ASA sailing instructor

Today I got to teach sailing. 4 nervous and excited people decided that they were going to get certified, so they signed up for the ASA 101 course at Harbor Sailboats. I met with them at 9am and went over their goals, concerns and hopes. Since the main idea is to get on the water and sail, we decided to get going early and headed down to the docks. They all said "let's do this!" That was their team theme, a bunch of go-getter's. Julian was from Lebanon originally, he's in IT consulting and got hooked sailing in the Aegean Sea around Greece, he's also a dive master. Mark is a Corpsman in the Navy and getting out soon, his plans are to get a boat and becoming a liveaboard voyager. I recommended a book called "Get Real, Get Gone. How to become a modern day sea-gypsy and sail away forever." Kim was nicknamed the "Rocket Scientist" since she is graduating from SDSU with an Aerospace Engineering in the Spring. Rob was the most experienced who had sailed in the BVI's and Greece. Initially we had very light wind, so I just gave them the rundown on the boat, rules of the road and finding the wind. By about 11am the wind switched on and we were off! The yehaw's were heard and it was pretty fun. By 12:30 when we pulled in for lunch, the gusts were up to about 15 kts. 3 out of 4 people had some helm time and I showed them how to dock the boat. After lunch, I had them rig the boat, I showed them how to reef the main at the dock, since the front office wants students to reef above 13 kts. We sailed out and started back into the drills. It was a sunny, windy day in San Diego on a Saturday, so we had lot's to discuss about traffic and rules of the road. I asked for a volunteer to dock the boat when we came in and Rob stepped up for a perfect landing, nice and smooth, I hopped off with the boat parallel to the dock, he did better than me at lunch. They secured the boat, rinsed it down and put the covers on. Day one down, well done team! Now to go home and study the materials for the test, "I know it's Saturday night, but you signed up for this." 
Day two was a little cloudy and the wind was blowing lightly from the South. This usually portends to a weather change and I pointed out some clouds as an early sign to weather later in the day. It was written test day. So we sat down for review time, some were really nervous so I answered their questions and we went down to a 40' Beneteau to take the test in the comforts of a very expensive yacht. I wanted them to get a picture of what they could operate if they just applied themselves. 100 questions on all kinds of things and they needed to get 80% to pass. 1 hour later, we're all smiles, everyone passed. Some of the nervous guys only missed a few. So let's go sailing! 
The light Southerly winds got us going and we went into America's Cup harbor to sail the circle around and learn all the points of sail. It just so happened another student boat was in there at the same time. The definition of a race is two sailboats within a mile of each other going the same direction. I told my class that we were going to catch them and pass them. They said, "Let's do this!" it took a while before the other instructor realized that we were on their tail attempting to out-pace and out maneuver them. It was like a racetrack in the harbor rounding the marks and catching puffs and shifts. We had pinched a little hard and got a bad shift and lost them. Unfazed, we clawed our way back and passed them. Each of the students took their turn at racing and it was pretty fun. The other boat gave up and sailed out of the harbor. We sailed back for lunch and another student docked the boat. My job was getting easier as they took ownership of the boat and they secured it without my input. Lunch at 1:15 and I ran back to our boat for a jacket as the rain was looking imminent and secured all our hatches so we did not have any water in the boat. 
The students wanted to get back on the water so we cut lunch short. Kim sailed us out and we went back to do figure 8 drills, tacking and jibing sailing all points of sail in preparation for the man overboard drills later in the day. The guys had all taken turns and Kim was on the helm and we had a pretty hard gust, I said, "That felt kinda squally." About 30 seconds later we were hit with a steady wind of about 20 kts, the boat heeled over really far, but did not bury the rail due to fast response by Mark on the mainsheet. Kim was clearly scared, being on the helm, I was giving her directions from the companion way, letting them deal with the situation as they saw best. I could tell they were a bit scared, not knowing what to do, so I slid up and took the helm with Kim, told her to hang on and we'll bear away and get downwind to regroup. We did and things calmed down on the boat, though we were in a pretty strong wind. So I asked them, "what are our options?" Kim said, "let's roll in the jib" so I said, yeah, great idea, Rob and Julian rolled it up about 1/3 and that helped. So I said, "how about reefing the main?" They said, yes. So I showed them how to heave-to which parks you in a safe balanced place, removes the stress on the main and started to reef, I walked them through the process and sailed out of the heave-to position. They were much more relaxed now and it really started to rain along with the wind. Boats all over the bay were struggling to shorten sail, drop them all together and motor. I shared with the class that if someone is scared, you can't just say, "don't worry, this is no big deal!" being scared is not usually rational, so minimizing the way people feel is not helpful. Kim felt the weight of responsibility of everyone on board being hurt if she messed up. Which is a totally healthy way to view things, after all, my boat my responsibility. We got control of the situation and continued our training with man overboard drills. This is where you throw a life ring overboard and yell, "man overboard" and the job of the skipper is to quickly and safely retrieve them. It's a figure 8 and takes about 2 minutes, most people don't get it on the first try. Rob stepped up after I demonstrated it. A couple of tries and he got him! High fives and cheering all around. Next up and so on. One of the scariest things as a skipper is to lose someone overboard, with this skill down pat, the fear turns to confidence and you can have more fun. By the end, all I could see were smiles on wet soggy faces and a couple said, "this was a great day, we did it!" So getting to about 4pm we headed back to do the outboard training and signing their books certifying them as ASA 101 sailors. They can now take out a 22 foot keelboat by themselves from the club. I offered to sail with each of them if they wanted to have me crew. They took me up on it. I really do love sailing and I love to see people finally understand it too. 

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