It’s easy for most kids to learn how to sail. They just go to sailing school. Their parents enroll them in one of the numerous youth sailing programs available across the country. They learn fast and soon they’re on the water practicing in Optimist dinghies or other training boats and then racing around the buoys. The competition is fun and sailing programs start to look a lot like Little League or kids’ soccer, complete with intensely involved parents.

But for some kids, it’s not that easy. In fact, very little in their lives that involves interaction with other children is easy.

A father of one of them told me his son never had the opportunity to join in organized sports, and he added, “My son was never invited to a birthday party, he didn’t have any friends.”

That father is Scott Herman. His son Daniel is living with autism.

Scott learned to sail when he was in college and liked it so much he joined crews racing Tartan Tens on Lake Erie and then on larger boats on Florida waters and in Mackinac races. He wanted Daniel to experience some of the enjoyment he found on the water in sailboats. 

 “I tried five sailing programs,” he said. “None of them wanted a boy with autism.”

That was in Charleston, South Carolina, where the Herman family lives, and where a California-based organization called Surfers Healing comes from time to time to take advantage of the area’s splendid beaches for a surfing instruction program. The program is limited to special participants—kids with autism. Scott went to see what it was like.

“I teared up watching how this affected the kids and their parents,” he said. “I thought, these people come all the way from California to give this to autistic kids, and I can’t get my autistic son into a sailing class.”

He turned that frustration into motivation and went to work creating Spectrum Sailing. The name is derived from the formal name of autism—autism spectrum disorder. Like the surfing group, the organization is for special young people—kids with autism.

Herman put together a sailing camp in Charleston where autistic boys and girls 10 to 17 years old learn about sailing. And by actually doing it, by being given the responsibility of handling boats on the water, they experience what so often is beyond the reach of autistic children—confidence-building achievement.

The need for something like Spectrum Sailing was instantly evident. More than 70 parents applied for the 10 openings in the first camp. Herman expanded the program and three years ago started taking it to other cities. This year there have been 10 Spectrum Sailing camps in coastal cities from Maine to California. 

Hundreds of autistic children took part. None of their families were charged a cent for it. Spectrum Sailing camps are free.  

The camps are held at yacht clubs or sailing centers that have one-design keelboats available, such as Chicago’s Corinthian Yacht Club, where one of this year’s camps was held using Rhodes 19s.      

After a training session with autism experts, local certified sailing instructors guide the students through a three-day learning process that starts at the most basic level—how to put on a PFD, tie a square knot—and leads to steering, tacking and jibing a sailboat.

The goal of traditional youth sailing programs is to create lifetime sailors. That’s not what Spectrum Sailing is about. Spectrum’s purpose is to help children and teenagers overcome the inhibitions that constrict their lives by introducing them to the joys and skills inherent in sailing. 

There are immediate rewards. Children who are tentative or even fearful on the first day of sailing camp are often enthused and eager to rejoin their mates to go sailing on day three. For many, it’s their first experience with the social fun of teamwork. 

And there are long-term rewards. “These are kids who might have been afraid to walk on a pier, but once they sail a boat they think they can do anything,” Herman said. “They feel valued.”

Parents have told Herman they saw the first signs of confidence in their children, as in trying to ride a bike for the first time in their lives, after their sailing camp experience. The mother of a 16-year-old boy who is not able to communicate with spoken words told him the sailing camp was her son’s “happy place where he got to be a kid for a few hours.”

Encouragement like that from fellow parents of children on the spectrum has driven Herman to turn what started as a quest to give his son a chance to experience the enjoyment of sailing into a mission to give that experience to as many 10 to 17-year-olds with autism as he can reach with the resources he has available.

Herman had a successful career in health care marketing. Now Spectrum Sailing is his career. “It’s my full-time job,” he said, “and it is a 100% unpaid job.”

He formed a board of directors and registered Spectrum Sailing as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Volunteers help, but there is no paid staff. 

When possible, local sailing organizations help cover camp costs. The Lake Michigan Sail Racing Federation contributed to the Chicago camp.

Spectrum Sailing’s work is supported in a significant way by Harken, which has been a generous sponsor since staff members of the Wisconsin-based sailing hardware and gear manufacturer visited a Spectrum camp in Chicago in 2022.

A member of the company’s management team described watching “the power of sailing work in these people’s lives. And in that incredibly loving and organized environment, sailing delivers.”

After the first camp in Charleston, a parent thanked Herman for introducing her child to the “beautiful sport of sailing.”

Sailors forever have known about the beauty of sailing, but it is especially beautiful when it enriches the lives of challenged young people the way Spectrum Sailing does.