Getting Involved in the Sailing Community

As a novice sailor, getting involved eith other sailors and organized activities is an excellent way to expand your knowledge of sailing and become more comfortable with sailing.  There are two sailing camps locally and I would highly recommend looking into them, as well as local ragatas and clubs.  The most prominate of the two is Columbia sailing club, who you can check out at http://www.columbiasailingclub.org/.   I spent several summers at Columbia sailing camp and they are especially good at teaching younger sailors how to handle a boat.  They teach capsizing recovery, points of sails, how to rig and de-rig your boat and offer a lot of hands on learning in the water.  They have a large selection of Optis, small one man sail boats for children to learn on.

http://www.glpyc.org/2optis.jpg

However Columbia Sailing is orientated much more towards children who are new to sailing.  For adolescents and young adults new to the sport, Lake Murray is probably more your speed.  Though the class is still taught in a manner to catch new sailors up to speed, Lake Murray moves at a faster pace and is directed at an older audience.  They teach primarily on Fj sail boats, two to three man boats with a jib and a main sail.  While you are still supervised and Lake Murray, I found myself with lots more leeway to learn on my on my own and working in groups allowed us to learn from each others mistakes and practice working in teams, skills which are essential to learn to operate bigger boats.


http://lmsc.org/lmsa/wp-content/uploads/FJ.jpg

Both a Lake Murray and Clumbia offer week long camps in the summer as well as organize a étude ragatas in the fall.  However, if camps are too pricy for you or you would like a more familiar community to expamd your hobby with, many high schools and colleges offer different forms of sailing clubs and there are loads of local organizations just a click away on the web.  Get involved!