US Sailing President Gary Jobson talks – where to from here? Part 1

US Sailing President Gary Jobson talks – where to from here? Part 2

‘Gary Jobson making his acceptance speech at the US Sailing AGM in 2009’    USSailing

Sailing in the U.S. is at an interesting crossroads: participation is down, competing rating rules are creating confusion, the America’s Cup has a long way to go before it can reclaim its halcyon days of 2007, and even American Olympic sailing—when taking the long view—has seen a decline in earned medals since the 1980s and early 1990s.
But all is far from doom and gloom: day-glow green shoots abound with the Cup, US SAILING Team AlphaGraphics has been on a roll recently, and while we’re still looking at an alphabet soup with rating rules, US SAILING, the national governing body of sailing in the States, is looking strong.
To find out more about what’s going on, I caught up with Gary Jobson, the current president of US SAILING, as well as a well-respected sailing journalist and a former America’s Cup winner, to get his pulse on what’s going at US SAILING and around the country. [N.B., this is Part Two of a two-part interview with Jobson; Part One ran in the September 8 issue.]