The International Sailing School is being forced to leave its Malletts Bay location.
For 42 years, the Colchester-based sailing school has provided affordable and accessible sailing instruction and certification, seasonal rentals and racing opportunities.
“It’s just such a gut punch for so many people,” said Robin Doyle, who has directed the school since she purchased it in 1987. “Everybody is just in disbelief right now that this could even be happening.”
It has about 2,000 mooring customers, students and club members and their guests and 30 boating vessels, estimated Doyle, who hopes to find a new location.
Doyle, who learned the lease wasn’t going to be renewed in early November, described the news as a “bombshell.” Despite being on good terms with her landlords, she said she had “no option for negotiation, discussion (or) recourse.”
“I was super disappointed that they decided to make this arrangement and not even discuss it with me in advance to try and make things right or at least have the opportunity to match whatever scenario that they were arranging,” Doyle said.
The lease ends on April 30. Doyle’s landlords, Doug and Marlene Booth, didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.
Doyle said Rick Bove, owner of the nearby Moorings Marina, is expected to take over the lease. Bove, who has a questionable record as a landlord of hundreds of rental units in the state, didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Doyle said she hopes to find a new home for the sailing school.
She is trying to raise $50,000 through a GoFundMe campaign to relocate the school and help with the removal and cleanup of the property before the lease ends, among other expenses.
“We’re just trying to find some silver lining to all this,” Doyle said. Her goal is to “relocate in a pared-down version and hopefully pass the school on to any interested staff members.”
To many community members, however, the potential closure of the sailing school is a jarring prospect.
Chana Datskovsky, assistant director of the sailing school, said she was “so stressed” to hear that the lease wasn’t being renewed that she got physically ill and lost her voice.
“At that point, like, I was grieving,” Datskovsky said. “The sailing school defines a large part of who I am.”
Datskovsky started working at the sailing school in 2015 and said she has seen people not only from around Vermont, but also from New York and Canada, come to take classes.
Jeffrey Tirey, a teacher at the sailing school who began taking classes there in 2012, said he was drawn to the school because of Doyle’s interest in “maximiz(ing) the number of people that learn to sail by making it affordable to them.”
“We get a lot of local people who are just part of the club because we’re so accessible,” Datskovsky agreed.
The school’s partnership with Live Like Benjo Foundation — created in honor of Benjamin “Benjo” Haller, an instructor at the school who died by shallow water blackout — is one way they are able to provide sailing-accessible opportunities to youth, offering a week of sailing instruction for those in the Burlington Boys & Girls Club.
The school’s impact sometimes comes full circle.
Datskovsky learned this year that a counselor from the Boys & Girls Club program had been one of the first students when the sailing school launched the program.
“That kind of an impact, it’s beyond words really. It fills you with pride, excitement and, you know, we want to help bolster those future sailors,” Datskovsky said in tears.
Tom Dunn, a member and teacher for the school, said one of the best parts of his job is teaching people how to sail and then seeing them a year or two later sailing on Lake Champlain in their own boat.
Dunn said the decision not to renew the school’s lease “came out of left field.” The sailing school has been a big part of his life. Beyond teaching at the school for close to two decades, he took classes with his wife for couples’ cruising and bareboat chartering and has also been an avid participant in the school’s races.
Mark Pendergrast also attends the races, and won one last year. Pendergrast, a member of the school for over a decade, said he — like many others at the school — values the community that’s been created there.
“I’ve gotten to know people in all kinds of different walks of life and occupations,” Pendergrast said. “I can’t imagine that it wouldn’t be there.”
“There’s really kind of a huge loss of community that happens when this particular type of business ends up being shut down,” Tirey said.