While we await our permanent building, the Learn To Sail classes meet at our dock, just west of the TYC pier.  Our famous Army surplus tent and surrounding spaces provide room for small class sizes (5 - 7 sailors per instructor), Chalk-talks, backpack storage and portable toilets.  Our tent houses all the gear, including lifejackets, that we need to operate on the water.  Our 100' of dock space houses eight El Toto dinghies, eight Lasers (with either full rig or radial sails), six 420s and our half dozen safety boats.  Rigging, derigging, gear washing and on the dock instruction happens out here.  Wollochet Bay is shallow, relatively warmer that the rest of Puget Sound, and is very protected around our docks.  As students ability and weather permit, we take our classes out to the outer bay for more room and wind.  Our eight instructors are out with their students for the majority of the time at the site.  On the day when we teach capsizing and righting the boats, we do it right alongside our docks.

The El Toro is an eight foot single handed pram that was one of the first boats we selected for the program. Stable, unsinkable, and with a less sharp front end, it's a great boat for your first solo sail.

The Laser is a versatile 13' single sail Olympic Class boat.  It can hold a pair of light weights or a heavy weight and has two sail sizes available to match the crew weight.  Lasers are fast and require more skill to keep upright.

The 420 is a 14' multiple-person boat, capable of taking any combination of crew and skipper.  More stable than a Laser hull, the 420 offers challenges to beginners and experts alike.  It's our "group boat".

I started sailing at the age of 12 when my father bought his first sailboat and a sailing pram.  With no instruction and few friends that sailed, our family learned both how to sail and how to not sail by trial and error. I was fortunate to meet some dinghy racers and started crewing in Thistles when I was in the eighth grade and the sailing world opened up for me. Now, four decades later, I look back on how it all began, and how sailing has enhanced my life. It has provided an endless collection of experiences and friendships. When I enrolled my son in the TYC Junior Program classes in 1992, I thought what a great place to learn the sport the right way. I did not foresee the opportunity it would offer me to help give back to the sport that has given me so much.

What could be better than a summer of sailing on Wollochet Bay? Having grown up sailing there, I can tell you that for a kid who enjoys the water, there isn't anything that compares. As we begin our sixteenth year of instruction at Wollochet Bay I can't help thinking about how fortunate we are to have such an ideal location on which to base our program. The inner bay provides an area close to our docks, on very protected water, for our youngest beginners. As our sailors become more competent it is an easy move and a natural progression to the outer bay with more open water and steadier breezes to match their ability. To further enhance our classes, we have a cadre of instructors who have developed within the program and are experienced, expert, sailors in their own right. We look forward to a new summer of sailing on Wollochet with a slightly different format which will allow us a week of advanced instruction for our most experienced sailors, who are able to handle a full day on the water. We anticipate a safe and challenging summer of sailing.