DARIEN --
Brigette Croke, 10, is years from getting her driver's license and the independence that comes with it, but she knows the driver's seat of a sailboat and the feel of the open sea.
"I love just being on the water," said Brigette, who lives in Pound Ridge, N.Y. "That's where I'm used to being."
Controlling the sail and rudder of her Optimist Class Dinghy racing boat, Croke tacked and jibed her way around Long Island Sound yesterday with about 80 girls, ages 9 to 15, looking to improve their sailing skills at the Noroton Yacht Club Optimist Dinghy Racing Clinic for Girls.
The clinic was started six years ago by John Hammel, a club member who wanted to give girls a chance to gain confidence and improve skills for sailboat racing, a sport traditionally dominated by boys. Clinic organizers hope it will help develop a broader base of American female sailors who compete.
"This is one sport where boys don't have a physical advantage. But at a younger age, boys are more aggressive," said Michael Rudnick of Darien, an organizer. "In a regatta, no one needs to bark to win. They just need to be confident."
Bob Monro, the event chairman, invited five prominent sailors to coach the girls, including Hammel's daughter, Leigh Hammel, 17, who grew up in Darien.
Last month, Leigh and her sailing partner, Rebecca Dellenbaugh, 18, of Easton, another clinic coach, won the U.S. Sailing Double-handed Youth Championship in Detroit. It was the second time in 34 years that a female team won the event.
Leigh, who will attend Stanford University in the fall and race on that team, said that when she started sailing competitively, few sailors were female. But she said she learned that many girls were interested in the sport.
"Before I was sailing on a crew with boys and it wasn't the same," she said. "I've done better and enjoyed myself more with girls."
Amanda Clark, 24, who is training for a 2008 Olympic bid, was head coach for the two-day clinic that started yesterday and ends with a regatta today.
Clark said she remembers regattas with 80 fleets and three girls competing.
"To see such a strong turnout is awesome," said Clark, who lives in Shelter Island, N.Y. "Hopefully, they leave here with something new to think about."
Clark, who started sailing solo at 7, said sailing opens doors to travel. She said she has been to 40 countries and made friends throughout the world, and has gained an understanding of the environment and engineering.
"You learn so much outside of sailing," Clark said. "I know how to read winds and currents. To get in a boat and do a tack is an amazing feet of understanding and coordination. There is a lot of multitasking."
Young sailors start with Optimists, single-crew dinghies about 7 feet long and 4 feet wide, because of their simplicity as well as their small size and weight. The girls at yesterday's clinic -- many of whom said they started sailing with their parents at 3 -- started skippering boats at 8.
Clark coached seven advanced sailors, all about 12 years old, in a stop-and-go drill. Not more than an hour into it, the girls, each in her own boat, tacked and jibed with finesse as they followed each other single-file, like ducklings following their mother in the water.
