4-year-old Cali Felch is getting ready for a special guest on her little sailboat.

“I'm gonna sail my mom,” said Cali.

In the long tradition of the St. Petersburg Sailing Center classes, each graduating student sails a grown-up loved one in their small sailboats—called "optis," or dinghies.

It’s all happening just off the docks of the Sailing Center Demens Landing Park.

Cali and her classmates are maneuvering their boats to different markers, tacking and jibing.

(That's sailing talk for turning. There is also "luffing," when your sail gets all wobbly and billowing like a flag, and that means you need to move the sail to catch the wind.)

Cali is the youngest person in her graduating class. She is doing all this after about a month of lessons.

"Her confidence has grown and her skills and just the focus,” explained instructor Kellie Simpson.

Optis, or dinghies, are what the St. Petersburg Sailing Center uses to train their youngest students in the art of sailing. (Virginia Johnson, staff)

Simpson can tell you all about focus. She was once just like Cali, learning the ropes in this very basin.

“I started sailing out of this summer camp 18 years ago,” she said with a smile.

Now the center’s Summer Camp Director and Sailing Coach, Simpson guides the next generation in the ways of the wind on the water.

She and several other instructors are moving in and out the optis in small motorboats, giving instruction and offering encouragement.

The students are in life vests and have already undergone water safety training.

That training includes how to handle a capsized boat—instructors help students get under the boat into a safe air pocket.

It may sound like a lot to the mind of a non-sailing adult, but Simpson says the children prevail.

“Maybe they are a little nervous on the water, and maybe they don't think they can get it,” said Simpson. “Once it clicks, it's the most magical thing ever.”

For example, when tacking—again, that’s turning in sailboat talk—one must duck one’s head as the sail swings across the boat, and then one must move to the opposite side of the sailboat.

Here is where sailing students run into trouble.

“The boom is what comes across, and the reason it's called a "boom" is if it hits you in the head, it makes a boom noise,” explained Simpson.

This is what happens to Cali—a little bump on the head is a reminder that the sail is attached to the boom.

But within minutes, we get to witness the magical learning moment: at the next tack, as the boom swings across her little boat, Cali remembers to duck and switch sides opposite the sail.

Simpson calls out to Cali the entire time, her voice filled with excitement.

“You did it without hitting your head! How awesome!” she cheers.

Cali doesn’t think it’s unusual for a 4-year-old to know the ins-and-outs of sailing.

After all, she IS practically five.