by Karen Nelson

Teaching kids self-reliance is a key goal of the nonprofit Edison Sailing Center. “After years of this, I’d put these kids up against any other group of kids, and they could kick their butts just by being able to think for themselves and succeed,” says Steve Olive, who co-founded the school twenty-five years ago with its managing director, Ross Webb.

From its beginnings at the Royal Palm Yacht Club, and through the ups and downs of downtown Fort Myers redevelopment, the Edison Sailing Center has held its course and brought the thrill of sailing to thousands of local kids. Olive, the center’s executive director, has been sailing since he took his first lesson at age ten in Hollywood, Florida. His family later moved to Florida’s west coast, and Olive so loved the sport that he cobbled together an old Styrofoam catamaran he found in the rock pits off Gladiolus Drive, a mast made from a TV antenna, and a sail that he sewed himself and went sailing in the Caloosahatchee River.

In his early twenties, Olive began racing as well as teaching sailing to adults at the YMCA, all while continuing his full-time night job in the production department of a daily newspaper. It wasn’t until 2001 that he began to concentrate full-time on sailing.

Edison Sailing Center traditionally offers summer sailing trips to the Dry Tortugas, but in 2008, five high school kids flew down to Roatan island off Honduras to join Olive there. While in Roatan, the kids got to see what life was like someplace else. To get supplies, they walked to the grocery store on foot, pushing their purchases back in a wheelbarrow. “They had a chance to see how these people live,” says Olive.

The group motor-sailed home (the wind died after a rough start) and passed a Cuban chug, or homemade refugee boat, that was about twenty miles west of the tip of Cuba. There were nine people in the chug, and they asked where Mexico was.

Olive used that encounter as a learning experience for the kids. “It makes them realize what people will do to escape, to get away from their environment,” he says. “You see a lot of things out there. We went 680 miles over open water. Not a lot of adults have done that, let alone fifteen-year-olds. I can’t tell you how many mothers have said to me, ‘You brought back a different kid.’”

The school also offers a hands-on motorboat safety class for kids as well as sailing lessons for adults. There are opportunities to race, and Olive generally travels every third weekend with a group of racing students. The school’s October River Romp is a U.S. Sailing–sanctioned youth regatta and one of the premier Junior Olympic regattas in the country.

“We want our kids to grow, and to grow as they learn to think for themselves,” says Olive. “There aren’t many programs around anymore where kids learn to think for themselves. We make them think. They’re out on the water with a problem, and we say, ‘OK, you’ve broken down. See you onshore after you fix it.’ You never know what Mother Nature will throw at you or what will break.

“We end up with creative kids,” he continues. “You have to be damned creative if you spend any time on the water.”

For more information about the Edison Sailing Center, call 239-454-5114 or visit www.edisonsailingcenter.org.