RNZYS Expand Learn to Sail Programme

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The Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron has expanded its Learn to sail programme for the 2017/2018 season.  The key elements have been the recruitment of dedicated full time learn to sail coach Peter Linford, and adding the Farr MRX fleet as a Learn to sail boat option.

Peter comes to the RNZYS with an extensive background of running Learn to sail programmes around his normal day job working for mortgage express.  It was Peters passion of running these courses that lead to him applying for the role at RNZYS ‘While working at Mortgage Express I found myself really looking forward to getting out coaching in the weekends, to be able to coach full time with the RNZYS is a dream come true’.

Peter will also bring a professional management background to the programme, having run his own business for the past 10 years.

Laurie Jury Sailing Director for the RNZYS is excited about the next phase in the sailing school. ‘We hope with Peters background and professional approach we will be able to rapidly grow our learn to sail programmes at the club, last season was the first time RNZYS has run any learn to sail courses and was a great success, this season we are throwing in more resources to cope with the demand, while still improving the delivery of the courses.’

The other part of the equation is the inclusion of the MRX yachts into the Learn to sail fleet. ‘There were two reasons for this, first having a larger boat yacht will suit some of the less nimble students, it will also be a more relevant platform for those students looking at purchasing a larger yacht themselves. Second reason is our fleet of Elliott 7’s which we ran all the level 1 courses’ on last year are already being used most weekends by our Youth Training Programme.’

The RNZYS currently run three different courses, a Yachting New Zealand Level 1 ‘introduction to sailing’ course with the option of using the Elliott 7, (a 7 meter open keelboat) or an MRX (10 meter keelboat with a cabin). Yachting New Zealand Level 2 seamanship course, run on different larger RNZYS member’s keelboat and a Race Crew Training course run in the Elliott 7s.