Bust the bubble

by Craig Leweck, Scuttlebutt Sailing News
The Guardians of the Monohull are a humorous group which recently considered how a junior sailor progresses in the sport. Odds are beer was involved in creating their graph which uses a person’s age, and among the notable moments were:

21 – Leave college sailing and you don’t know what do to with your life.
23 – Burned out. Haven’t seen a boat in years.

It reminded me of a 2014 column I wrote for Sailing World (below) which discussed how to improve the odds that junior sailors become life sailors. Over a decade later, which way is the pendulum swinging?

Youth sailing programs are phenomenal today. Anecdotal evidence suggests more kids are sailing than ever before. This is largely accomplished by narrowing the focus to youth boats and age-based sailing. A lot of equipment is provided, and most activities are hyper organized. This trend has helped make sailing easy to remain involved, but I think—for the good of our sailing future—we need to bust the bubble and give kids a taste of something else.

New organic experiences are critical for kids to remain connected to sailing. Whatever type of sailing you do, find an opportunity to expose it to a young sailor. Keelboats, catamarans, one-design classes new and old: anything goes. Open their eyes to a life outside the junior program bubble. Weeknight racing is low key, and it provides the type of unstructured outing that offers fun and adventure, so lets make sure they’re part of our summer twilight action.

Encourage kids to mess with boats. Rig a spinnaker on an Optimist. Send them halyard swinging on a keelboat. Introduce them to windsurfing. Let them sail to a distant beach or destination. Let them deliver their boat to a regional regatta, under its own bottom. Minimize competition and maximize curiosity. When it comes to kids, we like to measure progress, but let’s stop measuring, and simply let them roam.

Sailing won’t grow without its next generation. If teens and twenty-year-olds don’t make connections, they will drift away. Use this summer to show them what they can do when they graduate from the youth sailing schedule.

Don’t lose them to other sports.