Boat Anatomy
Students will learn the different parts of a boat as they rig and sail them on Holly Pond. Learn how to identify and understand the parts of your sailboat by playing fun games to reinforce what you’ve learned.

Navigating a boat
Sail like a scientist! Sailors have been using their engineering skills for hundreds of years to help them navigate their world; now it’s your turn! Use real charts, compasses, simple tools, and a little old-fashioned ingenuity to discover our location and track our speed and progress through the Long Island Sound. How do these ancient skills compare to a modern GPS system? Learning how to sail can be hard. But with SoundWaters you will learn how to position your body and hold the controls of the sailboat to be successful. Develop skills to steer your boat straight, read a chart and plot your course.

Sail Handling
Learn how to make your boat stop, and go by controlling the sails. This is important for beginner sailors to know how to do so they can be comfortable no matter the weather conditions. Play games like ‘what time is it Captain?’ to reinforce.

Points of Sail
By the end of this lesson, sailors will understand how to position their sails so they can sail in any direction, no matter where the wind is coming from. Play games on land to practice each point of sail. Head out on your boat and play games like ‘follow the leader.’

Reading the Weather & Harnessing the Wind
Learn about the conditions that make your sailboat move. Make your own anemometer so you can take measurements of the wind speed.

Animal Adaptations
The Long Island Sound is teeming with life! Help launch and retrieve our special trawl net, and see what’s living down deep in the Sound. Every sail brings a unique catch! Learn about what makes the creatures we find uniquely suited to their habitats, and get an up close and personal encounter with each species. What can we discover by using our senses to investigate these animals?

LIS Observations
It’s amazing what our powers of observation can do! Learn how to turn the things we can observe from on board our schooner into a wealth of knowledge! Learn what the “road signs” all around us mean, and how sailors use them every day. What are these things telling us now? Feel the wind on your face – what’s the direction and the speed? How should we sail the schooner as a result? And how do we fit in to the world of the Long Island Sound?