Northeast · St. Augustine
Nonprofit teaching center on Salt Run beneath the St. Augustine Lighthouse, on the water since 2012 and now reaching over 300 kids a year. Youth camps, after-school and a 10-week homeschool course, US Sailing-coached Opti and 420 race teams, and adult clinics on the J/24.
More than 3,600 local kids have learned to sail here since the program started in 2012, and it now reaches over 300 a year. The Sailing Center is the teaching arm of the St. Augustine Yacht Club, run as a nonprofit with its own staff, its own programs and, since June 2026, its own building: the City of St. Augustine accepted the donated site in 2022, and the Center moved in this summer.
Salt Run is why the beginner programs work. It is a sheltered tidal creek behind Anastasia Island, small enough that an Optimist sailor’s first solo happens within sight of the dock, with Matanzas Bay and the Tolomato River past the mouth of it when a sailor is ready for current and traffic. Children who start in the creek end up racing the same water the club races.
The pathway is unusually complete for a youth program. Sail Camp is the way in, and the Sail Team carries racers up an Optimist ladder from a development squad through Green Fleet to an advanced group, then across to regional and performance 420 teams, sailing Optimists, ILCAs, Club 420s and high-school 420s under US Sailing certified coaches at one to eight traveling regattas a season. Around that sit an after-school program, Discovery Sailing for middle-schoolers, and a 10-week homeschool course meeting one full day a week that teaches the physics of sailing, marine engineering and navigation alongside the sailing itself. The Center is an approved Florida Step Up provider, which is what puts that course within reach of families using the scholarship.
The adult side has run since 2018, longer than most junior programs bother with: clinics are either a single six-hour day or two midweek afternoons, sailed on the J/24 and the Hobie Waves, and they cover learning to race as well as learning to sail. What the Center does with its money fills in the rest. It gives away more than $15,000 in scholarships a year, holds approved-provider status with Step Up, and backs the sailing club at Flagler College. For a program carrying a private club’s name, its reach is almost entirely public.
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Jacksonville membership boat club with an ASA school inside, on Julington Creek where the St. Johns widens south of town. Courses through Advanced Coastal on a Catalina fleet; members check out club boats at no charge once certified.