The Optimist fleet sailing off the National Sailing Centre

Around the world many sports have seen a decline in numbers in recent years, sailing is no exception. The young these days have a lot of choices in their lives.  The rise of cyber-games and extreme sports has detracted away from some of the traditional pastimes. ISAF has recognised this world-wide decline in many sports and commenced a program known as “Connect-to-Sailing” to curtail and even reverse the decline in the sport of sailing. To this end, Connect-to-Sailing programs are now running in France, USA, Australia, Great Britain and Brazil.

Singapore, being an island nation, is in a good position to promote a range of water sports. Furthermore the high population density of the island means there are large numbers of people in close proximity to water-sports facilities.

SingaporeSailing is built on the young. There was a big push to get the young into the sport through the National Optimist Sailing Scheme starting from the late 80s. Currently, through the learn-to-sail and learn-to-race programmes, we are training about 1000 new sailors every year, and have 600 who are regularly racing.

SingaporeSailing aims to get every child to experience sailing during Primary school. Sailing is a life-time sport that will develop independence, inspire confidence and equip the students with knowledge of currents, winds, tides, geography and the marine environment. We believe that everyone can benefit from learning to sail.

Riding on the waves of our athletes’ outstanding performance at regional and international meets, the profile of the sport has gone up tremendously. More primary and secondary schools are now offering sailing as a co-curricular activity, and the number of sailors taking to the waters has experienced an overwhelming increase.

To cater to this surge in popularity, SingaporeSailing has sought the cooperation of clubs and sea sports centres to provide learning and training facilities for sailors of all levels. With SingaporeSailing as the coordinating arm, and the various sailing centres functioning as accessible venues to pick up and continue practising the sport, “Connect-to-Sailing” programmes will be full steam ahead. We also intend to bring the sport into the heartlands by using reservoirs as possible venues for leisure sailing.