Guiding Sakonnet YC sailors has been a privilege

Posted 3/13/19

To the editor:

I would like to thank the parents who paid to submit a letter in the February 27 Sakonnet Times. I am honored and humbled by their many kind thoughts.

It isn’t often that one …

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Guiding Sakonnet YC sailors has been a privilege

Posted

To the editor:

I would like to thank the parents who paid to submit a letter in the February 27 Sakonnet Times. I am honored and humbled by their many kind thoughts.

It isn’t often that one is able to do what one loves in a place that one loves and have it be only five minutes from home. I am so lucky to have had the job of running the Sakonnet Yacht Club Sailing Program for 15 years — from 2004 through the summer of 2018. I am also incredibly fortunate to have had the chance to both teach and work with the hundreds of children who have gone through the Sakonnet program. Teaching kids to love being on the water and to sail has been such a privilege

Having come up through the Sakonnet program myself, and teaching on and off there since I was a kid, I have had the good fortune to teach the children of my friends, the children of people who I taught when they (the parents) were kids, and lots of children who were new to town and were able to build a social network through sailing and the kids and families that they met at the yacht club.

SYC has been able to keep membership open and costs down, thus encouraging new families to give sailing a try. It has also been a great place for both year-rounders and “summer people” to meet each other and become friends. 

Although I had hoped for one more summer and a chance to thank the children and families personally, the sailing program will be in great hands with Seamus Power. Seamus graduated from Bowdoin College, received his masters in teaching from the University of Notre Dame, and is currently studying for his masters in counseling at Boston College. He hopes to be a high school counselor and to teach sailing in the summers. He will do an incredible job!

Although I had planned to retire from teaching at the end of this coming summer (from Sakonnet), things don’t always work out the way we plan. After I learned that I wouldn’t be returning to SYC, I was lucky enough to be hired by the Barrington Yacht Club as their Sail Training Program director. I am so excited to be moving forward to a new program. Barrington’s program is much larger and more intense than Sakonnet’s. I am looking forward to the challenge of learning about and running Barrington’s program.

I would again like to thank the parents who published the letter in the Sakonnet Times. I would also like to thank the kids who have both worked with and taught me much over the years — I loved working with you! And I want to thank the families that entrusted their children to our wonderful sailing program. I truly hope that you continue on with a life-long love of being on the water.

Ellie Field

Little Compton

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Mike Rego has worked at East Bay Newspapers since 2001, helping the company launch The Westport Shorelines. He soon after became a Sports Editor, spending the next 10-plus years in that role before taking over as editor of The East Providence Post in February of 2012. To contact Mike about The Post or to submit information, suggest story ideas or photo opportunities, etc. in East Providence, email mrego@eastbaymediagroup.com.