ROTTERs with Lasers at Ripon Sailing Club
by Lucy Priest 15 Apr 2025 10:58 UTC
ROTTERs with Lasers at Ripon SC © RSC
Ripon Sailing Club's ROTTERs are the Ripon Oppy, Topper and TERa sailors who team up with the ILCA sailors for regular "ROTTERs with Lasers" sessions (other classes may also be sailed!). Saturday 12th April saw the RSC Youth and Junior sailors greeted with perfect weather for the second session of the year. With the sun shining and the breeze building the 17 sailors divided into three groups for the days activities.
The Blue (Intermediate) group were working on wind awareness and finding head to wind, with the aim of both improving their upwind sailing and becoming more confident in leaving and returning to the jetties. Starting with a quick onshore reminder of how to tie a boat up at a jetty and a group briefing the young sailors headed out to practice retrieving a selection of objects from the water, concentrating on controlling boat speed and angle to the wind as they approached their target.
After a quick break for a drink and a snack the sailors headed back out, this time to work on their tacking. With an improved understanding of how to find head to wind the sailors were working on achieving consistent tacking angles and by lunchtime the improvements in upwind sailing were clear for everyone to see.
The White (Advanced) group were working on boat handling and race skills. With the boats in this group ranging from Oppies to Lasers the coaches decided to focus on small area drills and the group started out working on improving their roll tacks using the 'elephant ears' drill with Oppies on one side of the coach boat and Lasers and Toppers on the other and then moved on to practice holding station at a mark.
After a quick break the group headed out again to apply their roll tacking practice on a short windward/leeward course before lunch, adding in a challenge to sail by the lee down wind.
Meanwhile the Green (Novice) group had been having their own adventures. Four of the youngest Ducklings took a cruise around the lake in one of the club training fleet, making sure to sail all the way round the island and to visit the wreck at least twice, while the final member of the group had the opportunity to do some independent sailing finishing up their first attempt at single handed sailing with several brilliant tacks.
Over lunch the sailors were sent off for an Easter Egg hunt round the boat park and managed to find most of the hidden eggs. Fortunately there were enough chocolate eggs for everyone, but a few sailors might find a surprise cardboard egg hanging off their cover straps in the coming weeks!
After lunch the Blue and White groups went out for another short coaching session, recapping the skills and drills worked on in the morning before joining together for a couple of short races. The coaches decided to use the club race box, flag pole, course board and hooter for the races to help the Blue group in particular to get more familiar with how club level races are run.
Although the results were unsurprisingly dominated by the White group sailors the improvement from some of the Blue group in the last few weeks has been phenomenal and there were some excellent individual moments from sailors from both groups in the racing.
The day finished with a quick de-brief and the final Easter eggs of the day being handed to the ROTTERs of the month (Theo for the Blue group and Oscar for the Whites).
The sailors are looking forward to hosting the NEYYSA travellers series Open on Sat 26th April followed by their next ROTTERs session on Saturday 10th May. The club is also hosting its Discover Sailing day on Monday 5th May. More information about these events is available via the club website www.ripon-sc.org.uk