2024 Youth Sailing Winter Update

SailMaine used to have a half dozen or more satellite youth sailing programs running in Maine during the summers. For the past few years, ours has been the only remaining program as interest and volunteerism had dropped at the other sites. Our program is running well with tremendous support from our membership. Unfortunately SailMaine sees our program as unnecessarily burdensome administratively and minimally profitable if not running at a small loss depending on how one calculates costs. 

SailMaine has offered to administrate the program for the last time this summer. We therefore have an opportunity to define the future of youth sailing on Great Pond. As an umbrella for the program, we have two likely options.

As one option, we can host the program under GPYC itself. This will require us to insure the boats and purchase liability insurance for the program.  We would have to administrate all aspects of the program including registration and support for inquiries. SailMaine has offered to sell us the RS Terras for $1.00 each as well as one 420. We are actively seeking quotes for insurances and are doing a financial analysis of the program.

As an alternative, the Center for All Seasons is interested in hosting the program. This would require Select Board Approval by the town of Belgrade. There is strong support for this from Dan MacGlashing, the Director at CFAS. Dan has been a terrific asset for the program and recognizes the value of the program. Since the CFAS already handles registrations for other programs, it would be a minimal effort to add this program to the existing ones. 

In addition to recruiting counselors for the program, the leadership of GPYC has been working on this over the winter. We are nearly ready to bring this to the membership for a vote. We hope to hear from you about this and also hope some of you will volunteer to participate in a committee to help steer the program’s launch and continued growth.

Thank you,
Andrew Dallas, Commodore