SUMMER 2019SW049The St. Thomas YC’s IC24 fleet
allows locals and visiting teams
to charter and race in the annual
St. Thomas International Regatta
in March.
PHOTO: INGRID ABERYFranzel ran the Boston Sailing
Center from 1977 to 2007,
serving more than 400 clients
annually until he sold the busi-
ness. After three decades of
focusing on a single project, he
went through a period of rein-
vention. “When you’ve been
doing one thing for most of your
life and you’ve built your iden-
tity around that, it’s hard to let
it go,” he says. “You have to tran-
sition to the next thing.”
Franzel began stringing
together various sailing gigs
around the country, including
coaching for North U. At one
clinic held at the U.S. Virgin
Island’s St. Thomas YC, Franzel
discovered his next thing. “Some
of the members were lamenting
at their decrease in member-
ship, and I told them about
some of the things we had done
in Boston to increase retention
and grow participation in other
ways,” he says. “One thing led to
another, and they made me an
oer I couldn’t refuse.”
In 2017, under his direc-
tion, St. Thomas YC started
the St. Thomas Sailing Center,
an adult sailing program
focused on growing club mem-
bership through racing and
social sailing activities.
“When I got back to work,
I found out how much I missed
it,” Franzel says. “It wasn’t
just about being involved in a
local sailing community, but
about engaging the world in a
meaningful way.”
Three years after opening
the center, membership has
increased and the island’s
adult sailing scene is as
vibrant as ever. One-third of
new members who joined in
2019 came through the sail-
ing center’s courses, boat
access, racing programs or
open-house events.
“A statistic I think is quite
telling is that 75 percent of
new members under the age
of 36 joined as a result of STSC
activities,” Franzel says.
He also attributes this
success to the center’s popu-
lar weekend racing program for
locals and visitors, meetups,
barbecues and other fun ways
of getting out on the water in a
non-racing environment.
“Sailing doesn’t always have
to be competitive,” he says.
“Getting people to engage with
the local community is the
best way to make them life-
long sailors. Retention is easy
when people have fun and
make friends.”
St. Thomas Sailing Center
owns 10 IC24 keelboats for its
sailing activities. The IC24, a
modified J/24 hull with a Sonar-
style deck layout, is completely
local to the Caribbean and is
the only one-design action
in the region.
Having won two Sonar world
championships himself, Franzel
considers one-design racing tobe the peak of the sport.
“One-design is where it’s at,”
he says. “When all the boats
are the same, there are no
excuses for going slow. If some-
one is faster, you need to figure
out why. You can’t just blame
your rating, like many peo-
ple often do when sailing the
handicapped format.”
When the St. Thomas
International Regatta rolls
into town each year, Franzel is
keen to get out on the water and
mix it up with the region’s best
sailors. Eighteen IC24s raced
in the 2019 STIR, with com-
petitors traveling in from the
U.S. mainland and Puerto Rico.
“We can offer mainlanders
short-term memberships,
which allows people to come
down and use the boats for the
event. After the winter months,
many of them are super-excited
to get back sailing. And here,
the water is blue and warm and
beautiful,” he says. “There’s no
better place to sail in the world.
It’s perfect down here.”
An individual IC24 charter fee
for St. Thomas’s winter regatta
is $2,200 for a boat with decent
sails and $2,700 for a boat with
new sails, which includes a prac-
tice day before the event and
a 30-day membership in the
St. Thomas YC. Franzel recom-
mends booking early because
with only 10 boats, charters get
snatched up quick.
With any blissful sailing
location, however, there’s
usually a tradeoff. For the
Caribbean, it’s hurricanes—
and the past few years have
been especially brutal. In early
September 2017, hurricanes
Irma and Maria swept through
St. Thomas, causing island-wideblackouts, tearing up roads and
devastating boatyards.
“The boats that were on
trailers were blown onto their
side[s] and tossed around like
dice,” Franzel says. “The [IC24]
fleet was totaled, and after-
ward the yacht club was ready
to give up. But I got my friend,
Chris Small, to come down from
New England and help with
the rebuild.”
Small and his team rented
a wedding tent big enough to
store two boats at a time. They
worked around the clock for a
month straight, bringing in pal-
lets of supplies and equipment.
By the time they were finished,
the IC24s were like new.
“It’s like the resurrection
story. It really inspired the
club, and a lot of people on the
island as well,” Franzel says.
“It became a symbol of recov-
ery. The Caribbean is a hearty
region. People here have seen
hurricanes before, and they’ll
see them again. The key is to
keep pushing forward.”
As we pull up to our mooring
in front of the yacht club after
our preregatta practice session,
the hurricane becomes a dis-
tant memory. The refurbished
boats float lazily on their anchor
lines, steel drum music echoes
out over the water, and the
palm trees lean in the breeze.
“Unfortunately, I’m all out of
beer,” Franzel says, plucking the
empties from the bilge. “Good
thing there’s plenty on shore.” QWhen the St. Thomas International
Regatta rolls into town each year,
Franzel is keen to get out on the
water and mix it up with the region’s
best sailors. Eighteen IC24s raced
in the 2019 STIR, with competitors
traveling in from the U.S. mainland
and Puerto Rico.