David Frame - Sailing Coach
Holidaying from a young age on the island of Cumbrae, not unsurprisingly I was introduced to boats as a child, through the family Drascombe Longboat. Taking my first RYA dinghy course aged twelve, at the SportScotland centre, on the island. Whereupon I caught the sailing bug! So I ended up coming back each year to do a more advanced courses, becoming a dinghy instructor at sixteen, and then helping out working during my summer holiday period.
Combined with this dinghy sailing, I was introduced to yachts, “big dinghies with beds” and windsurfers “dinghies with no sides“, and by eighteen I had completed two longish offshore yacht passages from Scotland to the Canaries and the following year to the Balearics, one of which involved surviving 65 knots of wind in the Bay of Biscay over a three day period! These two passages, quickly helped me gain, my Yachtmaster Offshore qualification shortly afterwards. At this stage I was full on into a sailing career after seven seasons at Cumbrae. Being able to teach in all three sailing disciplines at the centre, whilst I was a student, having just dropped into it. “A career on the water, is a bit like the water…. you just kind of fall into it! The fun of all this, well compensated me, for falling out of a poorly chosen university course”
Having decided on a course change to sport at Jordanhill College. I continued to coach the RYA Scotland National 420 squad over the five months winter training, alongside Sparky (Steven Parks, now Olympic manager) and Chris Owen. After graduation, I moved south to Loughborough University to complete my qualifications as a PE teacher where I remained, enjoying the experience of teaching in a large secondary school for four years.
Returning homewards, I began work in outdoor education at Castle Toward, until taking up the post of the RYA’s Scottish National Racing Coach at Cumbrae for three years. After the joy of leading the Scottish Youth Squads team to a convincing victory, after a fifteen-year gap at the Eric Twiname Event, I transferred to full time instructing at Cumbrae. Lucky enough that my employers, allowed me to take the time to achieve a wee personal goal, of a transatlantic trip before I was forty! At present I’m the Sailing Coach at Cumbrae.
Top Tips.
I always try to remind powerboat drivers on training courses that one of the things you never hear a power boat driver say is 'Oh no....... I was going to slow'.
Slowing down or stopping in a multitude of circumstances can save a lot of problems or damage, speeding up is usually the cause of them. I always try to impart this to my students.
On advanced powerboat navigation courses you learn and to use navigation techniques that are much simpler than perhaps the way navigation is traditionally taught on yachts. When yacht cruising I also encourage my students to use those techniques to fix their position by 'eye'.
For example: Using the ships compass point the yacht to a charted landmark, say a headland (hopefully not to far off your desired course!) do this at the same time as you have two charted objects coming into transit. You effectively use the boat to give you a bearing, which you can plot, then join your transited objects across the chart. Accurate position fixing with out using a handbearing compass and much quicker than three point fixing. Always lookout for transits they make life easier and can be more accurate than the human error when using a handbearing compass. By looking ahead on deck you can try and spot transists in advance.... you know where they are coming. So you can try and be ahead of the game rather than playing catch up navigation all the time.