Ryan Chin remembers being a little shaky about sailing for the first time.
He was 14 years old then. Learning how to rig the sails — attaching them to the mast like you would a zipper and pulling them up so they billow out  — and casting off from the dock was difficult enough.

Even more so for someone who is partially blind: Chin was born with macular degeneration and says at 14 he could only see objects inches from his face. Years later, his vision continues to deteriorate.
“Generally it’s more feeling where you need to go,” said Chin. “For me … I was pretty natural with the water and I could catch on quickly.”
Eager to share his experience with others, Chin, who became manager of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind Lake Joseph camp in MacTier (Lake Jo for short)  — the very place he learned to sail — introduced sailing to his campers.
CNIB Lake Jo had been looking for some time to expand its programming from recreational casual learning – camp games, canoeing, kayaking and waterskiing.
At the time, they had about 100 campers every week and only a few sailboats. So they relied on the neighbouring Lake Joseph Sailing Club, a tiny, seasonal club, to offer campers — kids, teens and visually-impaired adults there with their families — rides on 22-foot sailboats on sunny afternoons on the luxuriant Muskokan lake.
Things changed in 2005 when Chin, now the head of Camp Muskoka in Bracebridge, sat down with Carolyn Gagnon, the sailing school’s director.
CNIB guests didn’t just want to sail, they wanted to learn how to.
“He asked, ‘Did we have anyone to help?’” recalls Gagnon, who has been the sailing club’s volunteer director for eight years. “I said, sure, 150 kids sail with us.”
By the end of the summer, they had decided to start up a volunteer sailing program to start the following season. Teens at the sailing club would teach CNIB campers. The young adults would design the program themselves.
Since then the program has rolled out in sailing clubs across Ontario and even Canada. “It’s quite amazing,” says Gagnon. “Coming from just the CNIB up there and our little sailing club.”
That first morning, he refuses to go near the boats lined up on the grass.
Blind and autistic, the eight-year-old child has never been in a sailboat.
To sooth his worries, the instructor places him into a dinghy. This boat, provided by the Canadian Yachting Association and Ontario Sailing, has a joystick in the middle — easier to move and steer than a complicated sailboat.
He sits down. Eventually, he becomes accustomed to the swaying motion of the water. The pair goes boating.
Fast-forward four years and he is steering the boat by himself. He even tips it over and rights it again as part of the required portion of White Sail 1, the first level of instruction.
“As soon as he got comfortable and knew what was happening, he was a lot more comfortable,” says 17-year-old instructor Jessica Foley, of one of the favourite students she has taught. Foley started volunteering three years ago, and this summer is the head instructor at the Lake Joseph Sailing Club.
“I think in the first couple of years we underestimated them. Once we realized how skilled and how amazing they can be, that clued us in.”
The relationship forged between teen instructors and the campers, is one of the aspects that makes this program so special, says Gagnon.
“I thought it was amazing especially because it was driven by kids, teenagers mostly, and it just shows what they can do.” she says. “They had the wherewithal to put together the program, to run the program and even younger teenagers were the ones who were helping to make the whole thing happen. We supervised it but we didn’t run it by any stretch, the kids did all this.”
Gagnon’s young sailing instructors were determined to get the program right. They would treat the CNIB campers as equals and award them their Canadian Yachting Association standardized instruction levels — which span from three introductory White Sail levels up to gold levels for competitive racers — if and only if they achieved the requirements.
This required a rethinking of the some portions of the program, with time and money from the Canadian Yachting Association, Ontario Sailing and the Ontario Trillium Foundation. Over the course of the winter, then head instructor Leo Martin, at the time in his early 20s, modified introductory program White Sail 1, which was ready to launch by the time the boats were in the water.
“We had never really taught anybody (from the CNIB camp) sailing,” says Gagnon. “I wasn’t sure how comfortable they would be. I wasn’t sure if we could do as good a job as we thought. Our kids who come to sailing school love it … and I really wanted that feeling and flavour of it to be the same. We were a little nervous that it wouldn’t be the same and it’s totally the same.”
Jacqueline Harrison remembers the same doubt when she came on as head of the CNIB camp.
A lot of the kids that attend are multi-need kids, which means they are blind, but also suffer from developmental delays. “I wasn’t really sure how it would turn out and how the kids would respond to it. You go from something recreational to something instructional. It changes the flow a little bit.”
What little they had to worry about.
“It’s sort of like having a seeing eye dog in the boat,” says Carolyn Gagnon, describing the role of the teenage volunteers, who supervise the visually-impaired children as they learn to sail on mornings they are at the camp.
Introductory levels White Sail 1 and 2 have been adapted for Lake Jo CNIB campers as young as 10 to help them learn basic skills such as safety, attaching the tiller and rudder to steer the boat, rigging the boat on land before leading it down a ramp to the water, boat handling and more.
Most of the program is the same as the traditional White Sail checklist of skills.
Through hand-over-hand instruction, the sailors learn how to tie four different knots. They have to tie up the boat and rig the sailboat. They also have to learn how to steer and capsize the boat in shallow water.
Non-visual cues help them learn. Chin remembers learning to use the feel of the wind on his cheek to tell if it was on the port or starboard side. Like driving a car, “you can feel the control of the vehicle,” he says. “You can feel the breeze and can tell when the winds are shifting and where they are coming from.”
When the sailors need to rely on their “seeing eye dog” instructors, the program allows it.
To recover paddles, a non-sighted person can have an instructor tell him or her where they are. Steering is also difficult, so the sailor relies on the instructor in the boat with them to give directions.
For new sailors, instructors alleviate any worries about what to expect, telling kids that it’s normal for the boats to dip to the side in strong winds. “That’s where our volunteers are crucial in saying this is what’s going to happen,” says Gagnon. “I can hear the kids out there giggling away … they love it.”
The program’s a confidence booster as well, says Harrison. “They’re getting the same – White Sail 1 and 2 certificate and badge that any other kid in the province would get. I think those things that may seem really small are really empowering.”
From that first summer when 30 kids learned how to sail, to last year when they saw 42 kids in one week alone, the programming between the tiny summer sailing club and the CNIB is growing. The challenge now is trying to prepare the sailing levels to keep up with them. They hope to offer the four week White Sail 3 program as a split level over two summers.
That’s in addition to the variety of programming at the Lake Jo camp, which includes modified water ski instruction and modified swimming lessons.
“That program has set a precedent for us,” says Harrison. “We really want our kids essentially to be able to take the things they’ve learned here and be able to do them in their community. This is really helping with that kind of a movement.
Equally grateful is Gagnon.
“It’s been a phenomenal volunteer program,” she says. “It’s certainly really opened their eyes to the fact that their kids are our kids.”
She recalls a letter from the first summer the two Lake Jo clubs teamed up to run the program.
No matter whether or not the child passes a sailing course, they receive a token from the club — that year it was a T-shirt.
“This little boy went home and he wouldn’t take it off, his mother said.”