Crosby Sailing Club

15/09/2026

15/09/2026

The 2026/27 Dom Barnes Coaching winter programme is now open.

Last winter we coached nearly 50 sailors across the series. This winter we’re taking the programme to more clubs across the Midlands and North, with a bigger coaching team and more opportunities to train properly through the off-season.

And by properly, I mean coaching, not simply putting a course out and watching you sail around it.

We normally work at around 3 to 4 sailors per coach, which means we can actually watch what you’re doing, identify the things costing you speed or places, work on them with you and then see whether the changes are working.

Across the winter we’ll cover the things that really decide races: boat handling, boat speed, sail controls, starts and the first 100 metres, upwind and downwind technique, mark roundings, tactics, decision-making and race mindset.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re beginning to race, trying to move up your club fleet, heading to open meetings or already competing at championship level. You’ll be coached at your level, on the things that will make the biggest difference to you.

Most single-handed classes are welcome, including Toppers, Teras, Lasers/ILCAs, Solos, Streakers, Supernovas and Phantoms.

If you want to arrive next spring sailing exactly as you do now, keep doing what you’re doing.

If you want to be noticeably better, this is what the winter is for.

Train smart. Sail fast. Race to win.

Places are limited at each venue to protect the coaching ratios.

Register here:

https://www.cognitoforms.com/DomBarnesCoaching/_20262027SinglehandedOpenRaceCoachingRegistrationForm

15/09/2026

Every detail matters.
Know your boat. Trust your setup. Sail with purpose. ⛵️

11/09/2026

I watched a parent rig their kid's boat while impatiently telling the kid not to touch it and to go and get changed instead. It wasn't about helping or saving time. The message was pretty clear: I've spent a lot of money on this, don't mess it up.

Then this tiny human emerges from the changing room in a drysuit two sizes too big and the parent's parting words are not to come off the water unless they've won.

That has stuck with me, because somewhere in that moment the sailing had stopped being about the child enjoying the day, learning something and finding out what they could do, and had become about delivering a result for the adult standing on the shore.

There's a class of boat I won't coach. I'm not going to name it, and you can have a guess, but I'll tell you the reason clearly enough: it isn't the boat, which I actually rate, and it isn't the kids, most of whom are brilliant, funny, hungry to learn and exactly the sort of sailors you want to spend a Saturday with. It's the parents. Not all of them, because there are some genuinely wonderful exceptions, but enough of them stand on that shore treating a nine-year-old's race like their own unfinished business that I've stopped going near the fleet, even when I've been asked directly.

And yes, that class produces some very good sailors. Nobody's arguing with the results. What I do wonder about is how many potentially good sailors we lose along the way, because a talented ten-year-old who gets shouted at for finishing third doesn't always become a more determined thirteen-year-old. Sometimes they just decide that sailing isn't much fun anymore.

I think quite a few sailing parents confuse wanting the best for their child with needing something from them. Wanting the best is completely understandable because love, worry, pride and ambition all get tangled together, especially when you know your child has talent. Needing the result, though, is different, because then the child's race starts becoming a way of satisfying something in the parent.

So the question I think every parent of a young racer should occasionally ask themselves is a simple one: are you cheering for your kid, or through them?