Community sailing program to raffle new J/70

The Greenwich Bay Sailing Association (GBSA) was established over 20 years ago by the East Greenwich Yacht Club as separate nonprofit community sailing program. We serve about 120 kids each summer and a growing number of adults.

We don’t ever want a kid to miss out on the benefits of learning to sail due to financial need – toward this end, we granted over $5000 in scholarships this past summer. We are also the proud hosts of the CJ Buckley Regatta – which for the past five years has served as the Club 420 Association’s Jr. National Team Racing championships, attracting teams from throughout North America.

Every two years we have a charity auction event to raise funds to help cover our capital expenses (fleet, powerboats, etc). Our plan for 2014 and beyond is to dramatically increase our impact in the community by adding more opportunities for kids and adults to learn to sail.

Our plan centers around building a fleet of keelboats for that purpose. Two years ago, we were fortunate enough to receive a J24 as a donation to the program. It has proved to be a great boat for our adult learn to sail program and for our “sailing adventures” class in the afternoons (older kids). Our plan is to use the funds from this raffle to purchase three more J24’s.

We have received the support of both the Town of East Greenwich and the City of Warwick (our facility straddles the line between the two towns) to implement this plan. We have the mooring permits in place, the curriculum is being re-written over the winter months and our board members are out looking for boats. All that’s left now is to secure the funding – and that’s where the Win A J70 Raffle comes in.

The J70 is the most popular boat to come around in a generation. We came up with this crazy idea to raffle off a J70 to raise funds for GBSA. Through a lot of hard work and support from our partners at McMichaels we’ve made the raffle a reality. The plan is simple – sell 650 raffle tickets at $100 each.

We’re really excited about this opportunity – the J70 is a sweet boat and we’re fired up to give one to a lucky winner!

Click here for full details.

Regards,

Dave Wehr, President
Greenwich Bay Sailing Association