By Nicholas D. Hayes
Foreword by William F. Schanen III
Published by Crickhollow Books
240 pages
paperback $22
Market researcher and avid sailor Nick Hayes discovered that participation in sailing in the United States has declined more than 40% since 1997 – and a staggering 70% since 1979. To learn why enthusiasm for sailing has waned, he interviewed more than 1,200 sailors worldwide over a period of several years.
Hayes found that although post-World War II prosperity and the advent of fiberglass boats had boosted sailing’s popularity in previous decades, increasingly scarce leisure time has seen a growing number of Americans abandoning lifelong, family-based activities and “choosing to let the time pass” with unfulfilling spectator sports and electronic media. Instead of sharing recreational pastimes with their children, Hayes asserts, too many parents have become “taxi drivers and cheerleaders,” and if kids are enrolled in a sailing program, parents’ involvement ends at the yacht club gate.
The best way to get people into sailing and keep them interested, says Hayes, is the time-honored relationship of a capable mentor and a keen apprentice: “Mentoring is teaching infused with leadership. Mentoring may center on a principal skill or a capability like sailing, but its mastery isn’t exclusive to the skill or the technique, but to the broader understanding of what makes the skill or technique valuable and relevant.” Indeed, many people and organizations we know have employed this formula with laudable results. Witness the multi-generational accomplishments of the Storck, du Moulin and Sayre families, for example, or the success of public access programs like the Stamford Sailing Foundation.
Saving Sailing scores high for readability, beautifully capturing the essence of why we sail: “Sailors often speak of the mythical, the sublime, the magical things that they see and feel while sailing, like the potential of a boat to go faster when the wind it produces adds up to more than the wind around them. Or the feelings of trust and triviality that can only come on a small boat clawing upwind far out of sight of land and under a sky full of stars. Or the sensation that nudging forward or back an inch can set the boat free. Or the rhythmic pitter-patter from the swell lapping at the aft underbelly of an anchored boat at night. Sailors find God in such things. Sailors will often say that they are in heaven, here and in this time.”
Saving Sailing is available at better booksellers and from Itasca Book Distributing (800-901-3480, itascabooks.com), where you can add $3 to the purchase price as a donation to the Milwaukee Community Sailing Center’s COMPASS program, which introduces at-risk kids and their parents or guardians to the experience of sailing and the lessons that can be learned by spending quality time together on a boat.
The lessons in this book transcend sailing, with practicable ideas for parents and those who value the concept of community. In a culture that has embraced luxury SUVs, “social networking” websites, tattoos and predatory pop stars, saving sailing has never been more essential. For more information and to share your favorite sailing story on the “Lifelines” blog, visit SavingSailing.com. ✦