs, federations, in particular in regard to transitions from one equipment to another, and what makes sense today for clubs to invest in in terms of new equipments for addressing the sailing challenges of tomorrow.

The play list is a bit long - so relax and take the time to watch.  It should provide you with a good feeling of what these (relatively) new platforms have to offer.

PS: this article is in progress, so there may be changes made to this text in the next days.

For up to date news and analysis about youth sailing, in the Opti, Open Bic, and other boats - join the FB group https://www.facebook.com/groups/optimistopenbicsailing

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