Dinghy Minis

Our five-day Dinghy Minis course is a great introduction to dinghy sailing for children who are 6 and 7 years old. The course will help build water confidence through fun sailing-based activities in a safe learning environment.

For this course, you’ll need:

• To be between 6 and 7 years old.
• No previous experience needed as our instructors will help you every step of the way.

Waterbased Activities 

The RYA Stage 1 certificate includes the following:

• A basic understanding of how a boat sails
• Experience of steering and handling the boat
• During this course participants will be working towards the course syllabus and RYA stages as advertised, however sign off and completion of the participants logbook will be dependent on their ability.

Shorebased Activities

The Dinghy Science syllabus includes the following:

• Boat build, teaching the correct terminology for parts of the boat (bow, port etc)
• Design a sail, teaching about parts of sail and testing the artistic skills of the children too
• Gutter boat racing, build a mini boat and use ‘turbulent’ flow (huffs and puffs) to propel it along the gutter
• Laminar flow experiment using a spoon and running water
• Yard trolley obstacle course
• Map (chart) reading, treasure hunt
• Spell you name phonetically (Golf, Alpha, Romeo, Yankee)
• Tour of a yacht (if available) alongside

Each day of activities will start at 8.30am and finish at 4.30pm.

The syllabus is taught with a ratio of (5:1) students to instructor.

Due to the physical nature of this programme and the age of the children partaking on the course, on water sessions are restricted to three hours each day. 

Children are supervised at all times by our experienced and safeguard trained watersports instructor team throughout the session.

It is also important to note that while we have a fantastic instructor team and will do everything in our powers to ensure that outlined levels are completed, there may be external factors, such as weather, the level of the group or individuals, that may prevent this from happening.