RNZYS Level 1 Learn to Sail / Elliott 7
The course format is 5 sessions conducted fortnightly on Tuesday evenings in the RNZYS’ fleet of Emirates Team New Zealand Elliott 7’s. The sessions are conducted alongside our Tuesday afternoon Sprint Racing series. Following sailing, we are invited to join the club in the Dinghy Locker for race day prizegiving, with food and drink specials. The course is a mixture of theory and practical sailing delivered by RNZYS Coaches.
Who should do this course?
Those aged 14+ looking to get into sailing! No experience is necessary to do this course, here you will learn the basics of sailing. This course is conducted in the Elliott 7 fleet. These keelboats are small and agile and therefore provide a perfect learning platform for new sailors. Basic fitness and mobility are required to sail these boats. If you have mobility concerns, the weekend MRX courses may be a better option for you as the MRX keelboats are slightly bigger, more stable and have more hand hold points.
When is it?
4:30pm – 8:30pm
- 30th September
- 14th October
- 21st October
- 11th November
- 25th November
Course outcomes
- Understand safety requirements and weather for sailing
- How sails work & how to trim
- Rig an Elliott 7 ready for sailing
- Tie basic knots used for sailing
- Understand basic right of way rules
- Introduction to helming
- Understand points of sail and basic terminology
- Understand how to recover a person overboard
About the boats
This course is completed using the RNZYS’ fleet of Emirates Team New Zealand Elliott 7 keelboats. The fleet consists of 10 identical 7-meter yachts which in addition to Learn to Sail courses are used for the Squadron’s Mastercard Youth Training Programme, National and International match racing events and National fleet racing regattas.
The fleet has been a key element in the development of NZ’s vast talent of young sailors to national and international elite keelboat sailing culminating for many in successful careers.
As the boats are evenly matched and easy to sail, they provide exciting yachting for all levels of abilities from beginners to experienced yachties.
The fleet is professionally managed to ensure all users gain maximum benefits from these great yachts and berthed very close to RNZYS at Westhaven allowing easy access to the ideal sailing playground of Auckland’s Waitemata harbour.