When I teach friends how to sail, I tell them it will take two hours to learn how to move the boat across the water and they can spend the rest of their life learning to sail. Draft depth, draft position, twist and angle of attack are too advanced for a "newbie"; rather a person needs to get a lot of basic stuff out of the way and get some experience under their belt before getting into all the sail controls. Some of my friends have learned very well the first time, only to seem completely flummoxed on their second sail and that's because it just takes repeated lessons for the initial learning to sink in. Clogging up their heads with outhaul, jib car position, halyard tension, etc. won't do them any good because they are usually busy thinking about which way the wind is blowing as opposed to whether their sail is getting maximum lift.
Once they start to make sound decisions about angle of attack and demonstrate that they can keep the sails sufficiently trimmed with just the sheets, I move on to other things. I start with the things one does to deal with increased wind strength, which on my boat is the cunningham. As we play with that, I explain the effects on the sail (which is easy to see). And so on, with each of the (minimal) sail controls on my boat being employed and explained in an applied manner. This, I believe, is a teaching method that keeps them from getting overloaded. Sailing is easy, but excellent sailing and controlling a boat in growing winds is much harder. My biggest worry is that my friends will come away believing the learning curve is too steep.
I'm new to sailing, so everything could use a lesson of one kind or another.
