A San Diego Yacht Club Teaching Children Responsibility

Saturday, August 22nd in Tampa. Witness an MMA legend's final fight. Chris Cyborg, one of the greatest in history. She's an absolute pioneer in the sport. Defense her PFL world title, one last time. Unforgettable end to an unforgettable career. Saturday, August 22nd live from Benchmark International Arena. For tickets, visit pfl. info slash Tampa. Southwestern Yacht Club near Point Loma in the La Playa Cove area offer sailing lessons to kids as young as five. This is Cogo in the community. It's brought to you by Simper Holm. And we spoke with the junior program director, Jackie Hollander. So tell me a little bit about what you guys do. We run a sailing program for kids here in San Diego. During the school year, it's an after school program offering classes for a variety of skill levels and during summer as well. We take kids as young as five in our starfish program and then have a racing program all the way through teenage years. The practical sense of learning this skill, how will that... carry into other parts of their lives when they grow up. That's my favorite question to honestly answer. We're teaching sailing as a skill here right now and there's a lot of different components that are going on. I mean, we're putting an eight-year-old in a boat by themselves. And they are going to be able to sail that boat by themselves after our two week program. And what they don't realize while they're learning how to sail in those two weeks is how to multitask, how to be aware of your surroundings, how to problem solve, how to be independent. And one of the best things that I always love to tell and sell parents on is if you put your kids in sailing at a young age, when you go to get them their driver's license at 16, I guarantee you they pass on their first try because they already are so aware of how to be. a responsible person like on the water, which completely translates to being on the road. Do they get addicted to it and then the parents are having to get them their own boat? Oh yeah. All the time. And it's great because a lot of these parents didn't get the opportunity to learn how to sail when they were a kid. And so they're definitely like kind of like living through their child's experiences. And a lot of times I hear the parents being like, so can we get a boat and he can take us out? I'm like, yeah. There's definitely kids who become very quickly. more advanced at sailing and boating and anything safety on the water than some of these parents who just didn't get to have that experience. You know, you have to wait until you get a driver's license to drive, right? But to be able to be eight years old and then have that responsibility of taking passengers out on a boat, that's a huge, like you mentioned, a huge responsibility that you're teaching them, you know, how to keep your passengers safe. Yeah, absolutely. And it's interesting because at eight, They're learning this really incredible, very complex, difficult skill, but they don't even realize the complexity behind it, right? This to them, it's just become second nature to most of these kids. Then there's other kids who definitely do recognize that. And those are the ones that I kind of really enjoy because you can see they're like, I'm in charge. I know what I'm doing. And we're...

keeping these people safe, you know? That's the really cool thing. And I'm sure the parents tell you that that translates into other aspects of their life. Yes. I mean, like I said, it really teaches problem solving. It really teaches patience. It really teaches independence. And it really just teaches being responsible because, you know, these kids can't go on the water until like a pretty long checklist of things has been completed. I'm reminded all the time how really impressive it is and cool it is to see these kids do that. All right. Well, if you were wondering, what do these kids do afterwards? Yeah, exactly. Two Olympic sailors, Brianna Provencia, and Caleb Payne were enrolled at the Yacht Club's junior program as kids. Oh, it's awesome. They both went on to compete in the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympics. So we also talked to Dee Van Horn. She's been a sailing coach there for 17 years now. Many of my sailors are the... parents of our junior sailors here because they see their kids learning all of these wonderful skill sets. They too want to learn those skillsets. Oh, interesting. And so how happy are parents to be able to put them in a summer camp like this? I mean, this is considered a summer camp, right? Absolutely. Yes, they are very thrilled to put these kids into the summer program here at Southwestern Yacht Club. And then they come down here. They get to actually go down on the docks, watch their children sail, take video. take pictures and see their progression over the couple of weeks that we have with them. And then the parents, you know, they see that and they go, I want to do that. And then I talked to them. I said, well, come join my Sabbath sailing class for the adults. How many boats do you think it's sold just because of these classes? Oh my goodness, I have no clue. I wouldn't even know where to even start. I just imagine everybody wants to get into it after they take your class. Absolutely. Well, what happens is, you know, some of these kids age out. So after 17 or 18, either they're too tall or they're going off to college, so they sell their boat to one of the other up-and-coming junior sailors. So a lot of these boats go through generations of different sailors. So not so many brand-new boats. but definitely generational soulboats. Saturday, August 22nd in Tampa, witness an MMA legend's final fight. Chris Cyborg, one of the greatest in history. She's an absolute pioneer in the sport. Defense her PFL world title. One last time. Unforgettable end to an unforgettable career. And still. Saturday, August 22nd live from Benchmark International Arena. For tickets, visit pfl. info slash Tampa. Did you know using your browser in incognito mode doesn't actually protect your privacy? Take back your privacy with IPVanish VPN. Just one tap and all your data, passwords, communications, browsing history, and more will be instantly protected. IPVanish makes you virtually invisible online. Use IPVanish on all your devices. Anytime you go online at home and especially on public Wi-Fi. Get IPVanish now for 70% off a yearly plan with this exclusive offer at IPVanish.com slash...

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