Dinghy Sailing Practical Session Briefings

Your student briefing needs to contain the following elements -

• Safety - Hazards in the area, basic road rules & byelaws 
• Aims - what you want them to achieve & why they are doing it.
• Area - the course or area to carry out the exercise
• Direction of travel when going around a course or carrying out a manoeuvere
• Distance - away from other craft / between dinghies
• Duration - session length / number of laps of the course / number of attempts at an exercise
• Signals - whistles are a great means of attracting attention (i.e. to get your students to look at you) rather than shouting, these should ideally be followed up with a specific hand signal i.e. to call them in, direct them to a location, switch helms etc. For hand-signals to work effectively, you must position yourself in an obvious place, insight of your students. Some ideas of what hand signals you may need are: 

- Go home / back to base e.g. triangle above head

- Everyone come to me e.g. both hands on head

- You come to me (one individual dinghy) e.g. one hand on head with other hand pointing an individual dinghy

- Follow me e.g. one hand on head, the other hand pointing at stern/ back of RIB

- Switch helms e.g. circular motion of one hand above head

• Key teaching points of the exercise - How they are going to achieve the aims (Demonstration?)