Over to Robby for the full story…

This winter on Maui, I am going to start offering advanced-level clinics aimed at sailors who are already very competent but who would like specific help with certain aspects of their sailing. The lessons could range anywhere from jumps, all the way from the forward to the double, to freestyle or waveriding and tricks on the wave like 360s and takas.

             There are a lot of people who come to Maui in the winter and end up getting a bit lost and not learning what they had promised themselves to master during their trip. I was one of them when I came here for the first time. There were just so many places to go and so many good sailors around that I ended up not knowing where to sail and when I got there, the conditions were often a little harder than I had imagined and I ended up just having a good time sailing around watching the pros and not really pushing myself like I had promised I would when I was back at home.

            Of course there is nothing wrong with this but why not spend one day really pushing yourself? If you make that your aim and book a lesson towards the beginning of your stay, then you will have a base of knowledge of all the right spots to go to and you will also get your confidence up to try the tricks you want to learn right from the beginning.

Watching someone do what you want to learn right in front of your eyes is the best way to learn, and I will come and sail around in front of you doing whatever it is you want to learn and then I will watch you and tell you where you are going wrong. There is no better way of getting motivation to go for that trick you have always wanted to do than to have someone sailing around behind you egging you on. I know it because when I go out to learn jumps with Jason, Kevin, Levi or my brother, we follow each other around winding each other up to go for stuff all the time.

What I am proposing to do is to offer a full day of on and off the water coaching. You are not allowed to start sailing in Maui until 11, so we would meet at my house at around 10:00am to do some homework first of all. I have a whole terabyte of footage from all the JP sailors doing what they love best on my computer, so whatever it is you want to learn, I am certain to have plenty of examples of that trick from all different angles. We will analyse the move over and over so that you get an idea of exactly how you should be doing it and get inspired to go for it once you get on the water.

Then we will check on the wind and decide where to go depending on the conditions. Everywhere is pretty close together, so if you want to learn jumps first and then waveriding later, we can do a couple of spots in one day, making the most of the different spots.

One of the best ways to make sure that you are progressing in the right direction is to watch yourself on film. I would encourage anyone wanting to book a lesson to book filming as well. This is an optional extra, so if you don’t want it, you don’t have to have it, but whenever I want to learn something, I watch myself on video to see what I am doing wrong and it makes the learning curve so much faster.

The other benefit of that is that I can also then put together a short clip from the whole day, putting you alongside whichever JP rider you have studied to learn your new moves from, and give you a memorable DVD to take home with you, and to study on your own to perfect your new techniques.

To enquire about courses, please email me on [email protected].