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The Women and Girls in Sailing page on our website has some fantastic resources which clubs and organisations can use to help attract and retain female sailors.
Many of the resources were developed through initiatives by the Women in Sailing NZ junior girls sub-committee.
This group recognised the challenges faced by our junior girls in sailing, challenges such as no toilets on water, limited time between races and the difficulty in managing periods when sailing. Our research shows that a significant number of girls drop out of sailing by age 15 and the main reason girls stay in sport is for the friendships.
Addressing these facts, one initiative the sub-committee developed was the idea of a junior girls social educational evening for young female sailors aged 10-15 year.
The Murrays Bay Sailing Club piloted this inaugural event in July with great success and the resources from this are now available on our website for all clubs and members to view. It is hoped more clubs jump onto this idea and run their own junior girls events.
Nutritionist Jenny Bates was recruited to talk about how best to fuel bodies and brains when sailing and our website features PDF flyers with this information.
Tasman Rowntree spoke to the girls about how best to manage periods while sailing which you can find below. Oi (Organic Initiative) have kindly offered members a limited time 50 percent discount on their Oi Cup - see the resources page for further details.
Yachting New Zealand have put together an 18-minute video featuring a Q&A with female sailing mentors Jo Aleh, Erika Dawson, Bex Gmuer-Hornell and Veerle Ten Have.
Clubs are free to use these resources as they wish and we are continually adding to this page so let us know if there is anything specific you are looking for.
If you want to run your own girls social educational event, make sure you look at the overview of the Murrays Bay Sailing Club event here.
