Featured Speakers

Thanks for visiting. See you next year, January 20-23, 2011

The following are the speakers featured as part of the SailFest Seminar Series.

Nicholas Hayes
Nicholas Hayes' new book Saving Sailing burst onto the scene, quickly reaching the #1 "hot new release" position in the Sailing category, and #6 bestseller in the Outdoors Recreation category on Amazon.com. The book talks about the need to counteract a slow decline of sailing participation over recent decades, and to build stronger family and youth programs for sailing clubs. In it, Hayes advocates intergenerational mentoring (to encourage more young sailors to stick with the sport into adulthood), and for families to look at sailing as an opportunity to reflect on sailing in the bigger picture. Sailing clubs and program directors appreciate its advocacy of the core role of organizations and teachers in building a lifelong passion for sailing. 

Hayes contributes significant time to community work and to sailing. He chaired the Program Committee of the YMCA Camping Services Group and served on its Board for three years. He was a Director of the Milwaukee Yacht Club for four years, helping to renew its youth training facilities, and was its fleet captain. He is currently on the Board of Directors of the Milwaukee Community Sailing Center, leading its Program Committee, helping to set long term program strategy. He has developed and teaches advanced classes on crew development and sail-trim for the Center.  He is also a member of the Junior Sailing Committee at his home club.

Hayes is a partner at the research firm FiveTwelve Group, working with Fortune 500 businesses like GE, ITT and Schneider to improve the way they listen to customers and markets. Hayes is an avid sailor with nearly thirty years of racing experience. He actively races and cruises with his family together on Syrena, a B-32, out of the South Shore Yacht Club near thir home in Shorewood, Wisconsin. 

Capt. Thom Burns
Thom is a retired Naval Officer who came up through the ranks. He drove ships for five years and spent another three years aboard them as an enlisted sailor. After retiring at the first opportunity, in January 1992, Thom and two partners started Northern Breezes Sailing Magazine. In 1997, he added Sailing Breezes Internet Magazine.
Thom is a very experienced sailing coach and instructor. He first taught sailing in 1975 in Newport, Rhode Island at the Naval Base. He began teaching sailing on Lake Minnetonka in 1993 for the now defunct Northern Maritime Institute. In 1999 he started Northern Breezes Sailing School. He soon expanded it to include everything from a Youth Day Camp for Sailing to Offshore classes on Lake Superior and the Caribbean. Northern Breezes currently offers sixteen courses in nine locations.
Thom is a Nationally Certified Instructor Evaluator for the American Sailing Association where he “trains the trainers”. He is also on the Advisory Board of the American Sailing Association. Recently, he edited the official Coastal Navigation book of the American Sailing Association written by Captain Mike Pyzel. His latest project is editing Schooner Captain Dorothy LaFond’s Celestial Navigation book.
Over the years Thom has volunteered his time and expertise on numerous occasions. He was instrumental in launching the American Diabetes Association's ADA Regatta, which is a fundraiser. He has served four years as the Commodore of the Sailfest in Bayfield, Wisconsin.
 

Matthew Brown
Matthew Brown is originally from Hopkins, MN and currently lives in Grand Marais, MN and has been an outdoor adventure guide for the past 15 years with experience in canoes, as a dog musher for Wilderness Inquiry in Minneapolis, white water rafting in Idaho, sailing schooners and various other boats on Lake Superior and in the Atlantic. He has had four Atlantic crossings and been captain for North House Folk School's 50' Schooner the past 12 years sailing the western half of Lake Superior.  
 

 

 

Capt. Joan Gilmore
Captain Joan Gilmore is principal of Sail Away Sailing School.  Joan is the American Sailing Association's former Education Director and a current ASA Instructor Evaluator. She has managed and developed curriculums for several sailing schools, has been a tugboat operator, and has taught and presented seminars throughout the U.S. and Caribbean, including The Bitter End Yacht Club. She holds a master's degree in adult learning from the U of MN and a 100-ton U.S. Coast Guard license.