Beyond Junior Sailing: How YSF Is Building a Fleet (and a Following) for Adults
Everyone assumes the Youth Sailing Foundation is just for kids. It isn't, and the new building going up on the lagoon is about to make that very clear.
Yes, junior sailing is still the heart of it. Put a kid out there and the phone stays on shore. There's no scrolling your way out of a capsize.
But the latest is the grown-ups who've gotten involved. YSF has spent the last five years building an adult sailing program, complete with a fleet of 19-foot Flying Scots you can rent like a gym membership for $650 a year, and sail whenever you want. Forty members already. Executive director Stu Keiller sees that number hitting 200 once the new pier goes in. His theory: he came out of the ski industry, where families who ski together keep skiing together for decades, and he's betting sailing works the same way.
The building opens this December, and the name behind it is equally important to the story: the Pat Harris Community Sailing Center, after the board chairman who ran YSF for eight years and grew it from 50 students a year to 400 before he passed in 2023.
Learn more about the adult program here. For $550, you get 12 hours of personalized instruction that qualifies you to rent YSF's Flying Scotsmen any time for the aforementioned $650/year membership fee.
Some photos of the new building under construction
