Youth Development Squad

The WTYA has an awesome 420 fleet set up for teams racing. The fleet lives on a trailer (like a car transporter) and can be delivered anywher in New Zealand.

Unfortunately, over the past season or so the fleet has not been used very much.

Part of my job is too make sure that our local sailors get the chance to take advantage of this fantastic resource.

After talking to people at Burgess Trophy, it looks like a big part of the problem is that most of our schools (except HBHS) have only one or to or three sailors.

Because our schools only have a few sailors, they can’t make up a team (6 sailors) and so they can’t justify the expense or hassle of using the 420s.

I think it would be good if we formed a local sailing squad that any sailor from any club could join.

Say we had two sailors from one school, one from another, and so on, then we would have enough sailors together in one place to form teams and be able to practice team racing using the 420s.

If the sailors want to form themselves into teams for the training (or sailing outside training) then good luck to them but the way I see it that wouldn’t be any of the squad’s business.