Transition Year  Sailing Course

Transition year is broken up into three classes. Each class does different activities and classes which we rotate every ten weeks. This allows each class to experience all that Transition Year has to offer.

On Tuesdays TY2 go to Dun Laoghaire. Here we do a sailing course. We meet outside the building at ten and sail till around a quarter to one.

In our first class we learned about the different parts of the boats we would be using before our instructor, Niall, took us outside and showed us how to rig the boats. We broke into pairs and prepared our boats for the water. The wind was behind us so it was easy going. We had been shown the tack turn so we practiced it until we were confident enough to go farther out.

On our second week we were shown how to do the jibe turn, which is much faster than the tack turn. To do the tack turn you push the rudder towards the sail while to perform the jibe turn you pull it away from the sail. We were also shown how to right the boat if we get stuck head to wind and how to right it if we capsize.