Using the term “epic” too often makes one a kook. It’s equally uncool to overhype one’s sailing experiences because, let’s face it, there’s always someone who has won more, sailed faster or gone to a cooler place. The summer of 2022, however, was truly epic for Jesse Andrews, the Pied Piper of Hawaii’s Kaneohe Bay, whose followers stormed North America and Europe, and ascended to performance sailing’s world stage. Under Andrews’ direction, these young sailors are charging hard in the Waszp and Olympic iQFoil classes today, and getting serious looks to fill slots on the rosters of youth and women’s America’s Cup development teams.

Kaneohe sailing’s epic and timely ascent into everyone’s collective radar has been a long time coming, but the whole phenomenon was accelerated when the US Sailing Olympic Development Program doubled down on performance youth sailing in 2022. Kaneohe, naturally, was the first proving ground.

Oahu’s sailing teams were chasing ILCA and Club420 medals this past summer too, but most of the kids, whether because of geographic isolation or lack of interest, avoided the traditional path of racing in large Optimist and 420 fleets on the mainland. Instead, they began their careers with O’pen Skiff “Un-Regattas,” and then went on to 29ers and eventually anything with a foil they could get their hands on.

Deconstructing how these junior programs have grown to become a new model for enabling dedicated youth sailing talent despite their ­isolation starts with Andrews, a once-frustrated New England kid who refused to wear shoes and ended up in the Aloha State.

In Beebe Cove, an eel-grass-filled offshoot of Long Island Sound, Andrews enjoyed a traditional sailing upbringing, flipping over horseshoe crabs, and sailing Sunfish and Dyer Dhows. His teen years on the International 420 circuit took him to Europe and Australia, which “was a great experience and lifestyle,” he says. “Having the freedom to drive with other kids. Traveling and having fun is something that should always go hand in hand.”

A few of his teammates went on to Olympic and America’s Cup campaigns after college, and eventually for Andrews, Connecticut lost its appeal.

“I’ve never wanted to wear shoes in my life,” he says. “I was an untraditional kid living a pretty traditional life.” He was also hooked on surfing, and one winter his mother boldly moved him to California. That started to feel right, but then after two years studying and sailing at the University of Rhode Island in the early 1990s, he’d had enough of the cold—for good this time.

He enrolled in the University of Hawaii and found his new tribe on Oahu.

It’s been almost 30 years since his relocation to the land of rainbows. He started coaching the University of Hawaii sailing team after graduating while filling in at Kaneohe YC until becoming its sailing director.

“I’ve been doing the same two jobs for 25 years,” he says.

Today, he faces the same core challenge of his coaching peers: how to introduce kids to sailing and keep them sailing long after they leave the program. If he has a singular philosophy, it is to “do what the kids want.”

“In Australia, New Zealand, Europe, it’s easy to do what makes sense,” Andrews says. “Here there’s so much red tape, but in Hawaii, we listen to the kids. We have a small, great board of trustees, and when the kids asked, we brought in the foiling Waszps.”

Kaneohe YC has long been an outlier to the traditions of mainland American yacht clubs. When the closest national event is a five-hour flight, it’s hard to get excited for or even fund dinghy racing excursions. It’s also hard to hunker down to do mundane tacking drills when there’s surf to be ridden and waves to be jumped.

Ocean sports are “it” in Hawaii, so Andrews has had to be creative with keeping kids excited about sailing. That’s where the O’pens came to save the day, initially. Windfoiling, winging and Waszp sailing developed while Kaneohe’s groms were hitting their teens.

Andrews started “Foiling Fridays’’ in 2021 to keep the kids on the water during the pandemic. “First, it was Waszps and 29ers,” he says. “Then iQFoil and wingfoil all starting at the same time. It’s inclusive. The iQ is a little faster, but if you screw up, everyone’s right on your tail. It’s been a huge hit.”

Partnering with the Hawaii Kai Boat Club, the local kids have had access to 29ers and now a fleet of iQFoil boards, which Andrews says are inexpensive and a fast track to high-­performance ­racing skills. Hawaii Kai sailor CJ Perez is climbing through the International Moth fleet and was one of the first females to join a SailGP team as part of its Women’s Pathway Program.

“We haven’t lost the fundamentals and love of traditional sailing,” Andrews says about the junior sailing program today. “They love all crafts.”

Tapping into watersports stars and new disciplines, Kaneohe hosted a wingfoil clinic with Global Wingsports Tour champion Fiona Wylde. Local superstar and waterman Kai Lenny has even been a guest at the clubs.

Kaneohe’s sailors are now heading to Europe for Waszp and iQFoil tours. “What we were doing [and sharing] on Instagram was all good exposure, and it just exploded,” Andrews says. US Sailing took a keen interest as well and began hosting regional racing camps. “It’s amazing. Now people are coming to us. We’re in the right place, at the right time, with the right venue.”

“The Kaneohe program has a feeling of being ‘loose,’ but it’s really extremely organized,” says Leandro Spina, head of US Sailing’s Olympic Development Program [Editor’s note: Spina has since resigned from his position as head of the ODP]. “We’ve become really good partners. It’s such an iconic sailing venue, and now with the amount of talent in the [iQFoil], it’s ridiculous.”

In 2021, Andrews’ phone started ringing off the hook. The American junior sailing universe wanted what he had. Spina organized the 2022 iQFoil camps, and the US Junior Olympic Sailing Festival that came to Hawaii hosted iQFoil and Wingfoil fleets.

Jesse Andrews’ phone started ringing off the hook. The American junior sailing universe wanted what he had.

Spina says Andrews’ creative training formats and commitment to new classes has inspired him to integrate this approach into his ODP. “It’s what we envision young athletes to do,” he says. “Choose one class but sail everything they can get their hands on.”

When Spina and Andrews met, they quickly started talking about Olympic pathways. Andrews’ tour of European iQFoil events last summer attracted a lot of attention, especially since four Hawaiians qualified for the gold fleet in the iQFoil Youth Open World Championships in Silvaplana, Switzerland. Then came the clinics, plans for an annual performance youth event, and an international regatta. “It happened quickly,” Spina says. “Hawaii is now a new leg on our tour.”

Spina says Kaneohe’s program opened doors to different ways to retain sailors, and using foiling to do so in particular.

“Foiling and these programs are not a replacement; they’re an enhancement,” Spina says. Optimist and 420 participation is still strong. “It creates another path to retain talent. It’s an evolution, more ­opportunities to keep learning. As long as they keep learning, we can retain them.”

The Hawaiian ocean lifestyle, Spina adds, is also something that taps into an enjoyment of learning. “I love to be on the water, and what we’re learning now with the fast evolution of foils is that kids are having fun,” he says. “The boards are light and small. My 11-year-old son went to Hawaii and now wants to surf. There’s no surf in Miami, so now we wingfoil surf, and I’m learning with him.”

Having CJ Perez on the US SailGP team could be enough to affirm the virtues of Kaneohe’s model. The visual of America’s Cup skipper Jimmy Spithill enjoying a wingfoil session is something that draws a direct connection between Andrews’ sailors and the superstar. Perez has made the connection, sought her own path and, with serious ambition, broken into professional sailing.

The grand finale of SailGP’s Inspire Program, with qualification regattas held in many countries, seems to have been designed for Kaneohe sailors. And they didn’t disappoint. Pearl and JP Lattanzi qualified for two American spots in the 2022 final. Early in their careers, the siblings had Andrews as a coach in Oahu and traveled with their parents to O’pen Skiff regattas. They were nicknamed the “Flyin’ Hawaiians.”

Pearl, now finishing her college sailing career as captain of the Salve Regina University sailing team in Newport, Rhode Island, is a top-ranked Waszp sailor and candidate for American Magic’s Women’s America’s Cup team. JP is trying out for the youth team.

“I didn’t grow up sailing college boats,” Pearl says. “The skills have transferred over [in college sailing], and it hasn’t been a hindrance at all. I have a lot of opportunities outside college. I’m not thinking I’m nearing the end of my sailing career like some friends feel. That’s not me right now.”

Pearl, who also sailed with Perez at Hawaii Kai Boat Club, says the lack of big fleets in Hawaii forced her sailing ­diversity. “People like Jesse set us up for fun sailing, keeping us in the newest boats. I was never in a boat I didn’t want to be in.”

The optics of Andrews’ junior sailing approach look, as Spina says, “loose,” and he’s not far off. Andrews’ standard outfit is clashing Hawaiian floral prints and a comically large foam-front trucker’s cap. But this coach is in the College Sailing Hall of Fame, was awarded the Graham Hall Award for outstanding service, and is considered by his peers as one of the best. He has carefully integrated his passion for sailing into a seriously fun and outstanding package that’s now, ironically, a pathway for serious success in sailing.

Pearl says Andrews’ difference is his strength. “Jesse’s not the usual coach,” she says. “He’s so open to learning. In the beginning, we’d just have a big talk after practice. Comparing notes, watching videos online and researching. We were learning together. Now we’re both so knowledgeable about foiling and high-­performance sailing. I wouldn’t have had any of these opportunities without Jesse.”

Andrews has ideas about how to expand junior sailing on Oahu. His sailors are slightly less isolated now that their secret is out. Mainland kids are coming to compete and train on the island. Hawaii Kai Boat Club, however, recently lost its lease and needs a new home, and Kaneohe YC remains too small to grow beyond its footprint.

With racing perceived as the primary ticket to the bigger sailing world, Andrews is wary of focusing too narrowly on competition. Balance, he says, is important. “We can’t take the free sailing out of junior sailing,” he says. “It’s great seeing ex-junior sailors as long-term friends with foiling and current races. They’re not passionate about competing. They love the ocean. They love foiling.”

Sailing and foiling first, ­competition second. That’s epic—an epic shift to the junior sailing paradigm.

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You won’t get better or win races if you tell yourself you suck at sailing. Or life. Or work. Or while advancing the sport to a better place.

This is the wisdom of professional snowboarder Kevin Pearce, the morning’s keynote speaker on the fourth and final day of the 2023 Sailing Leadership Forum. The topic at this particular moment in his talk is about negativity and how it’s a barrier to one’s personal fulfillment.

Pearce speaks with authority because he has battled his own demons of negativity—from the moment his head slammed into the icy transition of a halfpipe built to launch him to the Vancouver Olympics. The horrific accident, and the traumatic brain injury that resulted, halted his gold-medal quest and detoured him on a long but inspirational journey of recovery. “Focus on the positive” is the point he’s hammering home to the forum audience. There are real chemicals in your brain at work when you do. Trust him. He knows the science.

Earlier, Pearce had posed a simple question after he stepped onto the stage: Why would a snowboarder be at a sailing conference? To inspire, of course. That’s what good keynoters do, but the real answer would eventually come when he closes with a few important takeaways: Use your brain for good, personally and professionally. Love what you do. Focus on the positive. Pass along the stoke.

And that’s exactly what’s happening across the sprawling conference center—on the beach, in the breakout rooms, at the cocktail parties, the award ceremonies and the afterhours. For anyone in the business of shaping sailing’s future, the biennial gathering is the place to be. This year, in early February, nearly 600 attendees hunker down and get elbow to elbow doing the good work for every level of the sport. Growing it. Promoting it. And living it. In the next seat are officers of yacht clubs big and small, sailing schools new and old, and community sailing centers growing faster than they can manage or afford. There are young and senior race officials, coaches and instructors shop-talking, recruiting, and doing recon for the next great solution. It’s four days of learning from each other—immersive enough to make your brain hurt, but that’s what the cocktail hours are for.

From the thick fog of a forum week, however, clarity does eventually come once you sit back and take stock of it all. At this forum in particular, there was a real sense of urgency and excitement. Sailing is on fire, and while each of us are immersed in our own little corner of the sport, it’s easy to miss all the hustle that’s happening across our waterfronts.

The sport is not dying. It’s diversifying—rapidly. That’s a positive for the future of wind-powered sports. It’s a great time to be a sailing kid. I admit I used to gripe about modern-day junior sailing. It was jealousy, really, of all the coddled kids with parents toting them and their coaches around the country and abroad. Skiffs, kites, windsurfers, wings and foils—come on, now. That’s not fair. Youth sailors not only have all the fun boats today, but they also have what you and I did not: professionally organized pathways to anywhere a kid wants to go in sailing and beyond.

Making lifelong sailors is the goal, says John Pearce, US Sailing’s youth competition manager, who leads a session at the forum entitled “Youth Racing Pathways.” He makes a darn good case for the ­modern-day performance-racing paths. His flow chart maps out the many ways to progress: Start the kids in Optis or whatever boat you have until they’re 14 or so. Then for the next four years, take them up a notch to the ILCA 6, Nacra 15 or 29er. Those who don’t take to the dinghy pathway can advance to small keelboats and aim for the Sears Cup—the granddaddy of all youth trophies. From age 16 to 20, it’s college sailing or a committed tack to the Olympic on-ramp. And if all goes to the Pathway plan, the end of the road is pro sailing, marine careers, coaching, adult racing, race officials and tomorrow’s leaders.

The flow is not always fixed or perfectly linear, however, and we know only a select few will sail to the tip of the spear. And that’s OK. Pearce’s co-­presenter at the breakout session, Maxwell Plarr, director of sailing at Virginia’s Hampton YC, says he has no interest in fueling directly into the Olympic pipeline. He’s happy to let those eager birds fly from his nest early, but his focus is keeping it fun. Over the past few years, he’s led a few junior-boat experiments with the support of the club’s board of directors, and the results were surprising. 

International 420s? Nah. The kids didn’t go for it. 29ers? Now, that they are into, but it takes a more careful approach to skill development. How about adding a couple of wingfoil setups to the quiver? Oh yes, they did.

“If you don’t have a wing in your program,” Plarr tells forum attendees, “get one.”

Hampton’s youth sailing program is healthy, he says, and it’s producing top-level keelboat kids too, but he’s not doing it alone. He’s constantly leaning on the resources at US Sailing, which he says makes his life a lot easier. He’s got Pearce on speed dial. And that’s cool, says Pearce, because that’s what he’s there for. It’s his, and US Sailing’s, responsibility to support every organization.

How US Sailing attempts to serve so many masters is a complicated story for another day and place. The organization is not perfect, but it’s trying. And it wants all of us to be part of the progress. Membership revenues are a significant source of income that trickles out to the sailing community. Benefactors and corporate partners are essential too. There are many mouths to feed, but if there’s one thing US Sailing want us all to know, it’s that it’s bent on serving everyone, which is, of course, easier said than done.

Of the estimated millions of sailors in America, only a tiny fraction are dues-paying members, and I suspect you and I know many in our own circles who are not members either. Reasons run the gamut, but the most common is: “There’s ­nothing in it for me.”

Be that as it may, those among us who sit on their hands and complain about a lack of available crew, bad race management, unfair ratings, high entry fees and the like have no skin in the game. Kevin Pearce would say: Don’t complain if you don’t belong, and take your negativity elsewhere. It’s not helping.

Belonging goes beyond “what we get” for the $79 individual membership fee. Sure, we get the digital rulebook and partner discounts that will save us the same amount. But it’s not the money that’s important; it’s each of us doing our part to advance the sport to a better place for those who follow. It allows US Sailing to invest in retaining those who walk through the doors of community sailing centers, yacht clubs and sailing schools—organizations that need certified instructors and educational programming. Think of it as a down payment on your future crew pool.

US Sailing is committed to improving the capabilities of the important offshore office too, which was understaffed and underfunded for far too long. Here, Jim Teeters, head of the Offshore Ratings Office, is getting the house back in order. At Teeters’ forum breakout session with Stan Honey—the smartest guy in sailing—they reveal they’re working on a tweak to handicap scoring methodology that Honey is certain will create better races, as well as happier owners and tacticians. Applying modern weather forecasting technology, he says, will make handicap racing “more fair and less complex.”

Like Pearce and his Youth Racing Pathway, Teeters and Honey also have a flow chart to explain this novel concept of a “forecast time correction factor.” With the FTCF, Honey explains, sailors will more accurately know their time allowance before the race starts, so they can make better tactical decisions during the race. The forecast part of the FTCF is done by predicting the wind before the race starts using the highest-possible-­resolution weather file. In essence, a race committee would estimate the course, enter the polar file for each entered boat, route each boat around the course using Expedition software or a web-based application (to be developed), and deliver “time correction factors” to competitors shortly before the race starts. 

This is the sort of stuff we learn at the forum, from two of the most intelligent guys in the handicapping space. They’re committed to achieving a better race outcome for you and me, and I argue that this alone is worth a slice of the membership. We can’t complain about our rating or the quality of the outcome if we don’t invest in the game, and that applies to both skippers and crews. Yes, if you’re on the rail and calling the shots, it’s to your benefit as well.

One might say that four days neck-deep in US Sailing has me gulping the organization’s Kool-Aid, but that’s not the case. All we have to do is sit and listen—with a positive mindset—to the many people out there advancing the sport on our behalf. Sailing is on fire because of them, and it’s on all of us to help fan the flames.

Take, for example, Jessica Koenig, the outgoing executive director of Charleston Community Sailing (South Carolina), who collects the Martin A. Luray Award at the forum’s Community Sailing Awards Luncheon on the final day. Koenig closes the gathering by sharing that she introduced more than 16,000 people to the sport in her time at the sailing center, and “that feels pretty special.”

Charleston Community Sailing is but one of many organizations across the country that rely on US Sailing for support in some way, and I have no doubt Kevin Pearce would agree that they’re all winning because of it. When it comes to shaping the future of our sport, they’re making a positive impact, and they certainly don’t suck.

The post There is an “us” in US Sailing appeared first on Sailing World.

The competition for places onboard the Challenger and Defender yachts is extreme, and, in the past, the pathway has been varied. But for 2024, the game has changed, supported magnificently by the confirmed teams, it is aimed at encouraging the next generation of superstars into the white-hot auditorium of America’s Cup sailing.

In what is expected to be one of the highlights of the 37th America’s Cup, both the Women’s and Youth America’s Cups will be sailed on the America’s Cup racecourse off the Barcelona waterfront during the final stages of the Challenger Selection Series and the opening of America’s Cup Match itself.

Coming into the fold will be the very best female and youth athletes from around the world thrust into prime exposure at the venue and aired to a global broadcast across multiple platforms. The chance to shine, to create a buzz and light the pathway to the future of the America’s Cup itself, has simply never been brighter.

Speaking about the new formats, America’s Cup Event CEO, Grant Dalton enthused, “As we have always intended, the Women’s and Youth America’s Cup events are going to be major draw cards of the 37th America’s Cup, and we want to give them the exposure these athletes and teams deserve. It won’t just be the fans and audience who are watching these events, the teams themselves will be keeping a laser-focus on the emerging talent with an eye towards the make-up of their teams for the 38th America’s Cup.”

And indeed, the initial scheduling shows the Women’s America’s Cup Final Match Race being held on a Race day of the America’s Cup Match itself, guaranteeing prime-time exposure before the expected large crowds along the Barcelona waterfront and across the media platforms and broadcast.

More details of the format are now available with both Women’s and Youth America’s Cup regattas being contested between 12 teams split into two pools of six for an initial fleet race series. The first pool will be comprised of the teams entered and competing in the America’s Cup, the second pool will then be formed by the independent yacht club entries that qualify to enter under the nationality clause of the 37th America’s Cup Protocol.

Both pools will race a series of 6-9 fleet races with the top three teams from each pool progressing to the final series of 3-4 fleet races to decide the top two teams to compete in a single match-race final to determine the overall winners of each event. The variation between fleet and match racing will be a fascinating formula to play out with the very best emerging from the fleet racing to contest the winner-takes-all match race. Legends will be born for sure.

Racing will be in a fleet of six one design AC40s supplied by the America’s Cup teams. Off the water, a shared shore and technical support team will be provided by the organizers to facilitate cost savings and to ensure consistency across the fleet.

For the Youth America’s Cup, the crews can be made up of male, female or mixed crews all of whom are required to be aged 25 and under on the first race of the Match. There shall be no age restriction for the Women’s America’s Cup regatta.

The crew nationality requirements of the 37th America’s Cup Protocol shall apply for both regattas: 100-percdnt of the crew sailing each yacht in each race shall be nationals of the country of the yacht club that the team represents.

However, with a view to growing the sport globally and furthering its appeal to independent yacht club entries, a team may be considered to be from an ‘Emerging Nation’ or be eligible to receive a dispensation from the crew nationality requirements to allow a specific number of approved non-nationals to compete as crew onboard the AC40.

Entry criteria and expressions of interest will open to prospective teams on October 1, 2022, with significant global interest already registered. Teams are beginning to form over the northern hemisphere summer with foiling and high-performance talent being courted and much in demand.

The post Youth And Women’s America’s Cup Regattas Confirmed appeared first on Sailing World.

Successive hurricanes and floods pummeled coastal Texas in the early 2000s, dealing a crippling blow to the many one-design fleets long rooted in the region. Recovery was slow, and while it took the better part of two decades for dinghy and keelboat fleets to flourish once again, youth sailing, particularly at Lakewood, needed more young sailors among its ranks.

Ten years of building a strong youth program led them to ask the very same question posed in yacht clubs across the nation: How do they get those same young sailors back and active? “From a membership perspective, the level of growth wasn’t where we wanted it to be,” says Lakewood’s past commodore Ash Walker.

Younger members, who are building careers and families, want team and match racing as well as social activity, Walker says, but they don’t want—or can’t afford—to own and campaign private boats. It was time for the club to step up and smash those the barriers, which began with an exhaustive three-year evaluation process and led to 12 new RS21 keelboats, commissioned at the club in late February.

The process provides a road map for other clubs with the ­initiative and wherewithal to do the same: They first reached out to progressive peers around the country to determine what type of programming was working best. Then came the boat: J/22s were attractive, Walker says, because it was the dominant fleet in the area already, but trying to find a dozen of them was problematic. “We wanted boats to be virtually identical for the racing we wanted to do,” Walker says. “We then talked about the J/70, and looked at it pretty hard, but cost and boat draft was a factor there. They looked at Sonars, but again, sourcing a matched set was a concern. Then came the arrival of the RS21, from English builder RS Sailing. As a sporty new and unproven design, Walker and his committee, which included local RS dealer and club member Mark McNamara, owner of KO Sailing, found that the 21-footer was an even tougher sell to those with the purse strings.

Cost was a big concern, but the club had recently sold real estate it owned, an off-site facility with declining use by the club membership. “We had the good fortune to sell that property and reinvest for the good of the club,” Walker says. They also partnered with a local sailing foundation, Bay Access, which “gave us some flexibility and an additional source of capital to help offset the costs.”

“I was keen on the RS21 from the beginning,” McNamara says. “RS really thinks through their boats. Early on, I tied in the factory with the club’s decision-makers to ensure it was a partnership, that RS understands our goals.” As fleet manager, McNamara’s KO Sailing now oversees the concierge service. “The goal is to remove every barrier to get members out on the boats, and then back on land and straight into the club bar or restaurant,” he says.

Walker, McNamara and a small Texan entourage chartered an RS21 for one regatta in 2019 (“We had a great time,” they say, with a chuckle, when pressed on their results) and confirmed that it “hit all the buttons,” Walker says. “It’s a new, good-looking boat, and can be used for adult learn-to-sail classes, twilight club racing, as well as youth and match racing. It’s very versatile and very stable. Being able to sail in both Clear Lake and Galveston Bay 12 months out of the year, we’re happy with the choice. Costwise it’s a great fit.”

Plus, the members are now jazzed with the sight of a dozen of them, now sitting in lifts, adorned with colorful decals and bow numbers.

When the first container arrived at Lakewood’s facilities on Clear Lake, a handful of members rolled up their sleeves to help assemble—screwing on cleats, stepping rigs and slotting keels. “You can only imagine what it takes to organize a fleet like this, and the headaches we ran into were very, very small,” McNamara says, lauding RS for its help—including one of the company’s principles flying in from England to help assemble the boats.

RELATED: The Young and the Talented

“Looking back, it was important to have a lot of communication with the members, to sell them on the idea that this is the future,” Walker says. “Selling them on the idea of buying 12 sailboats was a challenge, but when we showed that it would bring in new members, they jumped on the wagon.”

When the board approved the plan, and the funding in late 2019, membership jumped immediately—”double digits,” Walker says. “Including younger family members and a couple of well‑known ­sailors who sold their J/22s.”

To facilitate management of the fleet and member usage, Lakewood also retained KO Sailing, which built an online reservation system. Every member who wants to charter is vetted, and those in need of remedial skills go to a coaching session with the club’s waterfront director, Terry Flynn. A custom microsite for Lakewood allows them to register for weeknight local races and day sails. “People show up, and the boat is on the dock ready to go,” McNamara says. “It’s a very simple process.”

Where there was once not a single club-owned fleet on Galveston Bay, Lakewood’s lead might quickly change that, says Walker, who hopes other nearby clubs follow suit because, as ­everyone knows, Texans only go big.

The post Lakewood’s Reboot appeared first on Sailing World.

“Transformational” is only a word—unless it sticks. Tom Siebel wouldn’t aim lower. He’s had a great run in tech, lately in artificial intelligence, and he’s out to make a difference. Typical of tech-sector folks, Siebel is fond of another word: disruption. Here’s a guy who has sailed all his life, raced MOD70 trimarans, campaigned a J Class yacht, raced whatever because “sailing is magical,” and now, in partnership with US Sailing, he’s launched a nationwide initiative funding quality boats and quality coaching for community sailing venues: the Siebel Sailors Program. Two more words—opportunity and ­diversity—are also in play. Familiar words. Some people hear them too often, to no effect. What we haven’t seen before is what is on tap now—well-funded levels of resource and support. Maybe, just maybe, this has legs.

As skies warm and the ­season kicks off, there will be networks operating around five regional centers, including the Columbia Sailing School in Chicago and DC Sail in Washington, D.C. Two more are in the lineup, South-Central Florida and the Pacific Northwest. The Siebel Sailors Program soft-launched this past fall on San Francisco Bay, where three fleets of new RS Fevas took to the water, and young Anna Novolt, drying off from her first sail, was inspired to declare, “I don’t know when I’ve been more excited about a boat.”

And for once, the boat is key—but there’s much, much more.

Twenty-one years ago, Carisa Harris Adamson founded the Treasure Island Sailing Center, where she and Siebel recently presided over the ceremonial launch of the Siebel Sailors Program. Adamson has nurtured her baby against long odds. In welcoming Siebel as a bolt from heaven, she noted that community sailing efforts “have done the job of growing the base, but we have difficulties keeping kids.” In particular, programs lose tweens when they outgrow their singlehanded trainers and perhaps have the skills for a big-kid boat, but they’re too scrawny to right the boat from a capsize. Then they ­struggle, or disappear. Not only in ­community sailing.

The junior program at my yacht club, St. Francis, has stumbled over this for years. And I’m careful in what I’m about to say, because the longer someone has been in youth sailing, the more likely they are to growl if you suggest a new type of boat. But the Feva—a doublehander with an asymmetric spinnaker for apparent-wind sailing—is going to matter. Scrawny kids can right it from capsize. If that was their only special quality, it would be enough, but Fevas are also a fast, 21st-century answer to how to hold a kid’s attention. Fevas are already big in Europe and growing in the United States. Siebel is taking them national, targeting that vulnerable middle school age, and I’m a believer. More on the boats later.

The Siebel ­program ­developed through brainstorming with leadership at US Sailing. How can it make a difference? Today, the manager for the national initiative is Blair Overman, and coming from a community sailing background herself, she says: “It’s not as though Siebel Sailors will be teaching anything drastically different. Rather, we’re intentionally hiring high-level people to work with kids who may not have had high-level teachers before. Beginners at sailing centers sometimes get the least of the instructors, but our beginners are going to get the best.” Think less chalk talk and more engagement; some coaching to win but a lot of adventure sailing.

“Each region is different,” Overman says. “They have different paths, but the goals are the same: to appeal to more kids, and more kinds of kids, and to keep them coming back and to connect with their families. That won’t come easily. There’s no formula. We’re attuned to training instructors in how to interact with people who are different from them. This is not just about sailing. It’s about recognizing that a kid who shows up lethargic and cranky maybe hasn’t had a meal all day, and until that kid is fueled up, there’s no use trying to teach.”

Situations of that sort are sure to arise, because one of the conditions for a program to be accepted is a promise that at least 50 percent of participants will come from disadvantaged neighborhoods. “Stacey and I invest in new things,” Siebel says. “We don’t give to the opera. We try to create, so what we’re doing in creating the Siebel Sailors Program is consistent with the giving we’ve done before.”

For example: A Siebel-funded campaign educating adolescents about the ugly realities of methamphetamine use ran in eight states and dramatically reduced methamphetamine usage. “It wasn’t about scaring kids straight,” Siebel says. “It was about teaching the consequences of meth as a consumer product, what it does to your body, your life, your looks. Methamphetamine rates in Montana dropped 70 ­percent.”

Siebel-funded stem-cell research has produced its own dramatic results in cure rates for specific cancers, so why not take a shot at a Tom Siebel obsession, the transformative power of time on the water under sail? “You want to know that it can scale,” Siebel says. “We bought 125 boats for five hubs in the first year. In 2020, we want to double down with another five hubs and another 125 boats. And my hope is that in 10 years, this will be transformative nationally. I started sailing on Lake Michigan with my dad when I was 8. When I was a teenager, the other kids and I would look for a buster so we could go out in a gale and get our teeth kicked in—the teamwork, the terror, the joy…yes, nothing short of magical.”

At the Columbia Sailing School, Kurt Thomsen sees the Siebel program as fitting right in. “We have STEM teaching, but it’s always been a problem getting scholarship money to bring in the kids, and we’re hoping this means we can expose more of them, and then pay attention to the kids who take to it. Last year, we had 600 in our field-trip program, and we were able to get them sailing maybe one time. Now we can do more, and for a lot of kids, the Feva is the perfect stepping stone.”

RELATED: So, the Kid Wants to Teach Sailing

Brian McNally, at DC Sailing says: “I can’t overstress how grateful we are to be able to engage kids we’d otherwise have missed. We’ve had just 20 FJs for all our adult and kid programs, including 10-week spring and fall high school sailing for 30 schools—the entire tristate area. With Fevas we can teach advanced skills, and yes, it matters to have ­top-level coaching.”

The format is to equip each Primary Center with Fevas and to equip each Supporting Center with Fevas for adventure sailing, also for racing as opportunity presents. Chris Childers is the Siebel coach for San Francisco Bay, with TISC as the hub and Alameda Community Sailing Center (in the East Bay) and Golden Gate Sailing Foundation (in the West Bay, at Golden Gate YC) in support. Childers believes that “Fevas are the perfect boat to start kids in doublehanded sailing at an age when they’re very social and want to be with other kids. They can begin doublehanded sailing earlier than they would in a boat like an FJ. We can do more to develop them going forward. Imagine the cohort of sailors 20 years from now who have been doing apparent-wind sailing their whole lives.”

The chair of the junior ­program at an establishment not far from Golden Gate YC, also party to the conversation, was heard to mutter something like: “Apparent-wind sailing? Trainer for the 29er? That’s exactly why we’re getting Fevas for ourselves. Bring it on.”

The post Time to Upgrade appeared first on Sailing World.

We’re now 10 days into our immersion in the M32 catamaran scene. We’re walking down the dock at Shake-A-Leg on the second day of the M32 Miami Winter Series. The boys—Gordon, Chris, Riley and Key—all sporting their Young American team shirts, stroll past the other perfectly polished and vinyl-wrapped race boats. I can sense their anticipation and excitement growing as we make our way past. As I walk behind them, I notice a little more pep in their step, the soreness from the previous day’s racing barely noticeable.

Berthed at the far end of the dock is our boat—two stark-white hulls with light-blue decking and black trim. The boat is owned by Sail Newport, the community sailing ­organization in Newport, Rhode Island, so it’s not technically “ours,” but we’re campaigning it for the winter, thanks to the support from Sail Newport and the M32 Class Association. It’s been a long time coming with putting it all together and getting the boat down south.

We’re the “youngsters” of the class—a team of college students and recently graduated kids, looking to experience, train and compete in one of the top high-performance classes in the world. We’re sailing under the banner of the Young American Sailing Academy, which started in 2013 as a way to kick-start a new generation of offshore sailors. Highlights of the Academy’s achievements include racing in the 2016 and 2018 Newport Bermuda Races, where the team received line honors in 2016 on the Tripp 41 High Noon and competitively sailed the Reichel/Pugh 63-footer Gambler in 2018.

Some of us are recent ­additions to the Young American program, so we’ve had only a few days of practice as a squad, but we’ve quickly bonded into a tightknit team. Key Becker, who is the forwardmost guy on the M32’s rack, is our main trimmer. He’s tall and lanky and has bleach-blond hair that sticks out from his pink helmet. He shares a similar big-boat background to myself and sails for the College of Charleston’s Offshore Team. He’s my older brother, and yes, he has been suspiciously nicer since this boat came our way.

Behind Key is Riley Freeman, our floater. Riley is a big-boat sailor and surfer from California who is studying at the University of San Diego. He is the muscle on our boat and brings the laid-back West Coast vibe to the team. He matches Key with the long blond hair, making them the perfect rack buddies. Next aft on the rack is Gordon Gurnell, who ­skippers at Connecticut College and grew up sailing dinghies in Newport, Rhode Island. In his hand is the traveler line, the “big‑guy” job on the boat.

Chris Manson-Hing is on gennaker trim. Chris graduated from Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and is the one with experience in multihull and skiff sailing on the boat. He’s small, but he’s fierce.

As for me, I’ve come up through a wide variety of monohull big boats. I define myself as a driver, but I can run around and fill any position on most boats. I also grew up sailing dinghies and now sail for Boston University, and until our first event with the M32 class—this past summer’s Midtown Cup in Newport—I’d never been exposed to multihull sailing, or much of skiff sailing, for that matter. As you can imagine, the M32 came with a vertical learning curve for all of us. After only a few days of sailing on the boat, I’ve learned it requires a strong helm and a playful hand. The balance of the boat and the rate of acceleration when it’s loaded is far different than anything I’ve ever experienced.

As we arrive at our boat at the end of the dock, we prepare for the day ahead. The wind is drowned out by the latest recording of a Phish concert playing from a little blue speaker clipped to the rack. It’s our team anthem now, thanks to Key and his obsession with the band. We tackle the morning work list: Tighten the trampoline, put in the boards, situate the lunch, check the spares kit, and so on. Because we’ve had two days of practice canceled this week on account of too much wind, we’ve had plenty of dock time, making us a well-oiled machine when it comes to boatwork.

Soon after, as we pull off the dock and head out of the harbor, waves crash over our bows as we slam through the chop. It’s blowing a solid 18 knots, with gusts in the low- to mid-20s —conditions we have sailed in only once before. As we hoist the main, anticipation is building. Gordon, Riley and Key line up on the main halyard, as if they’re about to start a game of tug of war. They’re waiting for the “ready to go up” from Chris. As they hear the call, they lean in to every pull as the bolt rope zips up the mast track.

Once the main is up and the boys are ready to play, we take off for our pre-race practice. We head upwind but look for the first opportunity to turn ­downwind and get the gennaker unfurled. When it’s go time, I reach behind me, clip the tiller extension onto the tiller bar, pop up onto the back beam, and lock my front foot under the traveler.

Chris counts, “Three, two, one,” and I steer the boat down into a bear-away set. The gennaker rolls out, Riley leaps to the winch, puts his head down and spins the handle like a madman.

Our next move is a furl-and-jibe. Riley jumps off the rack as Chris prepares the gennaker sheet to be eased. Key and Gordon are waiting, ready to bounce into action. The call is made, and Key darts across the boat, bouncing his way toward the leeward hull. I watch the gennaker begin to furl, and then, unnaturally, I feel the hull beneath me begin to force itself out of the water. Both bows are fighting gravity and lift skyward.

The windward board must have been put down in preparation for jibe, but with both boards down, there’s too much lift. The boat pops a wheelie before the bows come crashing down with a thud and big splash. The boat then settles, as do we. The mistake with the board drop is identified—one of the many lessons we’ll learn.

For each race, we set up one step behind the fleet, hanging back and being conservative by not engaging with the more-experienced teams. But when the flag skies, signaling the last race of the day, our hearts are beating a little faster. I think we’re all feeling that it’s time to be closer to the fleet. We’re excited and more comfortable with this weirdly bouncy, wet and jerky boat.

Each race begins with a reaching start, followed by a power reach to a bear-away mark, transitioning the race into a downwind leg. That first leg is the most intense part of the race, and the outcome typically determines one’s positioning for the rest of the race.

“This is the race, guys,” Chris, our trimmer and tactician, yells. “Let’s get closer.”

As the countdown continues, we place ourselves in the same “safe zone” we’ve been playing in the whole weekend—to windward of the rest of the fleet, just below our layline to the race-committee boat. This time, we tuck ourselves that much closer to the pack. We want to play.

I pull on the tiller, the bows turn down, and I aim toward the orange triangle in the distance. Water rushes past the leeward hull, and the windward hull pops out and starts to fly. Expressions turn more serious, and the boys start howling, “Coms.” We are in the mix. We have a boat to leeward, and we are on the tail of the fleet.

Before we know it, the orange turning mark is upon us. “Hold on deploy,” Chris yells as he watches the leeward boat scream past the mark. Once we’re clear of their stern: “Deploy in three, two, one.”

I turn the boat down hard, the apparent wind builds, and I jolt the boat back up to get the hull flying, and we quickly watch the speedometer on the display climb into the mid-20s.

Someone on the rack screams: “Yeah, buddy! Let’s get her ripping.”

Shortly after boats ahead flop onto the other jibe, we pick our line and prepare to jibe ourselves. Chris, when happy with our positioning, yells out, “Jibing in three, two, one.”

Similar to earlier, Riley jumps off the rack and reaches for the furling line. Key and Gordon wait until the boat starts to turn. The gennaker wraps around itself, and the boys are already on their feet. I finish the turn, and the boys wrap up their jobs before getting back on the rack. Once the gennaker starts to make its way in, I turn the boat up and pop a hull.

The fleet leaves us in a frothy sea of wakes, but we keep working hard to stay as close as possible. Being the new team on the course, we have a lot to learn, but the learning has been the most fun and insane sailing we’ve ever been exposed to. The M32 catamaran is challenging and physically demanding, but we are determined to master this beast. As we cross the finish line of our last race, Key speaks for all of us when he says, “I’m officially in love with this boat.”

The post Live Fast, Sail Young appeared first on Sailing World.

The Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron has released the framework for its edition of the Youth America Cup, to be contested before the 36th America’s Cup Match in Auckland in March 2021. For young elite sailors looking to crack into sailing’s main event, the announcement comes as welcome news, but it also comes with a heightened sense of urgency. In less than 12 months, hopeful squads, must form, fundraise and qualify, with no guarantee of making the finals.

The San Francisco edition of the Cup was the first time the event had established a youth sideshow of sorts. With the backing of Red Bull, national teams were hastily trained on the AC45s and delivered a captivating series to onshore spectators during Cup-racing interludes. The hard-charging New Zealand squad—led by a young, wickedly fast and relatively unknown kid named Peter Burling—won the series and celebrated their rock star status with a big night of club hopping on the Red Bull party bus. In 2017, British pro sailor Rob Bunce helmed Land Rover Ben Ainslie Racing’s AC45F to the top of the heap in the final race of the Red Bull series in Bermuda. While the foiling catamarans of that event required a skillset unfamiliar to most young sailors at the time, so too will the 30-foot foiling monohull (“AC9F”) designed for the series.

A December 12 Entry Memorandum from the RNZYS lays out the regatta’s specifics to prospective competitors, and while it’s early days yet, there’s plenty to glean from both the Notice of Race and the Memorandum. First, in line with the America’s Cup Deed of Gift, teams must challenge through accepted yacht clubs. The narrow window to challenge is between December 2019 and February 28, 2020. Once accepted, $75,000 in staggered entry fees and a $16,000 damage deposit must be advanced to the RNZYS. The entry fee includes charter/use of an AC9F for official races and only 10 hours of training time on the boat. Teams are on the hook for their own insurance, one branded jib, and a litany of costs, from coaches, training and travel. The cost to play is not insignificant.

“You’d be looking at a budget of $200,000—minimum,” says Carson Crain, of Houston, Texas, who founded and led the U.S. Next Generation team’s efforts in Bermuda. “Ours was $300,000 and that was relatively lean. The biggest expense we had was charter fees for training with the GC32 and the AC45F.”

Individual sailors must be “licensed” to sail the AC9F and the road to Auckland starts somewhere in China (a location “to be determined”) with a fleet-race seeding event in November 2020. From this, the top 20 teams (should there be as many) will continue to Stage 2, a late February 2021 match-racing event in Auckland. The top-10 teams then advance to Stage 3, in early March, another round-robin match-race series. According the NOR, only seven boats will be “provided” for the series and allocated by daily draw.

All crew members must be members of the challenging club, and not less than three must be passport-carrying nationals. Crain, who aged out of the regatta’s 18- to 25-year-old age bracket, says he would jump at the chance to compete again, if he could, but otherwise, he’s happy to consult any would-be teams. “My biggest piece of advice is to first develop a business plan,” Crain advises. “Don’t focus on winning. Focus first on getting to the starting line.”

And that means not just convincing the commodore to challenge, but “making sure the club’s board and the sailing foundation is willing to support the challenge and help raise money. Having the right leadership at the club level is critical. If you have buy-in from club and have the right people behind you, the challenge will be strong. It’s very difficult being an athlete on the boat and managing the team at the same time.”

Time, of course, will be the greatest burden teams will face, and Crain advises wasting none of it. “As soon as possible, you’re going to want to have your sailors training on small foilers and working on team dynamics, on any high-performance boat you can get your hands on.”

The post Youth America’s Cup, The Foiling Mono Version appeared first on Sailing World.

One minute remains before the start of the Thursday night “beer can” race in Newport Beach, California. Andy Rose is the tactician on his own Andrews 49, It’s OK!. The wind is funneling down the harbor at 10 knots as 20 boats jockey for position. The starting area is crowded and the adrenaline is running through the crew. As a guest in the back of the boat, I watch as Rose makes his calls.

We’re to windward of the starting line when Rose notes the wind is shifting to the left. With 25 seconds remaining, he calls for a dip start. Rope is spinning off the winches as the trimmers ease sheets and we bear away to sail below the line. With 5 seconds on the clock, Rose calls for a tack. The deck explodes with movement as crew sprint from one side to the other as we tack to port.

The starting horn sounds, and we cross the fleet on port tack. It was a brilliant maneuver by one of the greatest tacticians of our age. He smiles and tells ­everyone, “Nice start.”

Rose grew up sailing in Southern California in the 1960s. He raced frequently and had a knack for the game of match-racing tactics.

He won the Governor’s Cup Match Regatta hosted by Balboa Yacht YC in 1969 and 1970, the youngest to ever do so. He then teamed up with University of Southern California All-American, Argyle Campbell and won the

Congressional Cup in 1970 and 1972. They were young, bold and supremely talented match racers. Soon afterward, Rose was in high demand on the international yacht racing scene. He was the tactician on several of the hottest racing boats of the era, including Ondine, Blackfin, Kialoa and the Australian yacht Ballyhoo.

In 1977, Alan Bond challenged for the America’s Cup for a second time. Rose was tapped as the team’s tactician. The only issue was that Rose was an American and Bond was challenging on behalf of Australia.

At the time, there was no specific rule against having a non-national on a crew, but it wasn’t common practice during the 12-Meter era. Rose and his team won the Challenger trials against crews from Sweden, France and a second Australian challenger. I was the tactician on the American defender, Courageous, and we were pitted to battle on the sport’s biggest stage.

Rose was slim and trim and sported a signature dark mustache in the mold of singer Robert Goulet. He was a reveler onshore, but ruthless on the water. His match-race ­tactics were creative and unique, and he was one of the first sailors to understand the value of being aggressive in the prestart. He set a standard that was later used in the America’s Cup.

As with most Cup matches, the first race always arrives with great anticipation. No one truly knows which boat is going to be faster. About three days before the Cup, we were training off Newport, Rhode Island.

The Australians were sailing about a half-mile to leeward. We were instructed by the New York YC’s Cup Committee to stay away from the challengers, but I took bearings to compare our speed. Their speed edge was on my mind when we started Race 1 of the 1977 match.

Australia II had about a half-boatlength lead as its bow crossed the starting line. I could see Rose taking bearings on us. It took about 20 minutes for Courageous to establish a one-length lead because we were a little faster on the upwind legs. The Australians gained on the downwind legs but were never able to pass as the regatta progressed. Courageous won the series 4 to 0. In the process, Rose became a close friend.

I’d always been curious about how he felt when the Australians defeated Dennis Conner in the 1983 America’s Cup. He told me he remembers the moment well.

“I was very much rooting for them,” Rose says. “I’m a true American and I love my country, but I wore green and gold that day. I was proud to see them do it. That was magic, and it was a tremendous thing for the Cup.” Rose found his way into the Australian camp in 1974, at age 23. He was invited to Australia to coach the team on match racing. The syndicate’s leaders, Jim Hardy and John Bertrand, treated him well and listened to him, he says: “They wanted to learn. It was a great ego trip.”

In 1977, the Independence-Courageous Syndicate courted Rose to serve as tactician on Independence, but he never heard from them again. The Australians called and asked if he’d join them, but he declined. Months later, he reconsidered and called Alan Bond, asking if he could change his mind.

“Yes, when can you be here?” Bond said. Rose responded, “How about the red-eye plane tonight?” The next day, he stepped aboard the 12-Meter Australia.

Between his sailing gigs, Rose attended Stanford, then law school at the University of California, Davis. Today, Balboa Island in Newport Beach is his home base, but he travels extensively for sailing and works in the renewable energy business.

Rose’s It’s OK! is tied to the dock of his modest harbor-side home. It’s a great set up for a sailor. The boat is 49.9 feet, which puts it just under the local weeknight series’ 50-foot cutoff.

Once, when I was invited for a weeknight race, Rose invited about 20 or so teenagers to join the crew. The deck was a little crowded, but we still won the race. As I look back on that evening, winning wasn’t the biggest challenge. The more difficult part was avoiding all the small boats and ferries ­steaming around the harbor. Match racing and offshore sailing are important factors in Rose’s career. He got off to a fast start at a young age as the watch captain of the maxi, Blackfin. He was only 21 then, so he understands how important it is for young sailors to have opportunities.

The Balboa YC established the Governor’s Cup for junior sailors two years after the Long Beach YC started its Congressional Cup. Ronald Reagan, California’s governor at the time, signed the Deed of Gift for the junior match-race regatta. In 2014, Rose led a group of yacht club members in commissioning a new fleet of 22-foot sloops for the Governor’s Cup. Alan Andrews designed the new boat, which performs well in the area’s prevailing light to moderate winds. This special regatta had a profound effect on Rose’s career—which explains why he works hard to make sure it continues to thrive. Raising the funds to build a 16-boat fleet is a big project.

Rose is a persuasive person and is generous himself. At the 50th Anniversary Governor’s Cup, he arranged to have the Congressional Cup trophy and the America’s Cup itself sitting on a table next to the Governor’s Cup, an oversized bowl atop a massive wooden base. Rose says he’s embarrassed by the audacious size of the trophy that bears his name, but standing waist high, it’s a fitting tribute to a man who has accomplished so much and is credited with replenishing the next generation of traditional match-racing sailors.

As the young competitors studied the trophies, Rose sat to the side watching with a slight smile of satisfaction.

The post Andy Rose and the Next-Gen Match Racers appeared first on Sailing World.

At 13, my world revolved around my bus pass, bike and life jacket. I had some great sailing options, but I lived 10 miles away. After school and on weekends, often I would take the bus to the yacht club for Laser sailing on Lake Washington.

I earned my life jacket as payment for a summer job teaching younger kids how to sail. My mom bought me my diving wetsuit. I made my own weight jacket out of old sweatshirts—they were still legal back then, remember— and I found old bits of discarded rope on the dock and used them as my control lines. Going sailing was logistically challenging, but in my mind the rewards were always worth time spent on the bus and the trying sail through the narrow Montlake Cut.

At the time, the Seattle Laser Fleet was on top of the world. Stars like Chris Maas, Dennis Clark, Craig Thomas and Carl Buchan would battle it out in the often fluky and weed-infested waters of Union Bay, honing their skills in preparation for the coming world championship and U.S. Youth Championships. As an aspiring racer, these guys—there were a few women too—were role models.

I watched how they launched their boats, how they tweaked their control lines, how they maintained their positions on the starting line, how they used their weight to help them turn around the marks.

I also observed that they shared with each other what they were learning.

This was the very beginning of the “Laser Revolution,” and dinghy sailing techniques were evolving quickly. I did not know it at the time, but the center of the movement was right there in front of me.

I was just a kid who liked to sail, but there was a group of slightly older sailors who were the real deal.

RELATED: Youth Sailing

The bus did not run as often on Sundays, so I had to ride my bike—life jacket and wetsuit strapped to the back. This built character—and also my legs and lungs.

My battle was only half over when I got to the yacht club and rigged up my battered club boat. Sometimes I got a tow from a passing motorboat, but most of the time I still had to sail from the small bay where the yacht club is, through a narrow canal to Lake Washington.

More character building, and I also learned how to rock effectively to self-propel when the wind died, which was almost every time.

In those days, one of the Laser fleet members would volunteer to run races for the day, and each boat would pay $1. Each week I had to save up 60 cents each way for bus fare, plus a dollar for the racing, for $2.20 total. Lunch was a soggy sandwich brought from home.

All this was of no consequence because I got to sail against real sailors, current and future champions who were much better than me.

But I could also see myself in them. I could see that it was possible to get to a world-class level, despite my youth and modest skills at the time. I just had to keep coming back every week, keep watching and learning, keep ­getting stronger.

After a couple of years, the club bought a new batch of Lasers. This was a big break for me because I was just getting good enough that a decent Laser actually made a difference.

In 1976, I won the Canadian Nationals in Vancouver at age 16 in a club boat. While the Seattle fleet’s rock stars had largely moved on to Finns and other classes, I beat some pretty good guys from California, the Northwest and Canada. I was kind of stunned at the time, but I realized that those days of riding my bike or taking the bus were paying off.

My surprise victory qualified me for the Laser Worlds in Brazil—an amazing experience, my first time away from North America, and my first look at the ­international sailing scene. In Brazil, I met Peter Commette and John Bertrand, whom I had seen in the sailing magazines.

Alas, I was not quite ready for the big time. I was too small, not fit enough, and generally not good enough to compete at this level, and I finished 49th of 100. Not terrible for a 17-year-old kid from Seattle, but I vowed next time I would be more competitive.

These days, I sometimes wonder what caused me to choose sailing at a young age, and to pursue it above anything else. I had the desire, but equally important was the environment that allowed me to progress at my own pace—but with a high standard clearly in view.

How can we create this nurturing but competitive pathway for kids today? Is it better that kids sail only against other kids, or would it be more productive, as it was for me, to race against adults?

The post Product of My Environment appeared first on Sailing World.

The California International Sailing Association hosted its first advanced racing clinic 40 years ago. Dave Perry and I were the coaches, asked to help aspiring young sailors improve their skills. Several sailors from that inaugural clinic went on to win Olympic medals, including JJ Fetter, John Shadden and Brian Ledbetter. Recent Olympians that attended the CISA clinic at some point early in their careers include Charlie Buckingham, Annie Haeger, Briana Provancha and Zach Railey. The clinic has continued and evolved over the years, and when I revisited the most recent one, I found it to be an impressive learning experience for the sailors, as well as the all-star roster of 19 coaches.

The clinic spans four packed days, with each day dedicated to different elements: boat­handling, boatspeed, teamwork and tactics. The daily routine, which starts at 8 a.m. and runs full speed until 8 p.m., includes formal fitness training, followed by group briefings and on-the-water drills and races. Sixty-seven sailors were selected for the clinic, spread across four classes: International 420, 29er, Laser Radial and Formula Kiteboards.

“Participants need to take their sport seriously,” says clinic director Molly Vandemoer, who reviews applicants. “They must have a solid practice plan in place, goals set and a fitness regime. Our goal is to get the top sailors from across the country in one place, with excellent coaching. With a collaborative atmosphere, it’s hard not to improve over four days. We have no age limit, but most sailors are in the 13-to-18 range.”

Perry returned after his first year and served as an “at-large” coach. He is one of the most knowledgeable experts on the Racing Rules of Sailing, and a keen observer of performance. He says the types of sailors haven’t changed much over the past 40 years despite the higher levels of training we see in youth sailing today. “They are still excited to be in a situation where they are learning things about something they love and want to get better at,” Perry says. “As for coaching, the techniques haven’t changed either, except for video and other electronic equipment, which makes coaching more effective.”

At the conclusion of the first day’s drills, I sat in on the debriefs. Each coach is assigned to a specific class. The 19 coaches included National Sailing Hall of Fame inductee Dave Ullman, ­collegiate champion and two-time Olympian Amanda Clark, two-time Olympic medalist Charlie McKee, two-time Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year Sally Barkow, three-time Olympic medalist and Hall of Famer Mark Reynolds and America’s Cup-winning coach Grant Spanhake. Targeted details given by the coaches kept every young sailor’s rapt attention.

The Alamitos Bay Yacht Club in Long Beach, California, has hosted every CISA clinic, which was started in 1978 by Dave Crockett. Organizing an ambitious training session requires a dedicated board and staff. Mike Van Dyke is the current CISA president and says the organization has refined its focus over the past three to four years, concentrating on youth development classes, seeking out the best resources in those areas. For Van Dyke, the looming Olympic regatta in Long Beach in 2028 is having an impact.

“It is an exciting time to be living in Long Beach, and to be a sailor,” he says. “There’s no doubt some of our alumni will be sailors in the Olympics.”

The clinic’s $600 registration fees cover about half the operating costs, while the rest comes from corporate and individual donations. Van Dyke says the organization has been “blessed by having a consistent track record of producing sailors who have gone on to achieve great things. We have a diverse funding base. It’s a challenge, and we could do more and have a greater impact, but it does take funding.”

There are other advanced racing clinics elsewhere in the United States, including the Brooke Gonzalez Clinic, which is run by Sail Newport in Rhode Island, now in its 17th year. This is a bring-your-own-boat clinic, although a handful of charter boats are available. The Brooke Gonzalez Clinic also features a strong list of top college coaches and recent champions.

In Mantoloking, New Jersey, the Carl van Duyne Clinic collaborates with the CISA group. “We do compare notes with some of the other clinics around the country,” says Van Dyke. “We want to see what is happening and get a benchmark, and I think it would be great for various clinics to send their directors around the country to observe the different clinics to share ideas and best practices.”

Vandemoer says the organization invites all California junior program coaches and directors to attend the clinic and shadow the coaches as a “ride-along coach,” encouraging them to sit in on the debriefs. “It’s a fantastic way to reach as many sailors as possible,” she says.

When I was sailing in college in 1970, I was invited to an advanced racing clinic at the Hoofers Sailing Club at the University of Wisconsin, just before college nationals. There was a fleet of Lehman 12s and a fleet of Vanguard 470s. The clinic was led by two-time Olympic medalist Peter Barrett, and I remember how patient he was with all of us. The three-day clinic was invaluable throughout my college sailing career. Four years later, Sailing World sponsored a clinic at the USA Olympic Training Center on Lake Ontario.

I was the instructor. George Eddy, publisher of the magazine at the time, had organized a new fleet of 10 Lasers and 10 new 470s. Each session lasted six days. Among the young participants was Gary Bodie, who went on to be one of the most successful college and Olympic coaches in American sailing.

Inspired by my experiences, thanks to both Barrett and Eddy, I pitched US Sailing with the idea of creating a traveling advanced racing clinic. In 1975, I ran 10 clinics throughout that summer. By 1976, the clinics were so popular that we hired several more coaches from the college ranks, including Perry, Peter Isler, Stuart Johnstone, Ed Baird and Mark Laura. Every single coach had a full schedule of clinics. The idea for the CISA clinic came out of that series.

In recent years, sail training for aspiring racers has been established at several permanent facilities around the United States. Oakcliff Sailing in Oyster Bay, New York, for example, has an impressive program in a wide variety of boats. For sailing clubs looking to improve skill levels, a once-a-year three- to four-day clinic is a good way to start.

“The CISA clinic helps young sailors reach their goals by bringing in the best coaches and sailors in the country,” Perry says. “The sailors can work on their technique with the right information after the clinic. By attracting top sailors, it helps motivate and raise the bar for their own success.”

Looking toward Los Angeles in 2028, Van Dyke admits to having goosebumps, “with the thought that one of these kids in our clinic this year could be walking in the Opening Ceremonies. By helping them achieve their dreams, by showing them how to unleash their potential, it’s pretty powerful stuff.”

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