The Officers' School of Taranto offers the opportunity to all its attendees to be able to practice various sports disciplines, under the careful and qualified guidance of the Instructor staff. Among these, sailing is of particular importance for the professional growth of students.
We met and asked some questions to frigate captain Sergio Lamanna, head of the helmsmen department and vice president of the Mariscuola Taranto nautical/sports center.
Commander, how is sailing activity organized at Mariscuola Taranto for the benefit of its attendees?
The particularly high numbers require a modular organizational structure and a teaching methodology that is certainly different from that conducted in a traditional sailing school. Thus, starting from an initial acclimatization on a boat already in the competition phase, we move, during the first year, to a basic activity on boats such as "dinghies", the objective of which is to learn to manage the propulsive force of the wind.
Subsequently, during the second year, the course focuses on the management of dinghies to gradually move on to larger boats, coastal ones, in which the concept of crew is fully developed; during the third year, the 1st level MM sailing instructor course is started for all those attendees who, during the previous two years, have shown particular propensity or previous skills in sailing activity.
There is no shortage of opportunities for external comparison in regatta contexts that are particularly suited to developing technical coordination between crew members together with a high level of cinematic sensitivity.
How many and what types of boats does the Institute have?
The sailing detachment of the Petty Officers' School houses the fleet of "dinghys" which is divided into: multiple boats, intended for basic activities, and Olympic boats, intended for sailing improvement; the main sailing section houses the coastal boats (J/24) and the offshore boats, intended for the "upgrade" of medium and long navigation and external regattas. In total, the students can use a fleet of approximately 25 boats.
Commander, you certainly have a lot of experience in the sailing field, can you tell us why sailing is so important in your training for a student marshal?
The practice of sailing, during the basic training period of Navy personnel, has a wide and recognized educational as well as professional value. The professional value is quite intuitive: learning to manage natural elements, such as wind and sea, using their strength and power to safely steer one's vessel, is an inescapable cultural heritage for every sailor. But there's more! The wind and the sea will be the two elements that will constitute and define the environment in which future marshals will have to live and operate. In this sense, sailing teaches how to operate effectively on mobile and unstable platforms, developing a new motor coordination that allows one to better deal with conditions of instability.
My sailing experience, although it can include significant undertakings both from the point of view of offshore sailing, above all the round the world sailing trip, and from the competitive one, has its roots in small boats, the "dinghies" precisely, to which I recognize the merit of having developed in me those qualities of sensitivity, balance and reading of the wind and the sea that can hardly be developed on larger boats or even on ships.
I believe that the “dinghy”, although it is the most difficult sailing boat to sail, should be the starting point for every sailor.
She (the “cable", ed.) is extremely reactive to every weather-sea variant, nervous and sometimes recalcitrant, she does not forgive mistakes and is ready to unseat you (capsize, ed.) if you make a mistake in a maneuver, an adjustment or even, simply, a shift of weight. Her reactivity is promptly transferred to the crew that drives her, guaranteeing an immediate perception of causes and effects and thus speeding up the processes of acclimatization and learning.
Large boats, on the other hand, have decidedly more contained reactions, barely perceptible only by those who already possess a high level of seamanship, the so-called "sea foot" that only a good sea school can develop. It goes without saying that choosing the right school dinghy is essential to avoid excessive initial trauma in approaching the sea.
In this sense, the choice of the "multiple dinghy" (3,4 crew members) as a training boat, in addition to ensuring a "softer" and more gradual familiarization, allows to start another training process, less intuitive but no less important, the educational one! From this point of view, sailing facilitates the development of ethical and behavioral qualities typical of every good sailor; These qualities arise from the need to operate in full and constant synergy and synchrony with the rest of the crew, compensating, when necessary, the error of the boatmate.
Thus, characteristics such as altruism, professional humility, mutual trust, the ability to adapt and empathy contribute to the formation of that esprit de corps in which all good sailors recognize themselves.
This educational process is fundamental for the future marshal since the marshals themselves, regardless of their specific technical professionalism, represent, on board a ship, the backbone of the entire crew, carrying out the valuable role of supporting the command and coordinating the personnel for each activity in which the unit is called to operate.
