The Wind in Our Sails

For true Bostonians, the Community Boating Initiative needs little introduction. Nestled along the Charles River Esplanade, between the Hatch Shell and Longfellow Bridge, CBI is the oldest and largest community boating program in the U.S. As the nonprofit turns 80, its philosophy of “Sailing for All” lives on through staff, volunteers, and members—but more than anything, through the unexpected role this community has played in shaping and saving lives in Boston.

Learning the Ropes

Prior to Community Boating, Boston’s sailing scene was an exclusive affair; an elitist pastime for wealthy Boston WASPs. Seeking to upend this convention, Joe Jr. Lee, scion of a Beacon Hill Brahmin family, founded a loose program designed to introduce immigrant kids from the West End of Boston to the joy of sailing.

In 1937, he offered any child $20 to build a boat at a meeting Joe convened in the basement of the West End Community Center. These simply constructed boats, and Joe’s guidance, gave these kids not only access to recreation, but also taught them discipline, inspired perseverance, built confidence, and connected them to nature.

Joe’s first offer was so popular that by that first summer 100 members were captaining seven boats off the Charlesbank dock. It was not always smooth sailing—Joe’s first homemade boats were told to turn around and not sail west of the Longfellow Bridge by both the state recreation department as well as MIT’s sailing school, which considered these boats, or perhaps the people sailing them, not seaworthy. Over time, though, Lee was able to get the governor to put allocated parts of Helen Storrow’s financial legacy toward building the community boathouse that is still there today. But leadership disputes over who should run the boathouse remained for years.

Soon though, Lee’s earliest sailing acolytes returned after serving in Europe for World War II and reignited the cause. Nostalgic for their upbringing and battle-tested, these returning sailors formally incorporated and began operating CBI in 1946.

“The docks are public, you are welcome, please come in…”

In 80 years, CBI has grown by magnitudes. What started out as an initiative serving 100 kids in the first summer, CBI staff now checks out boats 25,000 times each season. This includes boats checked out to guests as well as a membership of 1,000 adult novice sailors, 3,000 returning adult sailors, and another thousand in the junior program. The water boils with activity when all 200 boats are deployed at once.

And yet Kate Ferris Richardson, Executive Director, wants more. With a wry smile, she conveys how sailing promotes mindfulness in a disconnected era by joking that while sailing, “the wind in my ears blows out all the thoughts of my brain.” Ferris Richardson wants to highlight the community part of CBI, and it shows. She emphasizes that the docks are public and that people, including non-members, should feel welcome.

“We take ‘Sailing for All’ very seriously, but we take the community of Community Boating to heart.”

“We grow our Staff”

Programs around the country write to CBI with one question repeated more than all the others—how do you hire and keep staff? Sam Pierson, Director of Operations, has an answer that sounds like a joke, but isn’t.

“We don’t hire staff as much as we grow our staff.”

Noah Stern, Director of Adult Programs and Fleet Maintenance, and Evan McCarty, Director of Auxiliary Services, are living proof that CBI’s philosophy works.

Stern first came to CBI as a junior sailor, then sought work at the front desk because he thought he wasn’t yet good enough at sailing to teach it. A decade later, there is scarcely a department he hasn’t worked in or led.

McCarty can even show you his early days if you ask. Tucked in a corner of the boathouse stairwell is a photo of two boys, aged 10 and looking miserable. McCarty’s credibly confirms their misery because he is one of the two pictured. He was a “dollar kid,” referring to the sliding scale, low-cost junior sailing program also generally known as the $1 membership program. Previously, you had to ask in person for reduced rates; now this is managed automatically online.

Despite his initial misery though, McCarty seems to have climbed every rung of the CBI ladder: junior sailor at the age of 10, instructor-in-training (IIT) at 13, dock staff at 16.

Both McCarty and Stern talk about personal growth—not their own so much as what they and others at CBI have passed on to others.

McCarty’s first example is a staffer, Addison, whom he watched move up through the program just as he had. First a junior sailor, then instructor-in-training, then dock staff, at the time one of the youngest dockmasters CBI has ever appointed.

McCarty, himself a former EMT for a number of years, was especially attuned when Addison was reluctant to admit he wanted to be a paramedic. In response, McCarty talked Addison into a free city cadet program, and as a result, Addison has now been an EMT serving Boston for a year and a half. Colleagues have started referring to Addison as McCarty’s son. McCarty's own description feels full circle: he’s one of my very best friends, and I treat him as a mentor to me now.

Likewise, Stern coaches young CBI staffers, most starting at 15 or 16, in the basics of what is typically their first job, but more so how to “take that first step into being an adult.” How to show up on time, how to write a professional email. How to talk to strangers. Stern talks about a former dock staffer, who now designs autonomous marine research vessels in California, who recently wrote to thank him saying, “Everything I know about how to be a human being and how to work at a job,” he wrote, “I learned at Community Boating.”

“Learning means having permission to be bad at something”

Anna Braun, Volunteer Services Manager, previously worked at a marina where $50,000 boats went out once a summer, and then languished under spider webs the rest of the year; a far cry from her current work at the nation’s leading sailing nonprofit. As a relatively recent addition to the CBI crew, she decided that “Community Boating was more about community and then, secondarily, about sailing.” After walking in solo a few years ago, Braun now runs an instruction and volunteer corps of about 130.

Braun teaches volunteers that it’s okay to be bad at something in public. These aren’t just words; Braun narrates this lesson in the action of two students who hit the Longfellow Bridge twice in a single afternoon. Thinking they were in trouble, they came to Anna apologizing. Her response was to ask whether they wanted her to tow them upwind for a while so they could try again.

“There’s so much room to make mistakes and learn by just kind of playing,” she says, and the boats are built for it—“bow bumpers come back cracked pretty much every single summer, which is what bow bumpers are for.”

Watching the Water

While mistakes can make learning that lasts, safety and vigilance make it possible—or so implies Sam Pierson, Director of Operations. To that end, he notes that the phrase “watch the water” is carved around the dock house as a reminder. As we talk, Pierson insists on facing the river, scanning the horizon for distressed sailors, and he also checks the radar on his phone for the puffy cumulus clouds that often herald stronger gusts. I’m skeptical anything out of the ordinary will happen on such a low wind and beautiful day.

As if to mock my hubris, radio static from Pierson’s walkie-talkie immediately cuts our conversation short, and we both hear that a Boston duck boat requests immediate assistance near the Museum of Science. Before the request even clicks off, Pierson is striding toward the launch boat before powering across the waters of the Charles.

Rescues seem to be a dime a dozen around Community Boating. When I ask around, Stern tells me I’d have to help him “narrow it down” about which one.

Stern recalls a spring afternoon when a state trooper appeared in a rush to ask for a boat immediately. Reports had come in that several Boston University sailing boats had capsized upriver in 50-degree water without the ability to rescue themselves. Stern took two troopers aboard and headed for the BU sailing area in the river basin. They were first to arrive at the scene where a violent gust had flattened the BU fleet and each sailor was in 50-degree water without wetsuits. Before marine units arrived, they’d already pulled six or seven sailors out, several showing early signs of hypothermia. The gust wasn’t unusual for the Charles. The water temperature was. “If we hadn’t gotten there as quickly as we did,” Stern says carefully, “there would have been some less-than-ideal outcomes.” He understates that he likely saved seven lives.

Even off-site, the CBI staff can save the day. One recent summer, two kayakers went over near the Mass. Avenue bridge—no life jackets, two dogs aboard, and by some accounts not much sobriety. McCarty, even being off-site, heard a statewide emergency broadcast to try to locate nearby responders. Although not on-site himself, McCarty contacted Pierson, who was already on the water to go respond. Pierson was first on the scene and pulled the pair out—they’d reached the stage of drowning where they were clawing at the hull of the rescue boat. Both Pierson and McCarty received a commendation for life-saving, and they make it sound like it was just another day.

A Reason to Live

Not every rescue by CBI happens on the water. Pierson tells this one carefully and prefaces it by saying he can only get through it because he has told it enough times not to cry. He starts by telling me about a Boston resident who lost his wife to COVID. That man walked out along the Esplanade intending to end his life that day. He instead passed the boathouse, went in instead, found the presence of people comforting, stayed, and learned to sail. He has since told the staff that they are the reason he is alive.

“That right there,” Pierson says, “is why I will happily work seven days a week, 15-hour days. That’s what it’s about.” He speaks flatly, without sentiment, and then looks back out at the water.