Waikiki Yacht Club’s director of sailing Guy Fleming announced yesterday that youth sailing activist Connie Smales was awarded the Community Sailing Council’s Outstanding Contributions to the Development of Community Sailing Award at the US Sailing National Sailing Symposium on Saturday.
In their nomination of Smales, veteran sailing officials Jo and Dale Mogle wrote of her many accomplishments over the past three decades, and spoke of her as one of the most generous, dedicated and Corinthian sailors they have ever known, along with being a wife, mother, and grandmother.
The Mogles noted that Smales as a mover and shaker behind youth sailing in Hawaii since the 1970s, at the Waikiki Yacht Club, spearheaded the creation of the WYC Education Foundation to receive donations for purchasing equipment for the club’s junior sailing program.
In the 1980s, the Mogles wrote, Smales solicited support from the state’s other yacht clubs to form the Hawaii Youth Sailing Association, which now organizes eight youth sailing regattas, annual training clinics, and the elimination series for the Sears, Bemis, and Smythe (Chubb) Junior Championships.
Smales also was instrumental in 1990 in convincing the WYC’s board to hire its first full-time sailing director. Consequently, the Hawaii and Kaneohe yacht clubs soon followed suit, and as the three directors have worked together, they have built a youth sailing program that matches those found anywhere, the Mogles noted.
Hawaii’s junior sailors can thank Smales as well for their fleets of 420s and Lasers, as she was the one who worked to have them purchased after they were brought to the Islands for national junior sailing events.
In conclusion, the Mogles wrote, “(Smales) always gets the job done, and serves as an inspiration and role model for all those who follow in her significantly impressive footsteps.”
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