Dell Quay Sailing Club

Meet Carol Morley and her two daughters, Aimee and Lucie. Both girls are following in Carol’s footsteps developing a love of water sports and achieving some RYA qualifications!

Morley Girls – Two Generations of Female Sailing

I started sailing at 12 years old when I joined the Sea Cadets in Blackpool. We sailed a big wooden boat called an ASC which had sliding gunter rig and could only be described as a tank! While Blackpool sounds like the ideal place to learn to sail, in reality it is an incredibly difficult place to dinghy sail, due to the 10 metre tidal ranges resulting in 5 knot tidal currents.

As my skills and experience progressed so did the boats that were available to sail. The Unit purchased a couple of second-hand Toppers and each year the Unit would attend a weeklong sailing camp at a Hollingworth Lake in Rochdale where I also sailed a Bosun dinghy.

In 1998 I qualified as a Dinghy Instructor. As a member of staff with the Sea Cadets and an RYA instructor, I was able to share my passion for sailing with the Cadets and develop and evolve both the range of dinghies and the opportunities for the cadets to learn to sail. I was instrumental in the unit becoming an RYA recognised training centre in 2006.

I have lost count of the number of youngsters that I have taught to sail. I am still in touch with many of them who are still sailing today, some of whom now work within the watersports industry in senior roles.

Becoming a mum to Aimee and Lucie made it more difficult to maintain my qualification and regrettably by instructor qualification lapsed.

In 2010 we purchased a Wanderer Dinghy which allowed us to start sailing as a family at Dell Quay Sail Club, Chichester, where we have enjoyed many family weekends, day cruising up and down the harbour, going on adventures to Itchnor for an Ice Cream or just sailing across to Copperas Point and landing for a family picnic!

As Aimee and Lucie have grown up, they have enjoyed learning to sail independently and love being on the water with their peers. A turning point for us was when we purchased a Laser Pico which gave Aimee and Lucie an opportunity to sail together without me.

As they have progressed through the RYA Youth Sailing Scheme it has given them the skills and confidence to enter Dell Quay’s regatta in their Pico. The results have been mixed but in July 2019 they took first in the Junior race.

Aimee has since advanced to sailing a Laser 4.7 and is utilising sailing as an individual sport in GCSE in PE. She is also working towards becoming an Assistant Instructor at Dell Quay, where she hopes to pass on her own passion for sailing to younger members of the club.

Lucie continues to enjoy sailing her Pico and hopes to achieve RYA stage 4 during the summer of 2021.

I led Woman on the Water (WoW) group for 2 years which was a role that I really enjoyed, this enabled me to reinvigorate my personal love for sailing.

In 2021 I stepped down from the WoW role to become Junior lead. I am working towards revalidating my Dinghy Instructor qualification now that Aimee and Lucie are more grown up and are sailing independently. Over the last few years, the family’s love of water sports has expanded and includes Kayaking, Stand up Paddle boarding and I have recently qualified as an accredited rowing Coxswain in the clubs Celtic Long Boat.

Sailing has given me some wonderful opportunities, lifelong memories and I am grateful that it continues to provide an interest that I can share with Aimee and Lucie.

Carol Morley