BWSC New Members

Who are the cadets in a club?

Sometimes they are the young members. Sometimes they can be older but have recently joined.
You already know how to sail the boat. You can rig and derig a boat. You can launch a boat. You can point it in the right direction and bring it back to the pontoon undamaged and happy. In Baltic Wharf we want Cadets to mean those sailors who may be unsure of the rules of racing. They may have recently qualified in a sailing school. They might be coming back to racing after a while away. So Cadets are people who want to race and improve their sailing and would welcome advice on how to improve.

So who helps them?

At the beginning it is Chris Querée, Alvar Bray, Rupert Diffey and Paul Linford the present Commodore. We know that we have a club where everyone helps everyone else out. We like to offer advice and cadets should feel that they can ask anyone for help.
The four people named have just put themselves forward to look after cadets. Some of our very best sailors will also want to help out and we know they will.

What do the helpers do?

We are NOT instructors for cadets. Some of us are Dinghy Instructors or even Senior Dinghy Instructors but we all want to COACH the cadets.

1. We will organise special sessions for cadets. These will take place before or after races and will practice certain things which help people who want to race.
2. We will post problems on the cadets section of the website and invite people to put in their solutions.
3. We will make sure that cadets in races have their results recorded as part of the whole fleet of boats racing but will also have a special section where Cadet results are separated out so that Cadets will have a “race within a race”.
4. We will offer advice on how to improve, we will help to point out what we think you might be doing which can be removed to help you sail faster and most of all we will support you before, during and after a race.

What do the Cadets do?

• They join in the races and try to win.
• They will try to make sure they do better than last week or the last time they raced.
• They will have as much fun as they can.
• They will ask other sailors how they can improve and then try and remember that when they race again.
• They will join in the activities put on for the cadets as much as they can.
  Cadets should be fun and should be about getting better and ENJOYING sailing.

How do You join the cadets?

You tell us.
You can find us in the club and ask who we are.
You can e.mail us direct or just put a message onto the cadet’s message board on the Website saying you want to join.
After a couple of times with the cadets we will ask you to join the club as a junior member.

Joining the club is important for a few reasons:

• You are showing you want to enjoy your sailing with us and improve how you sail.
• The insurers of the club want to know who is part of the club and races with us because they need to know who they are covering.
• You can access the BWSC online cadet facilities.
• All clubs want members because clubs have to pay the rent to someone, they can offer some boats for people to sail and most of all they want to enjoy sailing together.