US Sailing President Gary Jobson talks - where to from here? Part 2

by David Schmidt on 18 Sep 2010 A Conversation with the President (Part Two)

Sailing in the U.S. is at an interesting crossroads: participation is down, competing rating rules are creating confusion, the America’s Cup has a long way to go before it can reclaim its halcyon days of 2007, and even American Olympic sailing—when taking the long view—has seen a decline in earned medals since the 1980s and early 1990s.

But all is far from doom and gloom: day-glow green shoots abound with the Cup, US SAILING Team AlphaGraphics has been on a roll recently, and while we’re still looking at an alphabet soup with rating rules, US SAILING, the national governing body of sailing in the States, is looking strong.

To find out more about what’s going on, I caught up with Gary Jobson, the current president of US SAILING, as well as a well-respected sailing journalist and a former America’s Cup winner, to get his pulse on what’s going at US SAILING and around the country. [N.B., this is Part Two of a two-part interview with Jobson; Part One ran in the September 8 issue.]

What have been your biggest organizational challenges since taking the job?

The biggest organizational challenge—and it’s not just US SAILING, it’s across the board—is that yacht clubs are volunteer maintained. But because we all have such busy lives [now], volunteer life is waning. As a result, yacht clubs have bigger staffs, and we have to rely on paid staff. We’re never going to be able to afford 400 employees at US SAILING, and people aren’t getting rich working here — you do it because you love sailing. The shift is how do we keep people engaged without overwhelming a staff, [and] to balance that with this trend that people have less volunteer time. My philosophy is, ‘let’s do fewer things better’. This is part of my Year Two plan…trying to do everything for everybody that has to do with water might not be the best thing for us.

As a former America's Cup winner, what are your thoughts on AC34?

First of all, the America's Cup is a venerable, old event with a long history of weird things happening. If you look at the history, a lot of contentious things have happened, but nothing that compares to the outrageous events that happened [with] the 33rd America’s Cup. It was not good for sailing. Larry Ellison and Russell Coutts have a really good opportunity to get the America’s Cup back on track so that’s it’s exciting, and so that it generates interest in sailing.

To do that, here’s what they need to do: They need a new boat that’s exciting, but is matched up pretty closely… I’m old enough that I probably tend in the monohull direction, but I’m also open-minded enough to know that if you had two even cats, that could be really cool. Now we have the cat announcement it will be fascinating to see what happens from here.

I also think we can do something new with the course, starting on a reach maybe. You’d have to design for a reach, but [it is] sailing’s fastest point of sail.

The next thing is that the America’s Cup has gotten so expensive that very few people can play the game. Now it’s always been expensive and it always will be, but not like this. We’re not exactly setting the world on fire economically right now, so having an outrageous event that costs 100 million dollars won’t really relate to the general public, so the event has to cost less. You do that by [using] almost standard boats, limiting the amount of time that you can sail, or limiting salaries as we do in other sports. The less it costs, the greater the participation.

But this whole trend since 2000 where anybody can sail with anybody doesn’t cut it. The World Cup meant something to people because the Dutch team were all Dutch, the German team all German, and the American team all American. You do this one thing and the world is going to take notice big-time

So, cut the cost, make it affordable and the boats somewhat even, then put nationals on the boats… My point being, I think we have a lot of talent in this country. Most people [in the general public] have no clue who these people are on these boats, but if you have an all-American team, you’d find far more people cheering for that boat…that was the magic of the ’87 Cup. Dennis Conner was brilliant to name his boat Stars & Stripes.

As President of US SAILING, what are your thoughts on the recent phenomenon of young, sometimes-qualified teenagers attempting to solo circumnavigate?

I think it’s a bad idea to send very young people on long ocean passages singlehanded. I have three daughters, all in their 20s and out of college now, but there’s no way I would have sent them across an ocean by themselves at the age of 14. The problem you have with this stuff is ‘who pays for their rescue?’ With Abby Sunderland …to send her to the Southern Ocean in the winter…even the Volvo Ocean Race guys go there in the summer, they don’t go down there in June…they go there in January. As far as the rescue, should you have to put up a bond?

The Australians spent some two million dollars to go get [Abby Sunderland ]. Fourteen is very young to do this, so I think it should not happen. Parents need to take more responsibility and not live vicariously through [their] kid. I’m not in favor of it at all.

What do you consider to be the most interesting happenings in sailing at the moment?

I like the fact that people are rediscovering long-distance racing. Secondly, one-design sailing seems to be an answer to a lot of things in sailing. As far as what’s got my attention, I like boats that go fast; this [recent] Little America’s Cup was really interesting. I think team racing is pretty cool…I think team racing should be in the Olympics.

Anything that you’d like to add?

The most important thing is to go out sailing on your own. And once you do that, try to get one new person into the sport.

Many thanks to Gary Jobson for taking the time to talk