Florida Tech Sailing

Who We Are: Florida Tech’s Sailing Club is a diverse organization led by highly motivated student sailors who are passionate about teaching sailing as well as competing. There are two sides to our organization: the club side and the team side.

Our Club: Our club is run by team members who are passionate about coaching and sharing sailing with others. The members who lead the club are US Sailing Certified Instructors who are coaches for local and out-of-state yacht clubs. Our club runs weekly Learn to Sail events, cookouts, and a variety of social activities. With the addition of new boats, our club has seen an exponential increase in attendance to Learn to Sails, which we hope to retain throughout the upcoming semesters. As our capacity to teach increases, so does interest, leading to a continuous need for expansion and improvement.

Our Team: The team is a student-led club sport that sails in regional as well as out-of-conference regattas. In the sport of college sailing, all teams race against each other; yes, that means club and varsity teams sail against each other. The divide in funding and resources is obvious when one looks at scores. However, there are a few club teams that stick out and are competitive against varsity. In the past year, one of those teams has been Florida Tech. While the team has just started to grow our reputation, we are well on our way to rising in the ranks as our student sailors continue to work on growing the team and their skills.

As student sailors, team members work together to organize practices and help each other improve sailing skills. Moreover, we put together funding and event requests on top of planning lessons. Our amazing executive board members put hours of work in to get approval for travel across Florida and out-of-state.

Furthermore, the team also hosts its own regattas that are attended by teams from across the southern region, including the College of Charleston, North Carolina State University, University of Miami, and Jacksonville University. This semester, we held Single-Handed Championships. Coaches from other universities specifically requested our team to host this event after they saw how well we did in the past and their appreciation for the weather conditions in the Melbourne area. Our team is constantly complimented by varsity coaches on our ability to run professional regattas as a student-led team.

Our Accomplishments:

• Over the past year, we have worked diligently and have been fortunate in that we raised over $22,000 from alumni, donors, and our Student Government. This money has gone directly into the club to support the team traveling to Boston, MA, Annapolis, MD, and many other locations across the Atlantic coast.
• This money has also allowed us to increase our regatta-hosting capabilities and purchase brand-new Zim racing sails for our fleet of nine FJs.

We have expanded our horizons to out-of-conference fleet and team racing regattas. Nationally, we are currently ranked 67/177 among college teams.

Our Goals: This semester, we are continuing to fundraise. We are planning to hold an alumni regatta as a fundraising event as well as a way for our club to reconnect with sailors who contributed to our development during their time here at Tech. We are also working on beginning the process of obtaining sponsorship from local corporations in order to connect us with our community.

The club is looking to expand capabilities for Learn to Sail events and the types of sailing we can teach. We have had expanding interest in our club that our leaders are struggling to support and interest in boats we do not have access to. The team is looking to expand keelboat and single-hand proficiency while continuing to improve our expertise and reputation in college dinghy racing. We have so much potential to grow and expand in both the club and competitive college world of sailing. However, we do not want to be held back due to a lack of financial resources. We are asking for donations to help support our causes for both the team and the club. We appreciate anyone who is able to contribute to our growth!