Good Practice Guide

Good Practice Guide

This guide only covers the essential points of good practice when working with children and young people.  You should also read the Cody Sailing Club Child Protection Policy which is available for reference at all times.

• Avoid spending any significant time working with children in isolation

• Do not take children alone in a car, however short the journey

• Do not take children to your home as part of your organisation’s activity

• Where any of these are unavoidable, ensure that they only occur with the full knowledge and consent of someone in charge of the organisation or the child’s parents

• If a child is having difficulty with a wetsuit or buoyancy aid, ask them to ask a friend to help if at all possible

• If you do have to help a child, make sure you are in full view of others, preferably another adult

You should never:

• engage in rough, physical or sexually provocative games

• allow or engage in inappropriate touching of any form

• allow children to use inappropriate language unchallenged, or use such language yourself when with children

• make sexually suggestive comments to a child, even in fun

• fail to respond to an allegation made by a child; always act

• do things of a personal nature that children can do for themselves.

It may sometimes be necessary to do things of a personal nature for children, particularly if they are very young or disabled.  These tasks should only be carried out with the full understanding and consent of the child (where possible) and their parents/carers.  In an emergency situation which requires this type of help, parents should be fully informed.  In such situations it is important to ensure that any adult present is sensitive to the child and undertakes personal care tasks with the utmost discretion.

Recent Posts

Cobnor Training Weekend

Posted on by

July 2026

Friday arrivals were the usual Cody dribs and drabs arrivals, but even Simon arrived during the daylight, and a pleasant evening was had by all gathered around Anna’s wire mesh fire pit in the warm clear evening chatting and watching the satellites proceed across the night sky. A leisurely morning was spent in the lovely warm Saturday morning sunshine with Steve conducting ‘informal’ training on the field for people setting up new boats, optimising existing rigs or rigging spinnakers never rigged before. We took to the water around 11am and mustered on Cobnor Point to discuss the days training which included sailing efficiently in tidal flows, anchoring off with a tripping line, reefing afloat, a ‘acted out’ demonstration of man over board drills and practicing using the spinnaker (once it was rigged correctly). The day’s training was punctuated by a lunch on the foreshore at Cobnor point with Anna and Mark securing the royal ‘king and queen’ throne of the viewing bench there to dispense their regal declarations to the rebellious throng set out below them. All in all, a great day’s training.

The following day commenced with a session on Day Sail Leading, with Chris volunteering to lead a test day sail and presenting all the planning and briefing to the crews on the field before we went off the sail the plan.


From Chris:

On Sunday morning we had a six-boat fleet of Comets for a short cruise. This was part of the training for new day-sail OODs and was led by me (Chris) under Steve’s watchful tutelage.|

We were afloat just before 11, getting ahead of a fleet (flock, swarm… insert your preferred collective noun here) of Toppers, which were holding a youth race meeting from Cobnor SC. Our first leg was just a short hop from Cobnor to a stop at Itchenor hard. But just because it was short didn’t make it uneventful, with one boat finding themselves up a cul-de-sac the wrong side of the harbour jetties, before we were all able to meet up on the hard. Launching again into strengthening winds, the Cody fleet made its way upwind and uptide through a Sunday morning throng of racing dinghies, motor cruisers and anchored yachts to the ‘Wear’ mark. The fleet made good use of the skills of sailing out of the tide that they had practised the previous day. Turning back towards Cobnor, the fleet landed on Cobnor Point, practising landing on a lee-shore. De-briefing over lunch on the rocky beach, we were also able to watch the Toppers racing, with Debbie’s nephew taking a leading role.

We then spent time reefing afloat, more spinnaker practice before the participants left the point to pack up, An enjoyable and very useful day!

Simon and Chris.