Sandys Boat Club was presented with 15 refurbished Optimist dinghies yesterday after Oracle Team USA restored the boats that had been damaged in two direct-hit hurricanes in October 2014.

Mark Turner, the Oracle build team manager, and his crew spent the past few months on days between their busy work schedules, completely refurbishing and restoring the boats. The boats have received a full overhaul including a respray.

Sandys Boat Club ran a successful sailing programme, driven by members of the club. However, the programme dwindled as a result of a lack of support and funding. The club’s president, Martin Siese, described how the donation will benefit the club.

“This will have a huge impact on the rejuvenation and sustainability of our junior sailing programme,” he said.

“We began our programme in the early 1990s and had a thriving programme right through the late Nineties. For a number of reasons, our summer sailing was discontinued at Sandys Boat Club but experienced a revival in 2016.

“One of our main stumbling blocks to restarting the programme was the condition of our boats and the huge amount of work that would be required to get them ready to sail.

“We effectively now have 15 ‘as new’ boats, so that stumbling block has been removed for us by Oracle.

“I also think that this can only help us in selling our programme to young sailors, knowing that they will be getting to sail with top-notch equipment. Then, of course, the ultimate benefit to Sandys Boat Club is an increased membership, as new sailors’ families join, and increased activity at the club.”

Mr Siese said 50 to 60 sailors will use the boats during the summer programme and hopefully an after-school programme and Easter programme will offer more students the opportunity to sail.

Asked if the club could have done the restoration themselves, he said: “Well, some of the oldest boats we might have given up on. Our fleet of Optimist dinghies are quite old; the newest boats were ones we bought when the North American Championships were held here in the late Nineties.

“Over time these boats do take some licks, and that is to be expected with learn-to-sail programmes. As a relatively small club, our volunteer base is quite thin, so boat repairs have tended to be quick patch-up jobs rather than a proper repair.

“So we probably would have patched up only the best boats and discarded some of the worst ones.”

Mr Siese also described how the refurbished boats will be valuable in the long run.

“There is such a raised level of awareness of sailing at the moment, due entirely to the America’s Cup. The AC Endeavour programme is introducing so many young sailors to the sport — it is just incredible.

“Now it is our job as a sailing/boating club to provide the platform for these young sailors to continue in the sport.

“This donation by Oracle is perfectly timed; it will allow us to provide capacity for the AC Endeavour graduates to fill. If we can then be providing new sailors for the Bermuda Optimist Dinghy Association to continue training, this can only strengthen what is already a very successful programme.

“The more experienced Opti sailors we have, then hopefully we can have more youth Laser/Laser Radial/Nacra 15/420 sailors.

“It is a chain reaction: the more sailors we put in at the front end should result in more experienced sailors in the 16 to 19-year-old bracket in ten years’ time.”

Sandys Boat Club has helped to produce some of Bermuda’s finest sailing talent, including four-times Olympian Peter Bromby, Paul Fisher and Martin Siese, who all grew up sailing Sunfish at the club, as well as past Opti sailors such as Jesse and Zander Kirkland and Owen Siese, a member of Team BDA, the island’s entry into the Red Bull Youth America’s Cup.