From Paddling Pools to Foiling Catamarans

How Do We Get Children from First Sails to SailGP?

As I settle down to watch international sail racing in SailGP, it’s hard not to be blown away by the sheer spectacle. Fifty-foot foiling catamarans travelling at motorway speeds, flown with precision by athletes who combine physical strength, technical skill and razor-sharp tactical awareness.

But it also makes me wonder:
How do we encourage children to take their first steps into sailing – and how do those steps ever lead to something like SailGP?

Where Sailing Really Starts

For most sailors, the journey doesn’t begin on foils. It starts somewhere much humbler:

• A taster session at a local sailing club

• A summer course in a tiny dinghy

• Capsizing repeatedly in cold water, learning how to laugh about it

In the UK, grassroots sailing has traditionally been nurtured through clubs and youth programmes supported by Royal Yachting Association. Boats like the Optimist, Topper, RS Tera or Feva aren’t glamorous, but they are brilliant teachers. They reward balance, awareness and feel — skills that no amount of technology can replace.

The Big Gap: Visibility and Aspiration

The challenge is that elite sailing is largely invisible to non-sailors. Footballers are on cereal boxes. Racing drivers are household names. Sailors? Often not.

SailGP helps enormously here. It packages sailing as:

• Fast

• Visually spectacular

• Understandable to non-sailors

• Properly global

That matters. Children need heroes they can see and identify with. When they watch SailGP, they don’t just see boats — they see teamwork, technology, and a pathway where sailing looks exciting rather than obscure.

Making the Pathway Clearer

The missing link is often not opportunity, but clarity. Children (and parents) need to see:

1. First sails → fun and confidence

2. Club sailing → skills and friendships

3. Youth racing → challenge and progression

4. High-performance pathways → inspiration and ambition

Very few will ever sail in SailGP — and that’s fine. The real success is keeping young people in the sport, whether they become racers, instructors, coaches, engineers, or simply lifelong sailors.

Why Clubs Matter More Than Ever

Local sailing clubs are doing something SailGP never can:

• Providing community

• Offering affordable access

• Teaching resilience, teamwork and self-reliance

If we want more SailGP sailors in the future, we don’t just need better technology — we need welcoming clubs, patient instructors, supportive parents, and space for children to mess up safely.

From River to World Stage

Watching SailGP is thrilling. But it’s also a reminder that every one of those sailors once struggled with a flapping sail, a tangled rope, or a cold dunking.

The question isn’t “How do we create SailGP sailors?”
It’s “How do we make sure children fall in love with sailing in the first place?”

Everything else follows from that.