Nothing succeeds like success

by Mary Kay Dessoffy
When compared to its four larger siblings in the Great Lakes family, Lake Erie looks more like a pond than a particularly Great Lake. Yet its 850-mile Ohio shoreline stretches east from Toledo, Ohio, to Buffalo, New York, offering many ports in the storms that rile up these shallow waters.

Along that shoreline is Edgewater Yacht Club (EYC) in Cleveland which hosts the North Coast Women’s Sailing Association (NCWSA), a unique organization intent on promoting sailing exclusively to women, who appear to be an underserved part of sailing world. Underserved in most parts of the world, but not at EYC.

Nadja Hutchins, Education Director for NCWSA, smiles when she says, “You can’t throw a stone around here and not find a woman who is or was an NCWSA racer.” In fact, 50% of the racing community at EYC are women. They are professional race officers, judges, crew, owners, virtually all aspects of racing. And most, if not all, came through the NCWSA program. – Full report