Join SailCoach for an exciting six-day ILCA 4 New Year Clinic at our Valencia SailBase, designed to provide a platform for talented club sailors aged 15 and over who have been active in their national youth sailing circuits or Optimists sailors looking to transition to the ILCA Class.

What’s involved

The clinic is designed to help improve boat preparation with the most recent developments in the class, sail settings, and advanced boat handling skills, including roll-tacking, roll-gybing, and mark roundings. The ILCA 4 New Year Clinic will look hard at developing upwind and downwind speed with extensive video analysis.

At SailCoach, we have a strong belief in the multi-national training concept, which we pioneered many years ago. As a result, this intensive one-week training program offers sailors the chance to challenge themselves against competitors from various countries. Additionally, it provides young sailors with a unique opportunity to receive coaching from highly experienced ILCA dinghy coaches, some of whom have been part of the Team SailCoach squad at multiple Olympic events.

The clinic’s daily schedule will combine classroom lessons with on the water exercises offering healthy competition and is followed up with a debrief of tactical and strategy situations. Sailors will receive individual attention both on the water and with video analysis.

A typical day

Depending on the weather conditions, the day will start with a physical training warm-up session, sometimes before breakfast and sometimes after. These physical training sessions will be conducted by our in-house fitness coaches, with care being taken that the exercises are suitable for that age group and to ensure the safety of the sailors taking part in the sessions. This will be followed by a briefing on what the coach plans for the days sailing sessions, pointing out the areas where the coach intends to focus, taking into consideration the prevailing weather conditions.

After lunch, there will be a debrief on the morning session, followed by a briefing for the afternoon session. Depending on the venue and the weather forecast, the coach may decide to run one longer session instead of two shorter sessions.

The fitness coach will take control of the group again after sailing, running a cool down session which sometimes involves an ice bath or a swim. Again, depending on the venue, there will be a debrief on the days activities either before or after dinner. There will be some time set aside in the evening to relax before bed… the next day, it starts all over again!

SailCoach hopes you’ll be as excited as we are about this ILCA 4 New Year Clinic. You will meet people from around the world who, like you, are “mad about sailing” and will become life-long friends in our sport.

Program:

27th December 2025: (arrival day)

Arrive into Valencia Airport (VLC) between 08:00 hrs and 22:00 hrs and be met by one of SailCoach’s friendly staff. They will take you to the Club Nautical Valencia, the venue for this ILCA 4 New Year Clinic.

28th December 2025 to 2nd January 2026:

The ILCA 4 New Year Clinic daily schedule will start each morning with a group briefing at 10:00hrs in the Valencia SailBase and finish at 17:30hrs.

3rd January 2026: (departure day)

SailCoach staff will drop you off at Valencia Airport between 08:00 hrs and 22:00 hrs for your journey home after some quality training.