INITIATIVES

• ONGOING SUPPORT. Friends of Exuma and its donors provided significant funding in 2021 and 2022 to support the foundations of a thriving Sailing Club. FOE will continue to assist the club into 2024. Funding supports fleet maintenance, replacing sails, repairs, paint, administration, fuel for support boats, and travel for race events.

• NEW A CLASS SLOOP. The Exuma Sailing Club dreams of purchasing an A Class sloop to be able to compete in high-level competitions. The sailors are skilled and ready, now it’s time for the hometown team to get the chance to compete!

• NATIONAL FAMILY ISLANDS REGATTA. Separate from the Sailing Club, Friends of Exuma and its donors are a major sponsor of this annual event, and will continue to support the tradition of sloop sailing in Exuma.

Thanks to local charitable organization Friends of Exuma, the Club was able to persevere. Knowles voices his gratitude: “Friends of Exuma was a savior for the Club for 2021. With no regattas to sail in for 2 years we would have had little to no funding for the Club and would have most likely had to close practices and camps until regattas returned. Thanks to the generosity of FOE we actually had the biggest and best year the club has ever seen. We ADDED boats, ADDED sailors, HOSTED the 2020 postponed Optimist Bahamas National Championships for the first time ever in Exuma, and have been able to spend the year getting our 43-foot Trawler boat ready for the return of regattas (a liveaboard boat that was donated to the Club for us to use to carry the team to Long Island, Farmers Cay, and Nassau Regattas). None of this would have happened without the assistance Friends of Exuma offered us this year!”

For more information visit the Exuma Sailing Club website.