2015, it looked as if the Olympia High School Sailing Team was history. Its numbers had dwindled to three active team members, and if that wasn’t enough, its longtime volunteer coach had recently passed away.

Orion Bird, a sailor in the program of that era, recalls, “It really felt like the program was on the verge of dying.” Enter Sarah Hanavan, recently out of collegiate sailing at Western Washington University. She had moved to Olympia, Washington, and started volunteering with the team in the spring of 2015. That coming summer, she had planned to travel.

“Before I left, one of the three team members, Elena Gonick, a junior, invited me to coffee,” Hanavan says. “She told me she had watched kids from other teams who, at the start, were just as good as her, get better. She was frustrated that she had not. And she knew largely why. She said, ‘We’ve had this revolving door of coaches, and I am afraid you’re going to leave, just like the other coaches.’ The fact that she expected I wouldn’t be back for the fall season really pulled at my heartstrings.”

So, before Hanavan left, she got the parents of the three students involved. “I gave them sort of a road map—here’s what you need to do to make the program more viable, because I wasn’t interested in being a perpetual volunteer.”

From there, it went to a committee at the Olympia YC, which had been hosting and supporting the program. And then came a momentous decision. Rather than simply pulling the plug, the yacht club, which at the time was housing the program and managing it, followed Hanavan’s advice and went high-risk, high-reward, shocking the program back to life by creating a full-time paid coaching position that they offered to her when she returned that fall.

To say the club made the right move would be a dramatic understatement. In only five years, the Olympia race team numbers, which include Opti sailors, Laser sailors and the high school team, skyrocketed to 70.

The high school team, which now has around 45 team members, has won the Pacific Northwest district fleet championship three times, the district championship twice, and qualified for the Interscholastic Sailing Association national championships five years in a row. While not a powerhouse on the national level, they have had success there, breaking into the top 10 twice. But their real success is “off the field,” and the Olympia program has become a model for success at the high school sailing level by a metric other than just stellar regatta results.

Given that history, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect as I climbed the exterior steps to the main room at Olympia YC. An office to one side with “Olympia Community Sailing Executive Director” stenciled on the door? Perhaps a sign pointing to another building that housed the organization? The door was locked, but I knocked, and a kindly, older woman opened the door a bit and inquired as to what I wanted.

“I’m looking for Sarah.”

“Oh,” she said, opening the door all the way. “She’s over there,” pointing toward two women on the far side of the room. They were at a single round table. One, Hanavan, was seated and on her cellphone, while the other, Niki Alden, the program’s director of education and outreach, was standing to one side. While I waited for her to finish her call, I introduced myself to Alden.

“The whole northwest district seems to come to Sarah for advice,” she said, nodding toward Hanavan, who acknowledges my arrival with a fleeting smile. “We’ll say, ‘We’ve really got to plan the regatta,’ or something like that, and then she’ll get a call from another coach. She eventually hangs up, we start to work, and five minutes later, a different coach calls.”

It’s clear why. Watching her work with kids from seventh grade up through seniors is like watching a master class in teaching. Example: It’s JV practice day. In the ­boathouse—a small, nondescript, single-car garage-size floating building at the junction of a couple of the Olympia YC docks—a sophomore girl approaches her and with little hesitation says, “I’d really like to skipper in the team race this weekend.”

I can see the wheels grinding in Hanavan’s head, and without even knowing the young sailor and seeing Hanavan’s pause, I’m guessing this will be a big reach for the girl. But rather than flat-out telling her, “No, you don’t have enough experience,” she briefly explains how team racing is quite different from fleet racing and then asks, “Do you think it might be better to skipper some more fleet races first?”

With no disappointment, the girl smiles, nods her head and says: “OK. That makes sense. I’ll do that.”

Everyone is happy. Class dismissed.

More JV sailors arrive, and they are ­changing and rigging their boats at a glacial pace. Rudders are casually removed from their racks and carried over to the boats, then a return trip for the sails. A few are engaged in conversation, and only a couple are actively gearing up for today’s practice. None of it escapes Hanavan’s watchful eyes.

“The varsity does this in about 12 minutes,” she quietly tells me in a tone teetering between embarrassment and frustration. It gets dark early in October. Practice time is burning. Finally, she’s had enough and calls the team together in the boathouse. “I know we need to get out on the water, but we have something more important to talk about,” she says. “Why is it taking so long to change and rig the boats?”

Cue a pregnant pause. Then, “What do you think we should do?”

Note: “We,” not “you.”

Hands quickly go up, and ideas are offered. One suggests they need a greater sense of urgency. Clearly, the strongest answer, and she jumps right on it. “What would a greater sense of urgency mean?” And a discussion ensues until everyone appears to be on the same page.

It’s all part of what junior Liam O’Connell says is their team DNA. “What Sarah preaches is that every year is like a new cell in the body, yet the body is the same because we always pass down this mantra of being a team, not a bunch of ­individuals. We’re all in this together.”

That idea is instilled in the first week of practice. “We don’t sail for the first four or five days of the season,” Hanavan tells me. “We spend those days working on the boats, cleaning, repairing sails, etc. They’re taking care of the boats, even if it’s beautifully sunny and there’s a great wind. Sometimes, they get a little frustrated doing that, but it’s teaching them about ownership of equipment, taking care of the things they use every day that they don’t personally own.”

This sense of ownership is long-term. At regattas, teams bring their own boats, and with a round-robin format, each team ends up sailing other teams’ boats. “As the boats come into the dock for rotation, you always see the Olympia kids rushing down the docks ahead of everyone else to catch the boats,” Alden says. “They want to be sure nothing happens to them.”

OK, the boats are ready. Is it time to get on the water yet? Not quite.

“We then spend a couple of days setting goals and values as a team,” Hanavan says. “Kids break into small groups and talk about what’s important as student athletes and teammates, and what would benefit the team. Then we come together as a complete group, which the coaches facilitate, and do the same thing.”

Out of this often comes a poster that is typically hung in the boathouse, summarizing their conclusions. “It takes on different forms from year to year,” she explains, but the basic themes are similar: time management; respect for oneself, competitors, parents and coaches; how do we treat teammates from different backgrounds; and, since it’s a coed sport, how do we respect female competitors?

“Then we have a template we can point to for the rest of the season, saying these are your values, this is what you told us. It’s our job to facilitate and provide the consistency to enable them to live by those values. It’s always a really powerful conversation to have with either a team or individual. You end up saying: ‘It doesn’t really seem like we’re adhering to our values here. What’s going on?’ It’s a situation where they created the values themselves, now they have to own it.”

The Olympia YC program operates four to five high school teams that practice together. The largest numbers come from Olympia HS, which has over 20 members, and Capitol HS, which are the two closest schools. Three or four other schools ­participate, but with only a few sailors. However, in terms of programming, they’re all part of the same squad. And that’s encouraged in the Northwest.

“The national high school sailing organization allows regions to set up their own systems to promote growth,” Hanavan explains. “There are regions where you must have a full roster from any one school to compete, but here, we have lower-key, nonranking events for kids, which allows kids from different schools to sail on the same team.”

Without that, those from smaller schools who can’t field complete teams wouldn’t be able to compete. And everyone seems to be out there wanting to do just that. As I hang out in the coach boat with Hanavan, who is working with the JV team, a group of Laser sailors are also practicing, as are some beginning Opti sailors under Alden’s tutelage—not officially part of the team but clearly destined for that a few years down the road.

Yet what stands out about the Olympia sailing team is how they view competition. “We did a survey of our sailors a while back, and do you know what the No. 1 reason they gave for being on the team?” Hanavan asks. “The car rides, traveling to and from regattas, hanging out with friends between races (a product of the boat-­rotation ­format), which allows them to socialize a lot more than being on the water all day. Kids don’t care so much about sailing a fast boat. What they care about is the camaraderie, the friendships. We have kids who do the 420 or Laser Nationals, but they all come back to high school sailing. They crave that traditional high school experience.”

She’s right. In speaking to a handful of team members, both JV and varsity, about what draws them to the team and what keeps them coming back, competition is only mentioned when I prompt them about it. Varsity sailor Sophia Hubbard is a junior who has been sailing since around age 9. She says: “Sarah has focused more on the relationships and people in the boat, rather than going out and trying to win. If winning is a side effect, that’s fine.”

North Berebitsky, a freshman on the JV team, says: “When I started sailing, which was just this season, I thought I had to do my best to get a high place—that was the goal. Now I know it’s more about the experience.”

Alyssa Leong agrees. “When I went to my first regatta, I quickly realized that I’m not there to win. I’m there to be with my team.”

And that’s led to a close-knit group of sailors—friends, really. O’Connell, who is one of the team captains, says, “The reason I keep coming back here season after season is it just feels like another family.”

“I think our program is doing something similar to a lot of other programs,” Hanavan says, “but that’s not what makes the headlines. It’s race results and performance in big events in complicated classes, not having a robust, 70-kid high school program. You don’t make headlines just because you have a bunch of happy high schoolers, many from families who have never sailed. It’s kind of like this sleeper entity that’s happening and growing. Where else can you bring kids with diverse social, economic and racial backgrounds into our sport?”

Like most community sailing programs, Olympia maintains a strong scholarship program, providing support to families who find the $400 cost for a two-month racing period out of reach. “I was one of those kids who couldn’t fully afford the cost of sailing while in middle school,” Orion Bird says, “but I was fortunate enough to get a scholarship that allowed me to sail and afford the gear you need to sail.”

Now, several years out of high school, Bird is on the docks during my visit, coaching the beginning Opti sailors. If sailing programs exist to create lifelong sailors, he’s the poster child.

“I’m not going to lie—I’m an extremely ­competitive person,” Hanavan says. “Winning is a component of what we want to happen, but it’s a byproduct. It’s a good byproduct. It’s not that we don’t want to be competitive or produce athletes who can win and go to championships. But at the end of the day, that’s not as important as them being quality people. If we had to pick one or the other, we’d always pick quality people first. If ­winning is a product of that, great.”

So, how do you do both? “I’ve been a part of programs that fixate so much on exposure and experiences, there’s no structure for pursuing that grand goal of competitive success, and I see kids lose interest. Competition can provide you with that if you do it in a good way. As a coach, I can say that our success as a team has been every championship won, regionally. I’ll never forget those, and going to nationals has been wonderful, and as a coach, you feel ­accomplished. But the best moments I’ve ever had as a coach are going to lunch with kids who graduated and hearing about their adult lives and how happy and well-adjusted they are. That feels better than any trophy our team has won. As a coach, I can genuinely tell the team, ‘I don’t care about you guys winning. That’s great and awesome, and let’s pursue that, but I’d rather just meet up with you when you’re 21 years old and talk about your life and how you’re a happy person, rather than someone who is so fixated on winning that they’re burnt out.”

Such an approach is no doubt part of the reason why the Olympia race program is where it is today. The program has grown large enough that, recently, the host Olympia YC has reluctantly had to cap the amount of space available to the team. And as part of that growth, the Olympia Community High School program became a 501(c)(3) three years ago, taking the management weight off the shoulders of the yacht club.

And while the club’s facilities have space limitations, the program has access to a second site on the other side of a nearby peninsula and often sails Lasers out of there. But the real long-term solution, as with any community sailing center, is to find a chunk of land and build its own facility. In the coach boat with Hanavan, watching the varsity team practice on my final day there, she points across the bay to an unused piece of property with dilapidated buildings on it, about a half-mile away. “I’d love to find a way to get that piece of land,” she says, “but that means a lot of time and some generous benefactors, both of which are in short supply.”

Since the real priority is water access, which they have, that white plastic table in the Olympia YC clubhouse will have to suffice for now. With the continuity of a coach who’s been entrenched for eight years, and a program that seems to have struck the perfect balance between competition and social interaction, they’re in a fine place. And that sailor who helped convince Hanavan to stay, Elena Gonick? She went on to sail at Tufts and graduated in 2020. Just one of a number of Olympia sailing ­success stories to come.

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The future was looking grim for Whidbey Island Race Week. The annual July invasion of the quiet confines of the Washington island’s Oak Harbor and Penn Cove was waning. What once decades ago numbered 150 boats petered to 60-something. Small boats couldn’t get launched because the city wouldn’t fix the crane. Bigger boats couldn’t get into the marina because the channel wasn’t dredged. National ­sponsors took a pass.

It appeared the wind-delay water fights, shoreside volleyball and golf tournaments, epic bowling nights and bacon-offs in the campground would evaporate, as so many race weeks have around the country.

But the soggy sailors of the Salish Sea had pulled the “Adult Summer Camp” from the jaws of death before and weren’t ready to give up on it now. Race Week owner Schelleen Rathkopf and her advisory board decided a move to Point Roberts in 2020 could spark a revival.

Point where? Roberts.

“I’ve sailed here 30 years,” says longtime Whidbey participant Charlie Macaulay, “but I’ve actually never been to Point Roberts.” He plans to sail next year.

The name doesn’t exactly ring a bell on the Pacific Northwest sailing scene, but it might well be the right place at the right time. The racing community knew a move away from Oak Harbor was coming, but conventional thought had it going to Anacortes or Port Townsend, already popular ­racing and cruising destinations.

The Point Roberts “surprise” is actually a very fitting move. The town is craving more visitors and an enthusiastic community is eager to make it work. In fact, it’s much like Whidbey Island Race Week’s beginnings. When boat dealer and chamber of commerce vice chairman Stan Stanley started his race week in 1983, it was largely to generate excitement and commerce for the then little-known port of Oak Harbor. It generated that business for decades.

Point Roberts is anticipating a similar boost. While it doesn’t have the infrastructure of a naval-air-station town such as Oak Harbor, it does have beautiful campgrounds and Airbnbs.

And there’s already an away-from-it-all resort feel with parks everywhere and beaches galore. The famous race-week camping community will have several options.

On the sailing aspect, Point Roberts has many key ­ingredients to be a successful host. It has plenty of racing room for several round-the-buoys circles and options for longer-leg, cruising-class courses. Racing can be set up immediately outside the harbor, opening up the possibility for dinghy racing. The harbor is deep enough for TP52s and there is a 35-ton Marine Travelift and a 3,000-pound hoist.

The small port town is uniquely situated on the land south of the 49th Parallel on the tip of the (Canadian) Tsawwassen Peninsula, so one is either getting there by water from the United States or crossing a border. For sailors coming from the States that actually means two borders, getting into Canada, then crossing back into the United States. Organizers have anticipated difficulties arising from U.S. sailors with DUIs on their records not being able to get into Canada; the solution is a 15-minute ferry ride from Blaine to Point Roberts with no border crossings.

Point Roberts presents a very different delivery from the various other sailing centers in the region. While Oak Harbor was a one-day delivery for Seattle boats, the 91-mile delivery to Point Roberts would take two days or a really long day for a big boat. On the other hand, Point Roberts is about 20 miles from Vancouver. It’s an easy delivery from Anacortes, Bellingham and Victoria.

Racers might also use Point Roberts as a starting point for a cruise after race week. The renowned cruising grounds of the Gulf Islands and Strait of Georgia beckon, and returning south through the San Juan Islands could be a fine cruise in itself.

One thing that will have to be confronted head-on will be the handicapping issue. While the Pacific Northwest is one of the original PHRF strongholds, for several decades now there’s been a parting of the ways between PHRF-Northwest—mainly in the States—and PHRF-BC in Canada, and there can be small but significant differences in handicaps and a lack of cooperation between the two. PHRF handicapper Matt Wood anticipates that “good faith between both organizations” will make it work. History, however, suggests otherwise. There’s a growing big-boat fleet, and it’s anticipated that ORC will have to be offered to attract the several TP52s that now call the Northwest home. And, of course, one-design fleets such as the J/105s and Melges 24s have often used Race Week for their class events.

The Adult Summer Camp has cheated death already. Stan Stanley found the original sponsor with Yachting Magazine, so not only did Whidbey Island Race Week have money, but it had media exposure as well. Then came 1994, the year bean counters at Ziff-Davis decided Whidbey Island Race Week was just not making enough money for them and withdrew their support four months before the event. J/Boats dealer Bob Ross came to the rescue with help from regional sponsors such as Fisheries Supply.

One appeal of Point Roberts is it’s not Whidbey Island. After 37 years, the arena-type racing waters of Penn Cove was old hat for veterans. There was the reverse-toilet-bowl ­current and the lifts off the beach. Been there, done that. Because nobody has raced around Point Roberts, the newness of the challenge might be enough to attract some serious racers. And there are plans for serious dinghy racing, which could ­certainly broaden its appeal.

On the social side of things, Rathkopf has aggressively changed Whidbey Race Week from its raucous-all-the-time reputation to a more family-­oriented event with a sailing camp and special activities for kids, which will continue with Point Roberts Race Week.

Over the years, the fleets shrank, harbors became shallower and hoists broke down; while Stanley and other Oak Harbor sailors shake their heads a bit about the move and Northwest sailors try to wrap their heads around new currents to learn, Rathkopf is taking a very positive outlook.

“Point Roberts is the perfect venue,” she says with the conviction of an organizer. Now it’s up to the sailors to find out exactly where it is on the chart and how to get there.

The post Adult Summer Camp’s New Home appeared first on Sailing World.

It would be hard to find a more anachronistic racing boat than a San Francisco Bay Pelican. Its short rig, 12-foot pram hull and hefty 600-pound weight don’t exactly lend themselves to heart-pounding foiling into a jibe mark. Like the bird, the Pelican looks a bit “different.” And, like the bird, it suits its environment just fine.

And for Fleet 3 in the Pacific Northwest, different is perfect. In this small fleet (around 10 active boats) the main event is usually the potluck. Wherever the potluck is, they’ll get in some races. Racing, members say, is really secondary to eating and socializing. The racing season is fall, winter and spring when there’s more predictable winds. Summers, after all, are for cruising.

The Pelican was designed by Californian Bill Short in 1959, to be easily built from sheets of plywood and sailed by a family on a budget. It was supposed to fill several roles; cruiser, racer, daysailer, fishing boat and even a yacht tender.

At the time, Fred Smith, of Samish, Washington, bought some pram plans for 25 cents and built one for his own use. It caught some neighbors’ eyes and they started lining up for one of their own, and voile, Smith and his brother Don had burgeoning careers. Then came along Bill Short’s design, Smith built hull No. 38, and it wasn’t long before Smith was building them and selling them all over. One went to Norway and 17 to a reservoir in Oklahoma.

Local families took an immediate interest. Here was a boat that was easily trailered, launched and rigged. The lug rig is an important feature. It makes it easy to step the mast, a big plus for smaller or older crews rigging at the ramp. While only 12 feet long, the Pelican is roomy and stable with high freeboard. A large rudder makes it maneuverable. But it’s not fast. As every sailor knows, if it’s one-design, it’s game on at any speed.

Don Smith was usually the race committee, and Fred was usually skippering one of the boats. It was like a builder-supported one-design class on a much small, more human scale. “It was more an eating thing than a sailing thing,” Smith admits. That said, there were and are fleet championships and everyone’s definitely keeping score. The fleet championships are done in a round-robin format trading boats between races so nobody had a big advantage.

The Pacific Northwest is blessed with countless places for Pelican racing. It could be Holmes Harbor on Whidbey Island or Gig Harbor on the Kitsap Peninsula. These are saltwater venues are protected with verdant shores and amazing wildlife that may even include whales. Freshwater venues include Lake Sammamish, Lake Union in downtown Seattle, Lake Washington, Lake Ballinger and Cranberry Lake. Over the last 50 years it would be safe to say they’ve launched and raced in scores of both freshwater and saltwater venues, and eaten salmon in dozens of backyards.

There were more distant regattas as well. Terry Gosse, who grew up racing Pelicans with her father, mother and brother, remembers well some regattas at Whiskeytown Lake in Redding, California. There’d be 20 or so local boats and about five from Seattle. According to Gosse, a disagreement over the legality of loose-footed mains put an end to Washington sailors traveling the long distance to that regatta.

Pelicans are cruise-able, not just in theory, but in reality. Families would launch, pile into the Pelican with a tent and camp stoves and sail as a group to one of the Northwest’s amazing islands. The requisite potluck would commence! And for the more ambitious, there were cruises up to 10 days or more all the way up to Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. For those drizzly Northwest days and nights, a boom tent could be rigged. Regarding food, “you just needed to bring a shovel,” according to Fred Smith. After all, the Northwest clams, geoducks and crab are great eating.

Here is where Fleet 3 comes into its own. How many classes have a state park beach named after them? Fleet member Robert Kotovic remembers that one of the members knew someone in the State Parks office and Parks decided that since the Pelicans used a certain beach on Cypress Island so often, it might as well be named Pelican Beach. And the fleet responded by building solar-powered composting toilets.

The most memorable gatherings were the Boat Shop Regattas that Fred and Don Smith put on. They’d invite all their El Toro owners (there were more than 1,000) and Pelican owners, and about 50 total would turn up for two days of racing, camping and eating at the Smith’s property. There were also years of memorable fleet championships sailed on Seattle’s little iconic Green Lake. A raft would be anchored in the middle of the lake so boats could be traded easily in the round-robin format. The constant stream of park walkers could actually see sailboat races.

Interestingly, Fleet 3 also has one of the world’s, fastest drivers on the water. Hydroplane racing is huge in the Northwest, and for many years Chip Hanauer was the fastest “pilot.” After retiring, he was looking for a bit more sedate pace and a welcoming community, and found that by slowing down by about 200 mph he found a real home in the Pelican fleet. “What’s cool about the Pelican is it fits in a one-car garage, one guy can hook the trailer, you don’t have to have moorage and you don’t have to have a one ton truck to haul it around,” he says.

Fred Smith has watched the fleet dwindle over the years. “Fifty years ago people were looking for things to do. Not so much now.” But Fleet 3 carries on with no clubhouse but lots of enthusiasm. Today, many of the races are being sailed in coordination the newly formed South Whidbey Yacht Club. Like Fleet 3, it has no clubhouse but does have people committed to camaraderie at the local level.

Gosse, who remains an active racer if not much of a cruiser, explains one of the Pelican’s main appeals, cost. “People think you have to have money to sail. Pelicans are proof you don’t. Fleet dues are $12 per year, a Washington State Park Discover Pass allows you to launch for virtually nothing and you can still race with 15-year-old sails.”

It goes without saying to join the fleet you’ll need a dish to pass for the potluck.

The post Inside the Classes: The Pelican appeared first on Sailing World.

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Visit Sperry Top-Sider Seattle NOOD Headquarters for full results, more videos, and photos from Tim Wilkes.

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Click here to find results, photos, and videos from the 2013 Sperry Top-Sider Seattle NOOD Regatta.

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