Customer Reviews

Saving Sailing - The Story of Choices, Families, Time Commitments, and How We Can Create a Better Future

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I'm always impressed when a new author puts 'pen to paper'(fingers to keyboard) and puts their own ideas forth in such an engaging and thoughtful read. As a sailor, I've 'met' all the people and heard all the stories Nick discusses but could never have connected all the insights and lessons into such a cohesive argument for change in every individual's and family's approach to sailing and life. Nick connects us to the value of a 'life pastime' with solid data yet told with the open heart of a passionate sailor and story teller. Dedicated sailors will enjoy the read and recognize more about the values sailing offers. However, the lessons taught can be understood and utilized by every family regardless of their personal pastime - fishing, hunting and sailing or 'other'. Certainly an enjoyable and enlightening read.

My wife, a non-sailor, read this book, and now she has a much better understanding of my passion for sailing. She is keen to sail with me and the kids this summer. Very well written, and a compelling argument. I'm going to read it again, then pass it round to anyone at my club.

Recreational sailing has been on a down turn in recent years...why? "Saving Sailing: The Story of Choices, Families, Time Commitments, and How we Can Create a Better Future" uses Sailing as a model to discuss the fall of free time in America as a whole, Nicholas D. Hayes encourages readers to value free time as a source of family time and how more involved activities as a family lead to a greater unity. "Saving Sailing" is preaches the value of leisure and family, highly recommended.

Nick Hayes is in love with sailing. He is one of those people who believes that sailing takes us as close to God as we think we might ever be.

But he is troubled. The numbers tell him that sailing in America is in decline. And he wants to understand why something as rich and rewarding as sailing should be losing popularity. More than that: he wants to work out how to save sailing.

So he has studied sailing and sailors and sailing clubs. He has interviewed more than 1,200 sailors worldwide. He has drawn some fascinating conclusions as to why sailing is decline and what we need to do about it, and he has written all about it in his new book, Saving Sailing.

Actually, in the process of pondering what is happening in sailing, Nick has developed some theories about how people choose to use their free time generally, and how to support any challenging but rewarding inter-generational life-long pursuit. His conclusions are as applicable to making music or hunting or knitting as they are to sailing.

Saving Sailing is a book which challenges you to examine many of your own assumptions about our sport. Time and time again as I read it, I found myself thinking, "Hmmm. That's a good point. How does that relate to my experience at that club or that sailing program? Do I agree with his argument or not?" My mind is still buzzing as I mull over the ideas in this book. I suspect I may revisit some of the issues in future blog posts.

A couple of examples...

Nick argues that one of the reasons that an activity like sailing, a "life pastime" as he calls it, is deep and rich and socially meaningful is that it requires more skill and more time commitment than some "time filler" such as watching TV or surfing the web. Paradoxically fewer people are embracing a life pastime because other options are easier; but those of us who are drawn to a life pastime, like sailing, do so even though it is hard - or perhaps partly because it is hard. Nick concludes that, "If sailors hope that sailing will survive and grow, they won't try and convince others that it is easy. They will rightly call sailing what it is: difficult, time-consuming, evolving, sometimes risky and always worth it."

As someone who was once involved in teaching junior sailing classes, I have always seen the large number of kids involved in junior sailing programs as a healthy sign for the future of our sport. Nick, however, is skeptical about this view. He sees that the vast majority of kids, even those who go on to college sailing, eventually drop sailing from their lives after they graduate college and find more important things to take sailing's place, things like a career and wife and kids. He also sees that, for many families, sailing is just another one of those activities like baseball and ballet and soccer where the parents drop off their kid for some lessons, Mum and Dad are not involved themselves in their kid's sailing, and indeed they often don't even understand what the kid's sport is all about.

After ranging far and wide (and deep) and analyzing the decline in sailing from all angles, Nick develops a set of recommendations for attacking the problem based on a model of mentoring across generations, preferably within the family. He is a strong believer in parents investing in skills so as to be able to transfer skills, in parents doing things with their children not just for them, in parents making difficult time choices in order to share time with their kids in their chosen life pastime.

His vision is compelling. I have seen at least one sailing club where it is working superbly well. I am not totally convinced that Nick's vision is the only way to save sailing, but his book certainly stimulates the reader to think through all these issues.

I would recommend the book to anyone concerned about the future of sailing. If you are a parent who would like your kids to sail you should read the book; it could change your whole approach to sailing as a family. If you are in any kind of leadership position in a sailing club or a community sailing organization, then you should buy some copies of this book for all the officers of your group, read it, and then discuss as a group how you are going to use the ideas presented to improve your program. If, like me, you are just some old dude who loves sailing as much as Nick does, then you should read the book to rouse yourself to work out what you can do to make sure that our sport doesn't decline any more.

Everybody who is involved in sailing must read this. Weekenders, coaches, trainers, regatta sailors, club members, all who share the passion of sailing should think about the future and how to organize this on micro and macro scale. Saving Sailing gives you a start, a hand. The rest you should fill in with your family, club members and class members. It will take a lot of effort, maybe sacrifices, but it is the only way to go. Nice readable book, it will not give all the answers you want but it is the only book available that seriously handle the subject.

Around yacht club bars the lament is common, the number of sailors continues to decline. There is little doubt that Nick Hayes was part of those conversations. In Saving Sailing, Hayes explores the causes of sailing's decline. It is apparent that Hayes is passionate sailor, one who has, in his own terms, adopted sailing as a life pastime.

Central to Hayes's thesis is the notion that apart from the pleasures gained from sailing, the real cause of sailing's decline is the absence of mentors and the social relations developed while acquiring sailing skills. He argues that a passion for sailing develops through the family and mentor relations one has while learning to sail. Sailing competes for scarce time in a fragmented and structured world of family and child recreation, a social structure that obstructs the kind of personal relationships that sailing needs in order to attract and keep new sailors.

Hayes makes some compelling arguments based upon his own survey "research" and observations of turn of the century middle class American culture. Ones with which I mostly agree. However, this book falls short on a couple of points, therefore, four not five stars.

First, while Hayes cites his own research and survey he does not provide adequate documentation on how he obtained his data. If one is going to make a data based argument, one ought to provide sufficient information on how the data was obtained. Hayes fails on this point. An appendix to the book or even a page on his website detailing his survey methodology would go a long way towards bolstering his position. (This comment refers to the first printing. The author has provided a link to his blog that describes his research methods. See his comments in the comment section. Review edited on 10/21/09)

A second issue are his composite stories. Throughout the book Hayes presents fictional stories based on composites of real people. Perhaps the person who failed to enlist his family's support of his sailing passion might want to remain anonymous, however, successful sailors might enjoy hearing their story told. Sailing club officers should certainly hear these stories. Fictionalized stories, however many elements might be true, serve to undermine his argument more than support it. A stronger approach would have been to highlight how well known and lesser known sailors became lifelong passionate sailors.

These limitations aside, Saving Sailing is a must read for sailing club officers, especially for those clubs facing declining membership. Although my club is growing, this suggestion will be made to the officers.

Dave Lochner
Nauticalreads

This book is not just about Sailing, but is really about saving all family oriented activities. The author is a strong advocate for getting involved in activities WITH your kids, and not just being a spectator. This activity might be sailing, or it could be hunting, or camping, or sewing, or whatever else you choose it to be. Choose to learn something well, and as Hayes points out maybe it will become a pastime. Then, choose to become a mentor and share your knowledge and experiences with others.
A great book and recommended read for anyone, but especially for those who find themselves constantly running from one child's activity to the next!

I'd heard about the book for weeks before I ordered it. From all that I'd heard, I was wary of what I'd get out of the book. Sailing is for me, a lifetime pastime. Until I read this book, I understood what sailing meant to me, but I didn't have a phrase to distill that knowledge into a powerful concept.

The book was a tremendous surprise. I'd expected a lot of things from the book based on what I'd heard. I'd watched a YouTube video where the author presented some of the research he'd gathered while writing it. I was cautious about the book. While caring very much about this lifetime pastime of mine, so much of what is in the media, from sailing magazines to online forums doesn't connect with what it is to me. That there is an industry, and advertising and people whose jobs depend on this recreational industry, I don't really care about that. I assume that what I need to continue to sail will always be there. I don't want to read about it.

Would a book about the `State of the Union' of sailing be compelling? Or would it miss the mark about what sailing is? To me?

Sailing can jolt you out of your day to day life. There you are, sailing smoothly along, and something rears up and wakes you up; startles you with a situation that you didn't expect or anticipate, and now have to deal with - because your life depends on it.

Nick Hayes wrote a book that does just that. Read all of the reviews, buy the book, and you'll be surprised when something in the book does something to you that you did not expect. He weaves compelling stories into the fabric of his book. Beautiful stories that are a joy to read because they are about people you know in life. Some of them are about you. They make you laugh, they make you cry. If you sail, fish, hike, if you do something to enrich your life, enrich the lives of those close to you, then these stories will connect powerfully with you.

Then he confronts you with statements like:

"Asymmetrical commitment is the sad socioeconomic consequence of the charter. It turns the pastime into a crutch for some and a whim for everyone else."

Ah yes, I can hear my mother's lament:

"John, don't grow up to be a boat bum"

LOL

Does Paul Cayard realize he is crippled? Is his involvement in a major sailing event a crutch?

As a Professional Sailor, has the socioeconomic consequence of his making a living from it changed it? Or does the joy of sailing permeate his every day life?

Does Paul, a very successful boat bum, lead a joyful life? Does he sail with his family?

Can the same be said for a coach of a major league sports team?

What this book does is compel you to get into a discussion about what is important. Your job or what you do outside of your job. Your family, or the world outside your family. For Sailors, or Would-Be-Sailors, this book is about how their lives revolve around their lifelong pastime. For non-sailors, this book is about what is important to their lives.

I bought it thinking I was going to read a book.

It turned into a discussion.

Bravo!

"Page by page, insight by insight, I thought Hayes wrote this book just for me and my wife. We're at the formative stages of family life with our two year old son Jack, and I really think Nick's book will help us `find our thing...and help us do it as a family.' Maybe our thing is sailing!"

---Bill Goggins

Saving Sailing is not just about sailing. I recommend it to all parents, mentors and forward thinkers. The author has done a great job of taking complicated issues and reducing them to writing. The concepts discussed will help me be a better husband, father, and mentor.

Chapter 3: "That is what life is: time, subject to choices about how it will be spent. This book suggests that one measure of the health of a society is how its people collectively use...it...to the benefit of individuals, families, and communities as a whole."

Chapter 4: "Youth programs create a third dimention of competition: that for the time of the child within the family."

Chapter 9: "Things worth a lifetime learning curve are things that perpetually challenge and amaze ...throughout a lifetime.... Complexity is not what makes sailing unpopular; it is one of the prime things that makes sailing great"