Highlight - Fleet 113 - Single-handed Racing at BYC

Let me start this off by giving a background on Berlin Yacht Club. We started single-handed racing 6 years ago with the idea of allowing people to show up with whatever they owned as long as you single-hand. We have seen a huge success in this program with us scoring Portsmouth, doing a single start and short windward/leeward races.

Things have changed in the world and in our world of single-handed sailing at Berlin Yacht Club we have seen a positive change. It was disappointing to not be hosting the NAs at BYC this year, and even so we have seen a huge increase in our single-handed program.

We started off our season late due to COVID and it started off with small numbers. Since then we have averaged about 14 boats on the line every Tuesday. We have not seen less than 12 since July and as many as 18.

This larger group has really changed the environment as many sailors are seeing this amount of boats at the line for the first time. This has provided us with a great basis for learning for new people as it brings the elements of large fleets to our weekly racing.

Another thing we have seen in our club is the number of people contacting us to join the club and/or come out and experience sailing. Some are people coming back to sailing and others are jumping onto a boat for the first time. Our Tuesday night racing has really helped in getting these new people a chance to try out sailing. Although we do not have club boats, we do have many members who own multiple boats and we have been lending out almost all of them every week.