Full disclosure: I had definitely not conjured up images of floating leisurely across the water with Christopher Cross serenading melodiously in the background as I sat to chat with a pair of young students at the Sudbury Yacht Club sailing school recently.

This, however, is a lot more work than I envisioned.

To hear the likes of Liam McMahon and Braunze Dodge explain it, I might have an easier time understanding how to split the atom.

"As a crew, you work the jibe and balance it out," said McMahon, a grade 7 student at St Benedict who has sailed before with his father, but never previously on his own or with other youngsters.

"If there are only two of us, when you are on starboard tack, you have to unclip your sail and then pull it on the other side. It's not that difficult, but you do have to pay attention."

"You have to know your points of sail and where the wind is coming from, your gusts and your lulls," added the 11 year-old skipper.

"I've definitely gotten a lot better at the whole "steering the boat" thing," said Dodge, who now resides in Lindsay but was up visiting family, mixing in a chance to follow in the sailing footsteps of older sister Emily, a regular at the club before the family moved south.

"Emily told me that we would be doing the knots - and she taught me a few," added Dodge, who was attending the week-long camp along with his younger sister, Talia. "I had already known a few knots from prior things like Boy Scouts and stuff like that."

Making use of the C420s for most of the week, the students generally found themselves either two or three to a boat. "I'm usually on a boat with two other people," said Dodge, who also served mostly as skipper.

"With the crew, it's really just one position (or role), but you need two people to do it. You can have one person doing it, but it's easier with two."

Though the ability of the two pre-teens to discuss all sorts of aspects of craft navigation is impressive, there is no denying that they have only just begun to scratch the surface, that there will be plenty of learning to be done in the years to come.

"The hardest thing for me to learn at the sailing school was rigging - and learning how to not capsize the boat every five seconds," McMahon exclaimed with a smile. Part of that, he explained, is boat specific.

"The optis (optimist) are really hard to capsize - but with the 420's, if you catch a gust of wind and you're not prepared for it, if you have your sails all the way in, you're going over. I've learned now to let out my sails whenever it gets past 30% heel."

Those gusts of wind can be tough to judge out on Ramsey Lake, where consistency is not always a trademark of the conditions you will encounter as a sailor on the inner-city waters.

"The wind has definitely changed a lot throughout our days here," said Dodge. "Sometimes, it will be going one way then all of a sudden, it's going a c ompletely different way. That can make it difficult."

Still, the kids are getting the hang of it. Even navigating those tricky turns requires a good handle of the conditions, something the student sailors are absorbing more and more with every passing day.

"There are two kinds of turning," outlined McMahon. "Up wind, it's called a tack, where you push it away from you, so you duck and push it to the other wide. Downwind, it's called a jibe."

"You have to tighten your sails, pull your tiller towards you, pass your tiller behind you and sit on the other side."

And if you do all of that and somehow find a way to garner a gentle breeze, maybe, just maybe, you can relax, just a little, and enjoy the ride.