 Good morning everybody. Today we're at Burlington Community Sailing Center on the shore is a beautiful and scenic Lake Champlain. I'm joined today by Owen Myle who is the executive director and I'm really excited to get to know community sailing better this morning. Starting off how many years has your organization been here? So we've been here about 29 years this year. Wow that's a long time and what are some of the lessons you guys learned and what do you do? So we started you know 29 years ago our founders realized that sailing had become a little unaffordable for a large part of the population and that was tied up into the idea of boat ownership so we really kind of got started by creating a fleet of boats that people could rent and come down and learn to sail on and and reduce that barrier of accessing sailing in Lake Champlain and ever since then it's just about identifying someone's barrier to access and breaking down that barrier so that people can go out and enjoy sailing on Lake Champlain. Wow that's really good mission I'm happy to hear that. What program specifically do you guys offer to new sailors? So it varies quite a bit we a lot of what you'll see as you would be down here on a day like today would be a lot of summer campers so we serve about 500 kids in summer camp but what you'll also see are about a couple dozen adults that are coming down to learn how to sail and they're learning to sail so that they can eventually you know come down and start renting and going out of the lake on their own and then you know beyond that we offer programs for individuals with physical and cognitive disabilities we offer paddleboard and kayak and canoe rentals for people that haven't yet learned to sail but want to go out and enjoy the lake. Wow that's really great to hear that you guys are expanding accessibility to Lake Champlain. My next question is if you've been sailing for a few years kind of in the intermediate range are you able to come down in here and rent a sailboat? Yeah so we're actually one of the community sailing centers that has really made it very easy so as long as anybody knows how to sail all we have is a fairly rudimentary written test that our team kind of works with somebody to make sure that they know how they're doing and what they've got going on and then we've got kind of a clearly defined area in Burlington Bay where we let people go out and venture and explore the lake on their own. That's awesome so next question is something that you mentioned previously how are you guys working to break down a lot of the barriers to entering the sport I know you mentioned rentals and early programs but maybe talk about how you get kids to come here and start learning at a young age which really can ingrain them into the sport. Yeah so it started by reducing that financial barrier to access both through boat ownership but then we started creating a scholarship specifically for individuals that couldn't afford to either rent or learn to sail or send their kid to summer camp and so so that's what we eventually started breaking down was that financial barrier to access and then as I mentioned with you know things related to disability and physical limitations we acquired adaptive equipment and we partnered with Vermont Adaptive to reduce those barriers to access. One of the next groups who worked with were you know we'd noticed that there was a gender disparity between men and women participating in the sport and so we created gender specific programming for women and girls to participate in sailing and then more recently we've created the diversity access initiative to increase diversity among black indigenous people of color to have their kids come through for sailing camp so that's been the more recent barrier that we've worked to overcome. Yeah super super important in terms of getting diversity so before we started the interview you mentioned that you've been here about five years so some what were some of the changes you had to make during COVID and have all of them all of those been kind of brought back to pre-COVID or have you stuck with some of those? Yeah well one of the first things we had to do was we had to cancel our floating classrooms program so when the schools let out we weren't able to run that STEM education program and but at the same sense we know that you know summer camp is kind of like glorified childcare in a lot of ways so the one of the first things we did was actually to open a childcare facility open our doors childcare facility for essential personnel at the time and and then that summer as we transitioned into 2020 we had to make the choice of you know are we gonna be a facility for adults or are we gonna be a facility for children because we couldn't do both and that year we had we just focused on summer camp. Fortunately for us is that you know this year a lot of those restrictions have lifted so we're able to open our doors for everyone and then the other thing that we did starting in the pandemic was you know weren't well known for hosting cool fundraising events so what we created was the flotilla concert which is you know if you've ever heard of a drive-in movie we actually created a float up concert where we put a stage right at the edge of the water and then invite people to arrive by boat and watch a concert from their boat so we're gonna do that again this year we hope that all of you will you know consider coming to float till again this year. Do you know when that event is gonna be taking place? July 16th and the one benefit about it this year too is that because of some of the restrictions lifting we're able to offer a general admission ticket so if somebody doesn't have a boat they can just you know pay and come enjoy a concert on the dock right in front of the stage. Oh that sounds like something I want to do so yeah I might come down for that. So tell me now about your background I know I mentioned previously you started five years ago what drew you to this location in this organization? Yeah so I had been one of those kids who couldn't have afforded summer camp on my own and then one day you know somebody who was running a summer camp had said to my parents hey we'd love to have Owen come by my parents were like we can't afford you know summer camp and he said it's fine he can you know come wash dishes we'll scholarship it and that was a real big you know inflection point for me summer camp is this cool thing where you know it's not school and it's not home it's this in-between world and and that you know really changed things for me and you know fast forward decades later and I'm not so responsible single dad and I'm shopping for summer camp for my daughter in June and the only thing left is math camp and sailing camp and I had said to my daughter so how do you feel about sailing camp she's like well I'm not so sure I'm like sorry let me rephrase that you're going to sailing camp and and she said okay and interestingly in her three weeks here I saw a lot of the same positive changes for her that I had experienced and so you know fast forward about another decade later and this job opportunity came up and I did some research I realized that the sailing center scholarships about one out of every three kids who come through our door and it was that realization for me that I would have the opportunity to amplify and replicate what I had experienced the young person for other kids in the community and I really amazing speaking from personal experience going to camp I think it really helps with the independent aspect because you're not around your parents you get to make more of your own decisions which you kind of don't get in school and when you're at home so how many boats do you guys have in your fleet so it's a it's a big range you know if you look at everything from paddleboards to you know 23-foot sonars we have over 150 in the total fleet yeah but we have about eight killboats about 30 adult dinghies you know and then about another 30 plus kids dinghies is part of our camping so if I wanted to come down here on the weekend what are your hours of operations and what would be the process to rent a boat yeah so on the weekends we operate from 9 a.m. until 8 30 p.m. generally we send out the last renters at 6 30 because you can rent for two hours and I'm sorry that's nine to eight 9 8 30 and you know what you would do is come down and take a quick written test and our people would make sure that you knew how to sail and then once you're given the clear you can grab your sail walk right down to the dock and either launch your boat if you're taking a dingy or go out to one of the killboats and sail from there if you're coming down to use paddleboard you don't have to take a written test to go do that you just come right down give us your information and then you know go ahead and take a paddleboard or a kayak out and how long is your season how long do you guys stay open for that sort of daily rentals will happen through until Labor Day then we switched to weekends but we're renting straight through till Indigenous People's Day in mid-October okay that's a lot longer than I've heard other places yeah so it's good to have that accessibility yeah so if I have a boat that I wanted to launch could I use your facility as a boat launch or no not yet we are working on a project to expand our waterfront and once we do we're actually going to be breaking ground on that this fall hopefully once we've finished our fundraising we'll be able to have a facility that's more conducive for people to launch their you know small sailboats and will that be a source of revenue for you guys or will that be free it depends on the size of the boat if it's something that you can hand trailer down yourself we probably wouldn't charge for it if you're just going to be walking it out a ramp if you would be using a full-on hoist hoist into the water that's something would be a paid a paid service okay well that's all the questions I have do you have anything else you want to add before we leave thank you for thinking of us and and I hope you're able to make it down for the flotilla concert yeah definitely I really want to thanks for meeting with me appreciate it and have a good day yeah you too all right