Discussing Sail To Prevail’s new partnership with CEO Paul Callahan

by David Schmidt, Sail-World USA Editor on 17 Oct 2016 According Lao Tzu’s writing in the Tao Te Ching, “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” While this can be a bit too philosophical for some sailors, Sail To Prevail, a Rhode Island-based non-profit that aims to help people with disabilities triumph over their personal challenges and hardships through the sport of sailing, is proving that the philosophical can become reality for Boston-based children and adults who have been affected by emotional, physical or mental disabilities, thanks to a powerful new partnership program with Harvard University’s Sailing Team.

Sail To Prevail (established 1982) has long used sailing as curriculum to help teach people with disabilities the powerful-but-sometimes elusive life lessons of self-confidence and leadership-tools that they can apply to all other facets of their personal and professional lives-and each year the non-profit exposes some 1,000 new sailors to the sport in Newport, Rhode Island and Nantucket, Massachusetts aboard a fleet of specially modified sailboats. This curriculum just took a turn for the Ivy League thanks to this newly announced partnership, which began as a three-year pilot program, and which has now become part of the formal experience for Harvard University’s sailing team.

The partnership runs during fall months (ballpark twice a week, weather permitting) and brings disabled students and adults out on the Charles River, where they sail and practice next to Harvard University’s sailing team. According to Sail To Prevail’s CEO Paul Callahan (himself a Harvard University alumnus, as well as a two-time Paralympic sailor), the disabled sailors share on-the-water time with the Harvard sailors, who are ferried between their raceboats and the adaptive boats by their coaches.

The net result is that Harvard sailors end up spending roughly 15 percent of their practice time working with Sail To Prevail’s instructors and the disabled sailors themselves, adding another dimension to the Harvard students’ educations, while also directly giving back to the community. The program was jointly conceived and designed by Callahan and Michael O’Conner, Harvard’s head sailing coach, and is specifically tailored to amplify the positive outcomes for both groups of sailors.

Impressively, this partnership is already demonstrating that both groups can simultaneously be teachers and students, while making today-and tomorrow-brighter for all involved.

As Lao Tzu wrote, “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”

I caught up with Callahan via email to learn more about this powerful new partnership program.

Can you give me some background on how Sail To Prevail and Harvard University got started on the three-year pilot program that lead to this new and exciting partnership?

Coach Michael O’Connor [and I] entered into a conversation that ultimately combined the best attributes of both organizations, and [we] have nurtured this concept together since inception in 2013. This collaboration has resulted in a true working partnership.

Coach O’Connor indicated that the Harvard sailors had so much untapped potential as human beings–and could offer much more to the world with the correct outlet, especially given their experienced and well-rounded perspectives.

Sail To Prevail’s successful mission over the last 20 years has been to effectively change people’s lives through therapeutic sailing. Now, as Sail To Prevail is entering Phase II of its evolution, the organization is now teaching others to instruct disabled children and adults to sail, succeed and contribute. The Harvard sailor-athletes were a perfect fit to extend this paradigm and were eager to take on this unique challenge.

What are the main goals of this partnership?
For Sail To Prevail, this extends the reach of its mission by teaching others to apply its already successful “model,” as well as expand its geographic base.

For the Harvard Sailing Team, the partnership creates an opportunity to share their talents with others who would never have this opportunity to learn the sport of sailing, and-equally important-learn the corresponding [embedded] life lessons. Overarching this demonstration of compassion and quest for excellence in sailing, these activities are being performed nearly simultaneously at Harvard. This methodology allows for an efficient use of precious time on the overbearing demands on an Ivy League student-athlete.

For the neighboring communities of Allston, Brighton and Cambridge, and metropolitan Boston, it is a unique alternative for the disabled children and adults to experience something that until now, could be considered far beyond their reach, even though Harvard is in their “backyard.”

Can interested and qualified students from outside of this area also participate?
Yes, space permitting, we would certainly take participants from anywhere, similar to what we do in our programs in Newport, Rhode Island, and Nantucket, Massachusetts.

Will this partnership focus on racing skills, or will it focus more on seamanship and boat handling, in order to teach leadership skills? Can you give me some more info on the format that the partnership will use for its on-the-water time?

One of the keys to the partnership is that the Sail To Prevail instructors and the Harvard University Varsity Sailors have an innate, special gift to quickly recognize a participant’s unique interest, intellectual aptitude, and physical ability. Coach O’Connor and I can tailor each “lesson” to the specific desire of the participant.

Most participants have never been on a boat previously. Consequently, there is a significant amount of compassion and patience demonstrated by the Harvard sailors, in conjunction with the Sail To Prevail instructors, while identifying what goals would best fit each participant.

The ultimate attainable milestone is for the Harvard sailors to pass on and instill a sense of [self-]confidence to anyone that anything is possible, and that it can start on a sailboat.

After some basic discussion regarding working with people with disabilities, the Sail To Prevail instructors and the Harvard Sailors work together on a case-by-case situation to attempt to provide the maximum benefit to each disabled person.

The next phase will be to work with the Harvard Sailors to develop a handbook that could be universally used by others. One of the primary longer-term goals of this partnership would be to further perfecting the “teaching teachers” concept.

Will Sail To Prevail student-athletes be on the same boats as Harvard students, or will they be sailing aboard Catalina 20s that are crewed by other Sail To Prevail student-athletes and share the coaching/chase boats with the Harvard sailors?
The platform of choice that is currently being utilized by the partnership is the boat that Sail To Prevail utilizes in its current sailing therapy programs, which is the Independence 20 (a handicap-adapted Catalina 20).

The normal afternoon practice consists of Coach O’Connor shuttling the Harvard Sailors, two at a time, on and off their own 420s or FJs, and onto the Catalina 20s. This smooth rotation allows Coach O’Connor to continue a normal practice [for his team], as usual.

What is particularly of note is that Coach O’Connor has the disabled lessons taking place right beside the regular Varsity practice, so the participants almost feel as if they are part of the Harvard Team.

What do you see as the biggest take-away benefits for the Sail To Prevail student-athletes?
The disabled participants are gaining the universal transferable skills of leadership, teamwork and self-confidence, while applying them to life’s daily challenges. As the more obvious by-product, they are learning to sail–and on a body of water that they have [likely] only driven by for years. They [likely] never imagined being able to experience what it is like to be on the Charles River.

What about the biggest take-aways for the Harvard students?
Some might say that the Harvard student-athletes have lived a very fruitful life that centers on continually looking forward and perhaps, inward. This program serves as an enormous “compensating balance”, whereby these student-athletes eagerly share their skills with others who are less fortunate.

All aspects of this dynamic takes place in the normal day of a Harvard student without interruption, whereby the pressures on their time is enormous, yet this unique program combines both competition and compassion at the same time.

Further, it allows the Harvard student-athletes to participate in the grander process of integrating disabled people into society, with both the Harvard sailors and the disabled participants making a positive joint contribution, for a “greater good.”

Is there anything else that you’d like to add, for the record?
Harvard University and Coach Michael O’Connor should be commended for nurturing and endorsing this groundbreaking program. This unique combination and formula is a very specific ‘’win-win-win’’ situation for the Harvard student-athletes, disabled people from the surrounding communities, as well as Sail To Prevail – The National Disabled Sailing Program.