Brett is from Frankford and is the public relations officer with Quinte Sailability (QS). He grew up with his disability and it is a big part of his life. He was born with cerebral palsy. He started sailing with QS at the age of 4. He had lots of support over the years.
QS want to say that there are no limits on the water. This is something we really believe in. We are proud to work with many different types of disabilities. Two of our sailors with downs syndrome have been racing, sailing for the last two years. I have this team and like to see it grow.
QS moved to Belleville at the Quinte Yacht Club. They had a great relationship at CFB Trenton marina but weeds were getting to much.
We are proud to report that your donations are paying to subsidize the opportunities to the sailors.
Revenue is 23% from service clubs.
We are proud of our volunteers who support us, help with fund raising, instructors, etc.
QS had 40 sailors in 2023. Their season starts as soon as the high school students are out of school as they make up many of our coaches. We run for 10 weeks in the summer.
All of our boats are untippable and unsinkable. We also have a 16 foot sail boat.
We have smaller sailboats nicknamed bathtubs with sails.
We have a tri-miran that was donated to QS. It is used as a reward for any of our sailors that have done a good job.
Coaches are constantly out on the water on a second boat to work together with the sailors in the sail boats.
Our may volunteers make sure that we have coaches and that the boats are always ready to sail. Members learn to sail and become part of our program.
We have race nights in the evenings during the season. We have competitions against sailors in other clubs from other cities. We pride ourselves in developing our program to be competitive with other larger clubs. We complete with Napean because they have a regatta in their river so that our sailors are exposed to what they typically do not see on the Bay of Quinte.
One of our biggest regattas is the Mobility Cup which is a North American competition. CN ships our boats to wherever the competition is being held. Our sailors will see so many people with the same conditions that they have.
There are 17 programs, and QS has been successful because we did not need a team full of players. We do not have enough players to fill a full team such as soccer. We have shared with others in other locations and provinces to explain what we have done to make QS successful.