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Blog submitted by Will Clingan, Rooster Rider.
I have always been around sailing as my dad and my uncle grew up sailing, so it was something my dad was always keen for me and my brothers to do. The first time I sat in a boat was when I was three and dad took me for a spin in his miracle and it is still an experience that I remember, especially how scared I was.
My own sailing journey started 10 years ago in 2016 at Staunton Harold sailing club where I completed my RYA Stage One course in an optimist. In the following years as I was sailing my optimist in the youth squad, I was struggling to get to stage two level and especially struggled in the high winds. In this time, I gave a few club races a try which ended in one last place as well as a DNF because I got the course wrong. The main thing I lacked was confidence and experience which made enjoying sailing difficult for me. I can remember having one of the instructors sat on the boat with me because there were high winds and they were trying to help me relax - the boat was steadily sinking due to the weight, but it helped me to calm down and have fun.
In early 2019 I sold my optimist and moved up to a Topper but then later that year we moved to Notts County sailing club just in time for the start of lockdown. After lockdown, I went for a sail and it just felt like lots of what I had learnt before started to click and I also felt more comfortable, but I still didn't have quite enough confidence to really enjoy sailing yet.
In 2022, I joined Mammoth Explorer Scout Unit, which is a group based at the Nottinghamshire Scouts Adventure Centre, and who help run activities such as sailing, kayaking, canoeing, and stand up paddleboarding. For my first year I stuck with paddling which felt like it was a better fit for me than sailing and really boosted my confidence being around the water. I also began to teach watersports which I found I really enjoyed. In my second season at Mammoth, I tried sailing again and everything felt natural to me and made sense which was a feeling I hadn’t had before. This led me to start taking out an RS Vision or Laser 2000 with a range of scout, cub, and beaver sections from all over Nottinghamshire for taster sessions to spend time on sailing boats and for some of the older ones a chance to helm. This was my first step into instruction, and it felt very natural for me as well as enjoyable.
At the start of my third season, I completed an assistant instructor course and leant more of the teaching skills which was great knowledge to have as well as allowing me to be part of the team running RYA youth and adult courses to get into the teaching and development of skills. This made me even more interested and keen to keep instructing. I started to see that my struggles learning to sail enabled me to put myself even more into the shoes of the people I was teaching, helping me to break things down and understand the difficulties facing them to find solutions.
Before the next season I attended a 5 day RYA Dinghy Instructor course back at Notts County sailing club which was an amazing learning experience for me seeing how sessions are led and understanding how I can do it in a safe and fun environment. With the knowledge and skills, I learned, I went into the season with more confidence in my ability, still learning all the time - and I hit plenty of obstacles that changed me as an instructor to overcome them. The higher qualifications came with more responsibility and care over the people I instructed that I didn't expect, and I had to learn lots of things that can’t be taught like the compassion and patience needed at times.
That brings us up to date to this, my fifth season, which is my second as a dinghy instructor, and the learning keeps going but with the awesome reward of seeing the people I teach overcome their struggles - whether that's confidence or learning a sailing technique. Not only has sailing helped shape me as an instructor but also as a person with the social skills and confidence in talking or presenting to others which has shaped me into someone wanting to take a career in education as I know teaching is something rewarding and that I enjoy. Lots of times I remember the progression that I have made in my confidence and overall sailing ability, especially when I have sat on the front of single handers with kids to help calm them down like I often needed. I was also able to take part in a WASZP taster session as part of the Athena Foiling festival which, as you can probably tell, would be a huge step up for me. Once I got in the boat, I was very nervous and as I started moving, I could just feel the boat speed up which would then just keep leading to capsize after capsize. But by the end I managed to get up on the foils which filled me with immense amounts of pride and achievement over what I had done.
Looking to the future, I hope to become a senior instructor, once I have built up more experience and awareness of how to supervise as well as manage people in a water sports centre setting. I'm also hoping to keep developing my sailing skills to help me get over the challenges that I have struggled with racing as well as doing more activities like the WASZP taster that would push me out of my comfort zone. I’m looking forward to the next 10 years because of the change and progression I have had in the first 10 years, I am excited to see what comes next and where I might be in 2036!
