Christine Briggs will direct Sagamore Junior Sailing program

For the first time ever, the junior sailing program at the Sagamore Yacht Club will be led by an official director, Christine Briggs. The 46-year-old Oyster Bay native, who learned to sail at the club as a seventh-grader, will use her extensive experience to train the next generation of Sagamore sailors.

Briggs grew up sailing, and spent her late middle school and high school summers on the water at Sagamore, a private club in Oyster Bay that was founded in 1944. She sailed for a semester in college, and after her racing career was over, she spent several years as a volunteer instructor at the club.

A third-generation Oyster Bay resident, Briggs has also spent the past 15 years driving the club’s launch, which ferries sailors from the dock to their boats anchored in the harbor.

Briggs said she was very excited to coach the junior sailors, but had taken her time to think about it before accepting the job last November, because she understood what it would involve.

“Taking on the role of director is a huge responsibility,” she explained. “I’m responsible for 30 kids a week, my instructors and everything else. So I took some time, and then I let them know that I would be accepting.”

In the offseason, Briggs will continue her day job in real estate sales for the Daniel Gale-Sotheby’s Cold Spring Harbor branch. Since she can largely set her own hours, she will be working mostly on weekends and in the evenings, so she can focus on her young sailors during the day.

Although she won’t be working with them until summer, “It really takes a whole year to work on the program,” Briggs said.

She added that she had already attended a number of meetings focusing on the upcoming sailing season. In addition, there’s inventory to catalogue, and boats to inspect to ensure that they are seaworthy — including making sure the motors on the instructors’ Boston Whalers are all running smoothly.

“There’s been a lot of winter work that you wouldn’t think about,” Briggs said. Thankfully, she continued, she has built a team of instructors, and is looking forward to the season. She also recently set up a new page for the program on the yacht club website. The page mentions that the 2023 program will have a renewed emphasis on sailing, given that Briggs and the instructors will be full-time employees.

James Werner, a board member for the Junior Sailing Program, said that although it has been around for 11 years, in the past, parents and club members have served as volunteer instructors. While the goal of the program has been to coach children ages 8 to 18 to be good sailors, Werner said, there is also an emphasis on having fun and enjoying the summer.

As the program has become more popular, however, the board felt that it was necessary to hire a full-time director to manage it rather than continuing to rely on volunteers. While that operation kept costs low, the board believed that a dedicated staff of experienced sailors, some of whom come from as far away as Ireland, would provide a better structure for the program.

“Over time, the program has expanded exponentially,” Werner said. “We now have over 200 kids coming over the course of an eight-week program.”

Briggs will be training the young sailors in the use of several vessels, from beginner-level Optimists, dinghies commonly referred to as “Optis,” to more advanced racing craft like 420s.

Werner said that although the board had considered several other potential directors, they chose Briggs because of her years of experience as a sailor and the fact that she was familiar with the operations of the club. She’s the right person for the job, he said, and the board is very excited to work with her.