Sailing School WSTZ Workshop

On Tuesday 2nd and Wednesday 3rd May 2023, I was asked to run a Water Safety Awareness and Drowning Prevention Education workshop for the 54 optimist/laser sailors participating in the Lake Chivero, just outside Harare, Jacana Sailing School. Although the workshop was targeting under 18’s, many of the adults and parents attended and listened into the presentation. There was a total of 86 registered participants who attended Sailing School, from as young as 6 to folk in their 70’s.

We focused on all aspects of water safety whether around the house, around lakes, rivers and dams, around home and local pools. The emphasis was on the fact that water is fun and there are so many wonderful activities that happen in and around water, such as ski-ing, sailing, fishing, diving, synchronized swimming, water polo, cooling down and playing with friends, scuba diving to name a few, however there are also inherent dangers if water is not respected. We also discussed the dangers of drinking alcohol and participating in water activities. I was very impressed at the awareness of a lot of the children and their interaction with me on this water safety subject.

After the discussion we then went to the Jacana Club Pool and discussed non-contact rescue and spoke about REACH-THROW-DON’T’ GO and what that meant. (This means we always look around (pool brush pole extension, a branch, a hose-pipe etc) and see if there is something that can be used to reach the person in danger, or we throw something they can hang on to (a roped bottle/ tube/noodle/buoy and pull them back to safety), but absolutely DON’T GO unless the person is unconscious).

We spoke about SELF-PRESERVATION (when someone is in trouble, we need to be able to help without putting our own lives at risk, whereby instead of one drowning happening, two may happen) and the importance of keeping our self-safe while we help someone who is in the process of drowning.

And finally, we did demonstrations of how to do non-contact rescue, using the actual situation at the Jacana Yacht Club pool area.

The feedback was excellent from both adults and youngsters, they all felt they had gained a lot of knowledge on how to react in a possible drowning situation.