Joseph Lee, Jr., later a member of the Boston School Committee, starts a small public sailing program designed to keep the local West End children off the city streets in the summer. Under Mr. Lee’s direction, West End children and Suffolk College students built and sailed plywood boats designed by Mr. Lee. The boats sailed from a pier on the Charles River Esplanade near Massachusetts General Hospital.
The program moves to a boathouse built with money donated to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts by Mrs. James Jackson Storrow.
Adults were permitted to join as “cooperative” members if they performed 50 hours or more of volunteer service at CBI. It is these adult memberships that, even today, defray most of the costs of running the Junior program.
Community Boating, Inc. was incorporated as a 501(c)3 educational non-profit organization to operate the Junior Program and offer adults inexpensive sailing during the times when the Juniors were not using the boats.
The MDC purchased the first 30 Mercurys for CBI fleet. The Mercurys were revolutionary boats in that they were constructed of fiberglass instead of traditional wood. CBI fleet eventually grew to 84 Mercurys in the mid-1980s when our Senior program membership peaked at 7,500 members, and the Junior program membership was 2,500 members strong.
Popular Boating magazine awarded CBI ‘Boat Club of the Year’. In 1960 CBI provided leadership for the establishment of Regatta Point Community Sailing in Worcester, and maintains ties to that program today.
CBI provided leadership for the establishment of Regatta Point Community Sailing in Worcester, and maintains ties to that program today.
US SAILING, the national governing body of the sport of sailing, honored CBI as ‘Yacht Club of the Year’.
We added a second story to the building and dock renovations were completed. That same year, Boston Magazine elected CBI to their Hall of Fame as Boston’s Best Boating program.
The Community Sailing Council of US SAILING honored Community Boating with an award for our decades of ‘Distinguished Service and Performance’ to the public.