The Marion Bermuda Race is a 501(c)(3) organization and among other educational efforts, supports Youth Sailing programs. Children represent the future of sailing and we hope to encourage their stewardship of, participation in and love of the sport. We believe that sailing helps build leadership, personal responsibility, communication, problem solving and teamwork skills that will benefit and enhance the lives of our world’s children for their future.
Community Boating Center of New Bedford
Community Boating Center
’s mission is to enrich the lives of New Bedford area residents through boating. They use sailing to teach positive life values to the residents and especially the young people of Greater New Bedford.
Community Boating Center of New Bedford (CBC) is a non-profit educational organization which provides people from the Greater New Bedford area with challenging and enriching new experiences through boating. Community Boating Center offers a variety of educational and recreational programs throughout the year built on the rich waterfront heritage of New Bedford. Community Boating Center strives to instill in the young and continue to teach people of all ages the value of integrity, sound judgment, teamwork and environmental awareness. They do this by offering educational opportunities and access to the marine environment, regardless of means, through instruction, mentoring and coaching. Nearly 80% of the children that participate in the summer program attend on a full scholarship. 600 children between the ages of five and sixteen go through the program each summer.
Community Boating Center is a non-profit 501 (c) 3 organization, supported entirely through program fees, grants, and the voluntary contributions of caring and concerned citizens, corporations and foundation.
Courageous Sailing
Transforming children’s lives through sailing
Courageous Sailing envisions a community that embraces sailing as a platform for life-long learning, personal growth and leadership. They provide a center of sailing excellence that is committed to removing barriers to access for all Boston youth, the public and people with physical and intellectual challenges.
Courageous Sailing was established in 1987 as a 501(c)(3) non-profit in a joint effort between the City of Boston Parks and Recreation Department and the late South Boston sailing enthusiast Harry McDonough. Courageous Sailing has since grown into a dynamic, multi-faceted educational facility serving over 1,000 at-risk and disadvantaged children each year. Through the organization’s Courage Curriculum, young sailors develop essential leadership competencies in personal responsibility, communication, problem-solving, teamwork and stewardship. Demand for Courageous Sailing’s programs is at a record high with close to two-thirds (600) of the eager young children who attempt to register for our summer program being turned away due to a lack of sufficient capacity.
The organization’s name was inspired by the America’s Cup 12 meter "Courageous" which once lived at Pier 4 in the Charlestown (MA) Navy Yard. This two-time America’s Cup winner lent its name to Courageous Sailing in the late 1980s. The boat now resides at the Museum of Yachting in Newport, Rhode Island, where it has been restored and is still being raced.
Courageous prides itself on being a leader in community service. Courageous has hosted the Special Olympics Summer Games and has been consistently involved in training Special Olympics athletes. Courageous also has an ongoing partnership with The Carroll Center for the Blind, which holds national blind sailing competitions as well as weekly Sail Blind races at Courageous. In addition, Courageous serves as a venue for local high school sailing team practices, as well as Women’s Keel Boat and Mass Bay elimination events. Courageous has also partnered with Adventure Sail through the Big and Little Sisters organization, an event that has drawn hundreds of women and girls into the sport of sailing.
Changing Lives, One Voyage at a Time, Over Time
The purpose-built sail training vessel is based on civilian schooners constructed by Bermudians, enslaved and free, in the 19th century prior to the Emancipation of Slavery in the British Empire. The original hull shape was adapted from the Bermuda-built RN Shamrock class, fast Dispatch and patrol vessels that ran from the RN Dockyard northwest to Halifax and southwest to Jamaica to contain the rebel colonies. The Bermuda rig was innovated on the coastal sloops that abounded between the 17th and early 19th centuries. Faced with impassable pathways ashore, locals had evolved the lateen rig to short-tack upwind around the island and to the fishing banks windward of Bermuda.
Bermuda Sloop Foundation recognizes that children learn differently, and many of Bermuda’s youths do not acquire information optimally in a traditional classroom setting.
On board our floating classroom, Spirit of Bermuda, we provide character and educational development for these and other Bermuda youth using the unique attributes of structured experiential learning through sail training (learning by doing).
By providing this alternative learning environment, we strive to increase their positive life outcomes, and to create awareness of and pathways to technical, mechanical and marine-related careers for young Bermudians.
