Grand Lake Sailing Levels

Grand Lake Sailing promotes sailing on Grand Lake Michigan. We offer Optimist pram lessons in the mornings. These are single sail, simple boats which are light and "kid sized". They provide a safe and controllable sized vessel for youth sailing instruction.

We would like the program to expand to allow some of the graduates to become certified instructors to conduct the program on Grand Lake, participate in the Alpena Yngling program, and someday participate in the University of Michigan's J15 Races. In addition, we would like to "reinvent the wheel" to include a family night of sailing and a day of the month or week for racing.

in 2014 we added an JY15 Racing class that will use JY15 boats. These are boats with dual sails, main and jib. They are very safe and fun to sail.

The JY15 Racing Class sessions will require a young sailor to satisfactorily completed a beginners course. In addition, the intermediate session will ultimately lead to some racing and cruising experience. We are hopeful some of these graduates will enter the Grand Lake Regatta.

Adult and family sessions can be offered if demand warrants. The Opti sessions will be in the morning session and the remainder will be in the afternoon. If demand indicates we need more time we can extend the program into the following week.

Sailing Leadership

The program is very fortunate to have Richard Lappin, and Mark Kinney join our program. These people are very excited to help the program grow. In addition, these are people who have sailed many, many miles and the years of sailing experience is impressive. We have acquired the use of 3 JY15s for the program. In addition, a building is being used to store the boats and do necessary repairs over the winter. Mark has designed this web site to connect with Alpena Youth Sailing Program website.