07/08/07 Arrived of new students from another province of China

Today we get ten new students that will be in the morning and in the afternoon. In the morning only two of our regular students were there because it was lightning and raining so the other student prefer to stay at home. The mother of one the child wanted to take her boy back home because she thought that we could not learn them something new...

In the morning we told them how to rig and unrig the boats, they got a tour in the marina and after that, we learned them some knots wich they will use on the boat.

In the afternoon all the children were their and we had to splits the group in two parts: one group was for Jan with the old students and another group was for me with the ten new children. Because we don't have enough lifejackets for everyone of them, I first go swimming with the new children during Jan was giving the other group theory lessons. After one houre we switched, but because their was a risk of lightning Jan went not on the water for sailing with his group, so he continue his theory lessons for a some time. A half an houre before the end of the sailing course he went with the children on the water and let them swimm. I give on my turn theory lessons to my group: where they have to sit in the boat, how they have to hold the mainsheet how they have to sheet in andagain doing a few knots to see if they are remember them the knots

Cleaning the boats

Our biggest achievement so far is the cleaning of the boats. The water in Rizhao contains a kind of slib...



Today I was introduced to miss Joe and the kids.

Some motorboat problems during the last week caused a small delay in the training of the kids. Apparently, some days the trainers had no motorboat to their disposition. Therefore, they only could send a few kids on the water. However, today we had one motorboat and we could send all kids on the water as the wind was not too strong and the risk of capsizing was minimal.

From tomorrow on, we might even get a second motorboat, but this is because we have to train 10 extra kids. For the moment, it is not clear how we will handle 24 kids in the afternoon with only 13 boats.

This marina is quite impressive. Most impressive are the surfboards, they are very nice (a kind of formula race boards with modern sails) and they have them in huge numbers.

This is it for the moment!