The continued expansion of the Friday afternoon junior fun sailing program at the Cairns Yacht Club has seen the first official class of Tackers take to the water. Eleven Tackers completed the course, with over half of them being female.

Having such a wide variety of skills on the water, averaging around twenty-four participants a session, necessitated the introduction of a system which allows the clear identification of the confidence and the skillset of any particular sailor.

Hence, the CYC introduces the stoplight system: Three colours of bibs – Red, Yellow and Green – allow for instructors and safety boat operators to clearly prioritise the supervision and reinforcement of boats. Parents kindly donated the elastic mesh bibs that many would no doubt be familiar with from their school PE class days. These bibs are an inexpensive way to improve safety on the water.

Since the rollout of the system our team have praised the idea, citing the ability to focus on sailors with low confidence as ‘a brilliant safety innovation’. It is logical that those with more skills can sail the boat better, and working in a confined area with multimillion dollar superyachts brings its own challenges for our support team. Keeping a closer eye on Red bibs improves safety outcomes and allows the Tackers personnel to identify the boats involved in the program.

It has caused excitement among the small sailors as well. The ability for the bibs to be used as a progression system has enabled friendly competition between boats to move up between bibs. Furthermore, the matching of skills in a boat has given less confident sailors a chance to improve themselves. Previously, what we would now classify as a green bib would be in a boat with a red bib. The green bib would take over while leaving nothing for the red bib to do. Putting people of similar abilities together means that there is no longer a dominant crew member – they have to work together. 

Red. Yellow. Green. Cairns Yacht Club’s stoplight system is an easy, cheap and effective way to ensure safety of participants and allow instructors, volunteers and spectators to identify the different programs that are being run concurrently, and to provide extra support as needed.