HISTORY

Throughout the years several different groups of volunteer sailors have banded together to run a junior instructional program. Everyone who sails knows the sport needs many hands, and it is difficult for parents to teach their own children.

        The most recent volunteer group started around 1991 when someone donated four Optimist Dinghies to the recently incorporated Naples Sailing Center and local sailors became trained as US Sailing (USYRU as it was known then) certified instructors. King Purton, George Koch, and other members of the Gulf Coast Sailing Club approached Naples Sailing & Yacht Club about giving some space for a storage shed and a rack of donated dinghies.

        The summer program teaching area youth sailors evolved from there until it outgrew that venue in 1996. The city of Naples offered to re-locate the center to the Naples Landing Park. Some of the youth sailors with the help of their parents became very involved and started racing Optimist Dinghies against other junior sailing programs around the state of Florida using volunteer parents as coaches.

        In the spring of 1998, the Board of Directors decided it was time to develop a more comprehensive sailing center in Naples. Most of the children still active in sailing have parents who were not sailors but were drawn to junior sailing because of what it offered their children and family.

        The board hired full- and part-time coaches to develop the racing program who would work a long side the instructors teaching the learn to sail program.

        Currently, the sailing center utilizes a combination office/storage building and 135 feet of floating docks complete with dry storage racks and safety support boats at the Naples Landing Park. Our instructors teach over 150 area children how to sail each summer and coaches runs the after school and weekend racing programs.

        Some Learn to Sail fees are covered by "Sam's Sailing Scholarships," an endowed fund with the Collier County Community Foundation. The next step of the evolution is the establishment of a permanent facility, fleet, and an endowment for the on-going operating expenses not covered by fees.

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