Sam,

I accidentally omitted a mid-atlantic venue- my apologies. I would love more community sailing centers around the country! In Boston, we are fortunate enough to have several... unfortunately the "high performance" boat at these centers are lasers and 420s (plus windsurfers at Community Boating Boston). For a community sailing center, a premium has to be put on boats that can sustain constant use (abuse) for an entire summer with minimal maintenance. If you have ever watched the MIT rec sailors and community boating sailors run boats into the esplanade, into the bridges, into each other... you'll know what I mean!

Unfortunately, for high performance boats, private ownership seems much more likely. The Canadian 49er class started a boat grant this year which is great- I have tried to figure out a way to do that for the F18s with little success. My hope is that if you make coaching and training more accessible and reduce the campaign burden, maybe more people would be willing to investment slightly more in the equipment up front.

As far as coach availability, if you create actual paid positions, I think you would see people move to those areas- it already happens for collegiate coaching positions. I am confident we have an adequate number of individuals who could coach performance boats in the US, but if not, I am not against hiring foreign coaches... it works for nations like Singapore!