Down at the end of Old Harbor Road in New Suffolk this summer, a handful of women are learning to sail — not as tag-along crew, not as passengers on their husbands’ boats, but as sailors: trimming sails, reading the telltales and tacking through the wind.

“This is our first year,” said Beth Fleisher, one of the organizers, standing on the dock at Old Cove Yacht Club last week, watching a small crew cast off. “But there’s a whole movement across the country to get more women on the water.”

Fleisher said the new women’s sailing program — the first of its kind on the North Fork — grew out of a national push to counter historic barriers to participation, especially in racing.

“A lot of times — out here in particular, and other places around the country — there [are] moms whose kids have taken lessons, but they don’t know how to sail,” she said. “Or they took lessons when they were kids, but they’ve been so caught up in raising their children — or a job — and nobody ever reached out to them and said, “Hey, do you want to learn this really great sport that your kids do? That’s what this is.”

It’s an effort that’s been building steam since 1990, the year Tracy Edwards and the first all-female crew to compete in the Whitbread Round the World Race defied brutal seas and breathtaking sexism to prove themselves on the global stage — a remarkable odyssey captured in the award-winning 2019 documentary ‘Maiden.’ (The competition is now known as “The Ocean Race.”)

Fleisher, who cheered on the Maiden crew as a young sailor herself and vividly recalls the hostile environment women faced back then, said that many local mothers have supported their children’s sailing for years without ever being invited to learn themselves.

Fleisher and four other local sailors of different ages and experience levels — Nancy Steelman, Aida Kuehn, Ellen Talbot, and Caroline Kiel — designed the program, which is housed at Old Cove and follows a formal U.S. Sailing curriculum with textbooks, lesson plans and knot-tying workshops.

‘Not just lessons’

From the start, structure was paramount. But it was also about something larger.

“It’s not just lessons … It’s also community building, introducing them to people, providing them with opportunities to meet other local sailors … so if they want to pursue this, they can go out on boats. There’s just a lot of take away from this. It’ll have legs.”

The program includes social events, including a recent gathering at Lenz Winery — whose owners Peter and Deborah Carroll’s three daughters sail — and parties at students’ homes. Fleisher made a point of thanking Tara Newmann — a local mother whose daughter is a noted sailor — who is hosting an upcoming party for the group.

The program aims to “get women sailing and then — if they want — competing,” Fleisher said.

Students are also introduced to Wednesday night racing by pairing them individually with local crews, followed by meetups for drinks at Legends in New Suffolk. Fleisher said that the program offers both tangible sailing skills and lasting community connections, with plans to expand next year.

The broader, national movement to encourage women’s sailing has been gathering force for decades. In the late 1990s, the National Women’s Sailing Association launched AdventureSail days for girls. In 2009, American Yacht Club’s “Women on the Water” program began bringing women together to build skills on Long Island Sound — a model that spread to yacht clubs and sailing schools nationwide. The 2010s saw the creation of “Women in Wind,” “Women at the Helm,” and a surge of women-only ASA and US Sailing courses at community centers. In 2019, the American Sailing Association launched its “Women Wake Up Zone” campaign.

Earlier this summer, Team Allegiant made history as the first all-women crew to finish the grueling Annapolis-to-Newport Race.

Until this year, the North Fork had been missing from that map.

The Old Cove Yacht Club, a waterfront non-profit known for its junior sailing classes, welcomed them in, Fleisher said.

“Everything just fell into place really well. We advertised the lessons, and we had a 200% waiting list. We only had 12 spots this year because we started out small. We had 30 women on our waiting list.”

‘Empowering’

One of the first to sign up was Robin Lockwood. “My son, who’s 14, has been sailing here since he was four, and I wanted to join him on the water and learn how to sail,” she said.

By the third week, Lockwood said, the course felt “empowering.”

“Now knowing what they kids feel when they’re out on the water is really empowering … just to be able to put it together as a group and work as a team. [Instructor Mackie Myers-Aldous] lets us take our time and we talk about things before we do them. We feel like we’re prepared for any moment. And it’s awesome to have the women at the club supporting us from the dock.”

Grace Lee grew up far inland.

“I grew up hideously landlocked,” she said, “and with ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ and mermaid and pirate media coming out, and the ‘OC’ and everything — where kids live by the ocean and they’re so cool. I was like, ‘I wish I could be cool. I wish I could be on a boat. I wish I was by the ocean’… I think if you live inland, the misconception is, in order to do this sport, you have to be fabulously wealthy … and it’s not true.”

Before the program, she said, her job on sailboats was mostly as “rail meat” — a sailing term for a person whose sole job is to sit on the windward side and weigh down the boat to keep it balanced.

“But after a while, I was like, ‘I kind of want to learn to do things …

“It’s a lot more straightforward than I first thought. Mackie’s really great at explaining things … it feels like a judgment-free zone,” said Lee, a graphic novel artist who is currently shopping a pitch to publishers about women learning to sail.

Myers-Aldous, who trained at Stony Brook University, said that it’s long been a  “goal to do something like this for women — because sailing is a bit harder to get into.”

“Just being able to give women time on the water … in a safe environment … has been really wonderful.”

‘What are we waiting for?’

In an interview on the breezy deck of the tiny yacht club, Fleisher was quick to knock down one of the sport’s most persistent myths.

“You do not need to be strong like Hercules in order to sail on any size boat. Boats are set up so that mechanical advantage gives you physical advantage — so there’s no reason you need some sort of Herculean upper body strength.”

For Lindsay Chapman, 44, the class was about more than learning a sport. “I think if you stop learning new things, then what are we doing here? It’s really, really hard to learn new things when you’re over 40 … but my kids are learning. So why can’t I learn it?”

“They have hard days. I have hard days. They’re frustrated. I’m frustrated … But I was able to tack while holding the mainsheet today, which — if you asked me to do that yesterday — I might have jumped off the boat and said, ‘No, I’m not doing that.’”

The national model for women-only sailing programs often begins just this way: a small, structured beginner course taught by women, and a built-in social network that encourages students to keep sailing after the classes end.

The North Fork course runs in three- or four-week sessions, Monday and Tuesday afternoons and evenings. The first class is on land, learning boat parts and rigging. By the second day, the students are on the water, raising the mainsail and steering under power before sailing out into the bay.

Fleisher also takes students out on her 26-foot keelboat.

“It’s less tippy … We just use the jib and let the women trim the sail. We’ll tack, we’ll jibe, I’ll let them steer … All of a sudden, it’s like, ‘I got it — maybe not 100 percent, but this is now making some sort of sense.’”

By the final week, Myers-Aldous said, “they’re sailing me around. I don’t really have to do anything.”

Fleisher said this summer’s initial courses have been a gratifying learning experience. “I’m so glad. I don’t take any of this for granted.”

Next summer, she hopes to expand.

“If we don’t do it now, when are we going to do it? What are we waiting for?”

She’s already seen the effect it can have.

“I have a woman from the first session who’s pregnant, who’s learning how to sail before her baby’s born, so that the family will have that skill… Everyone brings their different bits and pieces… It’s not one eureka moment … It’s more of a cohesively organic process that’s been really enjoyable.”

Across the country, similar programs have proven to be gateways to the sailing life. A 2020 partnership between US Sailing and the NWSA to train more female instructors has seeded new courses at clubs and community centers across the country. The Women’s Coaching Pathway launched in 2024, to elevate women in competitive coaching roles. Each June, the National Women’s Sailing Conference draws sailors from across the U.S. to clinics on everything from safety and diesel basics to racing tactics and navigation.

The North Fork women’s course is now part of that lattice — a sprawling nationwide network of places where women can take the helm for the first time, surrounded by peers, guided by women skippers and linked into a wider sailing community.

“I think a lot of us were tired of bringing the snacks and putting the bumpers on every time we go sailing,” Lockwood said. “It kind of just felt like we didn’t have a real job on the boat. Now I feel like we could take the boat out ourselves.”