Semi OT: Declining popularity of sailing and outreach

[tjspiel]

This topic came up a couple of weeks ago in another thread about racing and the shrinking number of boats participating.

There's a local guy who seems to have made it his personal mission to get more people sailing. He took over what was left of a yacht club and turned it into a sailing center/club that provides the boats and you pay an annual membership fee to sail them. He also provides classes and a number of outreach events including one today:

WCCO News Report: Free sailing every 3rd Sunday

I volunteered to sail/crew on one of the Ensigns for about 5 hours and enjoyed it quite a bit. Those boats weigh 3,000 lbs and a have lot more momentum that my P-18 but I had the docking down by the 3rd attempt.