knot_moving
Member
From the perspective of a new member of one of the newest fleets
About 3 years ago Sam Grant and others made a concerted effort to reinvigorate dinghy sailing at Ft Walton Beach Yacht Club. He organized a series of Portsmouth races and most importantly - he worked with a local non-profit sailing organization to be able to use their boats!!
The Emerald Coast Sailing Association is a local non-profit aimed at promoting sailing in our area. They have over the past 5-10 years built up a fleet of boats that they've picked up and refurbished. They are mostly pretty old sunfish, along with a few 420s and a couple of Lasers.
They had a $1 or $2 registration fee per race day and because of the ECSA, they had boats available for anyone who wanted one.
So 2 years ago Sam & I put together a small portsmouth series between the Ft Walton yach Club and the Bluewater Bay Sailing Club. This got us sailing at each other's venue and added a few more boats to the mix. Sam really did all the work, I just found a couple of race days on our calendar.
Sam then found volunteers to come and serve as race committee for our races! The result of all their hard work is that 2 years ago we had 12+ boats racing, of which maybe half were ECSA boats and the other half were private boats.
Based on all the fun people had and seeing the people sailing lasers having the most fun - a number of us bought lasers and last year we added 4 or 5 more boats. We also added more focus on socializing after the Small Boat Challenge races.
This year at their 2 "Frosty Nipple" regattas we've had 20+ boats and of those 16 were lasers! From all this was born our new District 13 fleet (of which I have no official involvement except taking advantage of their existence!).
In summary I think the things that made this fleet grow were:
About 3 years ago Sam Grant and others made a concerted effort to reinvigorate dinghy sailing at Ft Walton Beach Yacht Club. He organized a series of Portsmouth races and most importantly - he worked with a local non-profit sailing organization to be able to use their boats!!
The Emerald Coast Sailing Association is a local non-profit aimed at promoting sailing in our area. They have over the past 5-10 years built up a fleet of boats that they've picked up and refurbished. They are mostly pretty old sunfish, along with a few 420s and a couple of Lasers.
They had a $1 or $2 registration fee per race day and because of the ECSA, they had boats available for anyone who wanted one.
So 2 years ago Sam & I put together a small portsmouth series between the Ft Walton yach Club and the Bluewater Bay Sailing Club. This got us sailing at each other's venue and added a few more boats to the mix. Sam really did all the work, I just found a couple of race days on our calendar.
Sam then found volunteers to come and serve as race committee for our races! The result of all their hard work is that 2 years ago we had 12+ boats racing, of which maybe half were ECSA boats and the other half were private boats.
Based on all the fun people had and seeing the people sailing lasers having the most fun - a number of us bought lasers and last year we added 4 or 5 more boats. We also added more focus on socializing after the Small Boat Challenge races.
This year at their 2 "Frosty Nipple" regattas we've had 20+ boats and of those 16 were lasers! From all this was born our new District 13 fleet (of which I have no official involvement except taking advantage of their existence!).
In summary I think the things that made this fleet grow were:
- having Sam willing to dedicate a huge amount of time and organizational expertise to lead it
- having ECSA let us use their boats so people could easily and cheaply get involved with racing
- having FWYC volunteers run the races in a very professional way