Spectrum Sailing

We met Scott Herman, the founder of Spectrum Sailing, in December of 2022. Spectrum Sailing is the first sailing camp specifically created to serve people on the Autism spectrum. At Harken, we believe in the power of Sailing to do amazing things in people's lives. It teaches self-reliance (grit!) in a way that sports with lots out-of-bounds lines can't. We started Harken Blockheads to help pass that along to the next generation of sailors. The smiles and the looks of confidence we see from Blockheads are worth?a lot. Scott's concept for Spectrum Sailing felt like it might work similarly. A group of people we respect were familiar and support the initiative. Harken took a flier and signed on to be a sponsor. Then we went to a camp, and we saw how they do it. How do they do it? They do it well. They care. They bring learning specialists to teach the local sailing instructors at yacht clubs and sailing centers who host the camps how to instruct kids who are differently enabled. They bring a curriculum that is tested and tweaked and proven to work. They organize a 3-day camp for a bunch of kids who don't generally go to camp?and for parents who don't take camps for granted and don't get a lot of free time from all the time they spend advocating for kids. Then they start the camp. They watch the power of sailing work in these people's lives. And in that incredibly loving and organized environment, sailing delivers. You can see it on the faces. You can see it in the improvements in helmsmanship and in the better knots. You can see it in the way the kids run to camp on day three when they held back on day one. And then there are the stories you don't always get to see in what sailing does for these kids days and weeks later. Those things are sometimes even more incredible. Anyway, we respected Sailing Spectrum when we signed on. All we can say is that Harken is not signing off. The rest you gotta see on our faces.