What is in store for 2010 at Annapolis Community Boating

With spring around the corner, boaters are gearing up. Annapolis Community Boating is right there with them, having accumulated an impressive fleet almost overnight.

It’s a nice problem to have. A year ago, ACB had no boats and no track record, just an idea. What if, we wondered, we offered boating to people who’d never tried it before? Would they respond?

We arranged Sunday “Free Sails” out of City Dock, where 20 or 30 newbies could come down each week for a dockside skull session, then a three-hour sail. The plan was to run from April to July. Six months later we’d booked every seat every Sunday into October and added Thursday evening sessions to handle the overflow.

The Free Sail boats were borrowed. Then around midsummer we took up an offer from a nonprofit, Spirit of America, for a fleet of small craft in return for training kids in safe boating. Now we have four new aluminum powerboats, 10 kayaks, five canoes and four sailboats to look after.

We ran 34 middle schoolers through Spirit’s safe boating classes and also organized sailboat match races for high schoolers in J-105s. We’ve been busy.

But not as busy as we’ll be this year. ACB plans to put on 10 of the week-long safe boating seminars for youngsters this summer and repeat the Free Sail sessions at City Dock, which welcomed an astonishing 450 folks ranging in age from 8 to 80.

We still haven’t finalized a home base but we’re close. The long-term goal is to duplicate and improve upon what’s been done recently at dozens of waterfront towns and cities around the country, creating an open, friendly, community-based program to bring people into boating. It’s about making it easy for folks to take up the sport.

Some day soon we’ll have a base for would-be boaters to come to, sit around the dock, learn a little, and get out and explore the water for the first time. There’s no greater gift than sharing what you love, and it’s fun. Join us.