Learn to Sail

This year’s learn to sail courses are offered in combination with Waikato Thames Yachting (SailWaikato). Available courses include:

• Learn to Sail (Level 1) – aimed at kids with no sailing experience. Held on Saturdays before club sailing. Sign up for this course here.
• Learn to Sail (Level 2/3) – builds on level 1 and improves kids confidence and boat handling skills in a fun and relaxed environment. Held on Friday afternoons (Coming soon!)
• Advanced Laser Youth Squad – aimed at experienced highschoolers, learn how to be fast and win races! Training held on Wednesdays after school, and put into practice at club sailing Saturday afternoons after a quick warm up. Contact Nathaniel directly or via our public channels to apply for this class.

Once you’ve sailed with us, please give us feedback at any time here.

We also run action packed holiday programmes, so there’s never a bad time to express your interest! Use the Contact us page to do this.

Optisail

Junior Fleet sailors are all encouraged to attend the live-in Hamilton Yacht Club Optisail 3-day course at Hamilton Bay Yacht Club in early mid January. Loads of fun guaranteed. Sailors will have to register and pay for this separately.

Parent help

It is preferable for junior fleet sailors to have caregivers get involved with the club (we also offer adult learn to sail!) and that they are not directly involved with the junior classes. Your sailor will be in the best learning environment if they know that you are close, but feel seperate enough from familiar help to try to solve their problems themselves before asking one of our trained coaches for a hint. The coach may ask for your assistance with things like launching or retrival of boats depending on the class size, so please let them know how available and able you are at the begining of the course, then leave as much as you can up to us.

Safety

NSC takes risk management very seriously and has a number of policies in place to ensure sailors stay safe. We need parent’s support to ensure that young sailors have fun in a safe and supportive environment. It’s important that young sailors bring the right clothing and equipment to cope with cold, wet, sunny or warm conditions and have a change of clothes with them.

Club boats

NSC has plastic Optimist training boats, and Waikato Thames Yachting has a fleet of O’pen Skiffs The hire cost is generally included in the Learn to Sail course fee.

Most sailors will eventually want buy their own boat once they finish the learn to sail programmes and start feeling competitive in the club racing. Although it can be an expensive purchase, second had boats usually keep their value and can be sold again for a similar price. Talk to our experienced sailors before you take this step!