RECENT COVERAGE : January 20, 2008
 Sailing, windsurfing, kiteboarding, speedster Nevin Sayre knows how to have fun.  Nevin and his entourage put on a spectacle at sailing’s fun zone – Shake-a-Leg Miami, this weekend.  Nearly forty junior sailors from Key Biscayne, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Fort Pierce, Clearwater and New Orleans elevated Nevin’s and O’Pen Bic’s rule number one – Have Fun, to a new level. 

Camp director Sayre, sporting a red T-shirt emblazoned with “bailing is prohibited” launched his loosely competitive, unorthodox unregatta from among the white sands and sea grapes of one of Miami’s restored spoil islands.  Sayre paraded the group of eleven and unders and the oldsters around untraditional courses.  As they planed from one hoppity hop to another, Sayre instructed them to stand up, capsize and do 360-degree turns.  He gave them extra style points if they could sail with both feet on the rail of the 9 foot, open hulled O’Pen Bics.  Smiles spread over the water rats nearly as quickly as their boat-handling skills improved.  In no time at all, some of the kids perfected the art of letting their mast tip hit the water and bounding up onto the dagger board to right their boat almost instantaneously.  Some were so good that they gained places during the legs in which everybody had to capsize.   

Sayre has demonstrated how sailing can have a freestyle event just like surfing, windsurfing, kiteboarding, skateboarding and rollerblading.  There was a singles and doubles competition in which kids invented never before performed stunts such as mast stands, rail riding, boom hangers and pirouettes.  Whether they were at the Caviglia Blue Water Classic’s Saturday night paella dinner or riding home for a shower and some rest, the topic of conversation was what tricks they were going to perform in Sunday’s final round of the expression session.

It’s been decades since Nevin Sayre spent time training in Miami as a member of the US Boardsailing Team.  Every junior sailing program should welcome Sayre and the O’pen Bic crew to their waters.  Kids of all ranges of abilities will have fun, sailing, flipping, slipping and sliding in and out of the little sailboat that is catching on like wildfire.