Can't get to the Florida Keys for a Rick White's Sailing Seminar to improve your racing and sailing skills? Race-training guru Rick White can bring one of his famous seminars to YOUR area, for any kind of small one-design. And you, your fleet or your organization can make as much as $1000 to put in you coffers to promote even more sailing.
His "on-the-road" seminars are usually three-day weekends, starting on Thursday night and ending on Sunday afternoon. On a holiday weekend, they sometimes start on Friday night and end on Monday afternoon. The scheduling is up to you.
All it requires is:
***A local organizer. It's a LOT easier than organizing a regatta -- no trophies, no T-shirts, no sponsors, no giveaways. All you need is PEOPLE. And you only need a minimum of 15 people at $295 each for the three-day seminar. (And if you get 20 people or more you get a rebate ranging from $500 to $1,000 to help your local fleet.)
***Protected water (no surf), and try not to pick the time of year when the wind is blowing 20+.
***A meeting room within a very short walk of the water for video debriefings and also for lectures if the weather is bad and also for the evening lecture sessions.
***Two small, manueverable powerboats (skiff-type, as opposed to cabin cruisers).
***A television set, if he flies to the seminar site.
***Rick brings the marks and anchors and his marker board and video equipment and all the teaching props.
The unique thing about Rick White's Sailing Seminars is that they are heavily on-water-oriented. The key to improvement is lots of time on the water doing carefully orchestrated drills along with on-water coaching and videos of your performance.
Give us a cyber, fax, telephonic or snailmail shout if your local group wants to improve their sailing or racing skills.
THE FOLLOWING IS EVEN MORE DETAILS ON HOSTING A SEMINAR:
We make it as easy as possible for your fleet, club or division -- or you personally -- to host a race-training seminar for sailors in your area. We bring everything needed to put on the seminar -- powerboats, marks, anchors, magnetic marker board and magnetic boats, television set, video player, copy machine, instructional handouts, camcorders, and when needed, a special guest expert of national or world caliber. We bring our own housing -- a motorhome -- for ourselves and the guest expert. We do not necessarily need any local volunteers to help us out with the seminar.
PLUS, the host(s) can earn a rebate of $500 if only 20 people come to the seminar and $1,000 if 30 people come. (Please note that this is people, not boats.)
Most of our on-the-road seminars are three-day weekends, with the seminar starting on a Thursday evening and ending on Sunday aftenoon. However, we can also offer a five-day seminar, which is the original seminar format that we use down in the Florida Keys, if people in your area would prefer that. Usually they don't.
All you need in order to have a seminar in your area is a minimum of 15 people and a good location -- with protected waters. We also need a protected shelter of some sort with electricity to do lecture and show videos and to do on-shore things if the weather is bad.
We will do all the actual work of conducting the seminar. You or your fleet or club or division will publicize it locally, answer inquiries about the seminar and send out information. Registrations and deposits will be sent directly to you.
You can make up a flyer yourself, if you wish, or I can make one up for you that you can send out. I will give you information to include with the flyer if you want to do it yourself.
The important thing is deciding on the dates. We need to fit them into our schedule and at the same time make sure they do not conflict with any major regattas in your area. We do not want people to have to choose between a regatta and the seminar. Our purpose is to get people more involved in racing, and we don't want them to miss an important one to come to the seminar.
Our fee is $295 per person for a 3-day seminar and $395 a person for a 5-day seminar (crews and skippers pay the same price). You can charge whatever you want to, as long as our fee is covered. If you are not sure that you will get 20 people and thereby get the rebate, you may want to charge more than $295 just to cover your phone and mailing expenses for handling inquiries about the seminar.
If there is a fee for use of a meeting room of some kind, that also will be your responsibility, so make sure you check into that before you decide what you want to charge for the seminar.
If a skipper cannot find crew to attend the seminar, we recommend that skippers team up on boats and share time on the helm. This is frequently done. And if they cannot find a skipper to team up with, we tell them we will attempt to team them up with someone else who has the same problem.
It is very difficult for the powerboats to keep up with the sailboats so we can coach people on the water if we are in rough seas.
If there is a lot of wind AND big seas, it is difficult for the students to learn the techniques we are trying to teach.
We do not need a very large water area for the seminar -- the drill courses are very short. Often, even on open water, there is a land feature that offers protection when the wind is from a direction that is going to bring big seas.
Wind itself is not a problem except for the mark-rounding drills, which we like to do in relatively light air. Again, if there is a way to get in the lee of a land feature, this is a big help.
We need the meeting room primarily for the evening lecture sessions, which will require lights and electricity to operate our video equipment. But we also need it to show videos during the day immediately following the morning session and afternoon session as soon as we get off the water. And we also need it to be available to us in case of inclement weather during the day, so we can do lectures and show teaching videos.
In other words, it needs to be VERY near the beach, so we can walk to it from the boats. We have used garages and quonset huts in the past. It does not have to be anything fancy -- just basic shelter. Even a covered pavilion (with electricity) will work unless tbere is a hurricane or very cold weather.
You really do not have to do anything during the seminar. As you can see from the attached schedule, we fill up the time pretty completely, and the seminar takes on a life of its own.
We advise against trying to schedule any kind of social activities in conjunction with the seminar. There just is not time, for one thing. And for another, people will be really tired.
If there is no place really close by to eat lunch, sometimes it works out well to find a way to provide lunch at the seminar site and include lunches in the seminar fee. It is very nice for everyone to be able to eat lunches together, and it also helps to keep us on schedule when people are not driving to various places to eat. Sometimes, a lunch package for Friday, Saturday and Sunday is offered to people when they arrive, rather tban included in the seminar fee.
You know what is available foodwise in the area of the seminar site, so the lunch option is up to you. If there are places to eat nearby, don't worry about it.
The schedules are VERY flexible.
For example, if people cannot arrive early enough to be there for the evening session on Thursday for a 3-day seminar, we can plan to start tbat session first thing Friday morning and do a full day on the water on Sunday. If even two or three people cannot make it Thursday evening, we would have to repeat everything for them on Friday morning, so it is important to make sure that everyone knows they have to be there Thursday evening.
We assume that everyone who is coming to the seminar will have to be there the night before in order to get their boats set up, since we have to be ready to go on the water by 9 a.m. on Friday. And most people want to get done at a reasonable time on Sunday so they can pack up and head home.