A New Approach to Pre Race Seminars
Starting this summer, Pacific Cup Yacht Club will offer its traditional seminars in a new format. Shorter and more concentrated, the half-day seminars will provide essential skills and knowledge for any off-shore passage in a more effective format. These will be suitable for sailors contemplating anything from the Pacific Cup, to a Ha-Ha, to a Coastal Cup, or just an ocean passage.
Our traditional 8-hour format from prior years, while packed with information, felt too much like “work on a weekend,” and attentions tended to wander near the end of the day. The new format provides greater number of shorter seminars with each afternoon or evening session ended with a chance to speak one-on-one with the expert speakers, moderators, and fellow sailors present.
It also leaves time free to sail or work on your boat, as your needs and preferences dictate.
Advance Materials
As well as requiring only a half-day or evening of your time, the new format will offer a chance to become familiar with the topic before the seminar. Downloadable materials available before and after the seminar will let attendees make better use of their time and formulate questions in advance. Each speaker will post a detailed report on his or her topic on the Pacific Cup website about a month before the seminar. Attendees are urged to review these materials before the seminar to get familiar with the basics. This will allow us to utilize the session time for detailed examples and highlights.
Breakouts: Birds of a Feather
Following very successful experiments with breakout sessions for the 2010 race, we’re adding more small break-out sessions, of perhaps eight people per table. This will allow individual questions to be addressed in-depth by moderators and fellow sailors: those with experience on many different boats, with various crew configurations, and diverse program goals. After listening to the speaker give a synopsis of the topic, we’ll break out in structured small groups to discuss submitted questions with moderators. This will allow more personal engagement with the topic. If the seminar format does not provide a specific answer, additional information will be provided to help participants discover answers to more complicated questions with other resources, including our on-line forum.
Whether you are preparing for your first major ocean passage, to race the Pacific Cup for the first time, or you are a veteran interested in improving your game, you will find invaluable information and make useful and enjoyable contacts among speakers, moderators and other sailors. Join us!
Four half-day seminars are planned. These include small-group break-out sessions. In addition, a sanctioned Safety At Sea seminar next May at Cal Maritime in Vallejo. Later, we'll be announcing a series of evening events for more specialized topics like Sailmail, double-handing, return and insurance.
