Hello All,

Recently I was able to take two very interesting and informative sailing classes.  The first was Sail Theory and Trim with Nick Hayes through the Milwaukee Community Sailing Center's Winter Course program.  There was a good turnout with the crowd mostly consisting of Sailing Center members and MAST racers.  The course focused on fairly basic trim techniques.  Discussions on use of back stay was particularly interesting. 

On Sunday, I attended the North U racing rules seminar at the Milwaukee Yacht Club.  The course was taught by Bill Gladstone and was outstanding!  Bill organized and ran the course incredibly efficiently and covered almost every imaginable area of upwind, downwind, and starting rule.  Although I'm sure one could always come up with something new, and I'm sure there are judges out there who have seen it, it was still very informative.  I thought I was well versed before, but now I'm much more confident in my knowledge of the racing rules.  I would recommend this course to anyone interested. 

This coming Thursday will be part two of Nick Hayes's Sail Theory and Trim course.  I will be attending, and I hope others will join me.  Nick hopes to continue on the topics of the first class and focus extensively on spinnaker handling and theory.  I'm am looking forward to the later as I struggle with teaching spinnaker sailing at the Sailing Center. 

Joe