Breakwater Yacht Club Bringing in Greg Bertish To Introduce Therapeutic Sailing to Community

Breakwater Yacht Club and Sailing Center has always prided itself on being an inclusion club, offering classes to underserved and economically challenged people in the community.

And now the club’s organizers are looking to even further that outreach.

Partnering with Greg Bertish, a world-renowned sailor, humanitarian and motivational speaker, among other things, Breakwater is set to go down a new path that, if all goes according to plan, would allow it to introduce therapeutic sailing events and programs for neurodivergent individuals for the first time in the club’s history.

To do so, the club is hosting Bertish, who is making the trip in from his homeland of South Africa, along with a few others, this Monday, August 25, for a hands-on, on-the-water training for its sailing instructors from 3-6 p.m., followed by an inspirational talk and a complete screening of “Optimist,” an internationally acclaimed documentary that features Bertish, from 7 to 9 p.m.

Breakwater Commodore Nick Gazzolo is excited to help lead his club and its instructors down this new path and has invited everyone, from the club to the community at large, to attend the talk and proceeding screening. Space is limited so Gazzolo encourages everyone to sign up at breakwateryc.org/event/fwlhIt5TIo.

“Breakwater has always believed that meeting challenges on the water helps people meet challenges off the water,” Gazzolo said. “Greg can speak to this much better than I can, but there’s now proven research how being on the water, in the water and under the water can change people for the good, and that’s something all of us here at Breakwater certainly believe in. We are excited to have Greg share his incredible story and empowering work with our community.”

Gazzolo said this all started when Bob Miller, a special education teacher at the Montauk School, who also runs A Walk on Water Surf Academy, mentioned Bertish and his therapeutic sailing endeavors to Breakwater board member and physical therapist Sinead Fitzgibbon. Over eight years ago, Miller helped start the International Surf Therapy Organization, which, at its core, uses surfing as a vehicle for delivering intentional, inclusive, population-specific and evidence-based therapeutic structures to promote psychological, physical and psychosocial well-being. Bertish was one of the keynote speakers for the organization a few years ago, and ever since then he and Miller have kept in touch.

Miller’s surf academy meets every Tuesday and Thursday in the summer. Bertish will be attending the final session of the summer this Thursday, August 21, prior to the big day at Breakwater on Monday, when Miller will be helping out on site as well.

Miller said he’s been trying for well over a year to get Bertish to the East End, and he’s happy it’s finally going to happen.

“Greg is a real global gamechanger and everything he does is for the good of mankind,” he said. “It’s pretty cool that he’s going to come out here and speak with our community. I’m really excited.”

Scott Cullen has been a volunteer with A Walk On Water since its inception over eight years ago, and said it’s an amazing program that he looks forward to every summer.

“Really what it does is it pairs special needs athletes with peers from the neighborhood and what comes out of it is this amazing community where the kids become complete friends and it washes away the BS,” he said. “It’s an amazing program and it keeps getting better, and now sailing seems to be a natural progression from that. This past winter we expanded to getting the kids in the pool at the East Hampton YMCA to keep everything going.”

Cullen said he’s watched the evolution of Breakwater from its early days when Mark Matthews was the commodore and he feels as though it has stayed true to its core principals of bringing sailing to the community since then, and why it’s a natural fit to bring something like therapeutic sailing to the East End.

Miller and Bertish have gotten behind the “Blue Mind Theory,” popularized by marine biologist Dr. Wallace J. Nichols, which suggests that being near, in, on, or under water can have a positive impact on mental and physical well-being. It proposes that the sight, sound and feeling of water can induce a state of calm, reduce stress and enhance creativity and focus.

“I studied aquatic therapy with people with special needs in grad school, but I wasn’t able to do my thesis on it because, at the time, there wasn’t enough evidence-based research done on it, meaning there weren’t 18 peered-reviewed articles on it,” Miller said. “Now, that’s changed, and now there are people, like Greg, who I’ve met through the global community who are creating that research and it’s pretty fantastic that they’re ahead of the curve.”

Bertish said that he grew up as an insecure child who had bad acne and was bullied so much he had no self-belief and never thought he would amount to much. When he was 30, now 24 years ago, Bertish contracted a tropical bacteria that attacked his aortic valve and forced him to spend 200 days in a hospital, where he underwent two open heart surgeries.

During his time in the hospital, Bertish met people from every walk of life. But it was a little girl who inspired him to keep going. In the ICU, Bertish promised his father that he would do something great one day.

In April 2016, Bertish sailed an 8-foot children’s sail boat, an Optimist — he thought it was the best name for a children’s sailboat — 200 kilometers around the Cape of Storms. His journey raised over 1.3 million South African rands for the Red Cross War Memorial Hospital, and it ultimately led to the documentary “Optimist,” directed by Robert Whitehead, which has been shown at film festivals around the world.

Bertish is now the founder of the internationally acclaimed Sharkspotter Program; in 2017 he founded the Little Optimist Children’s Trust, which “dreams of” an inclusive world where all youth have access to safe spaces, opportunity, inclusion, education and positive mental health intervention that fosters hope and inspiration for a better life and a pathway to self-empowerment and future employment. In 2019, Bertish was awarded the Dame Charity Award in Amsterdam, in recognition of the charity work he does in Africa.

“Where I work in South Africa … children are not brought up around the water because they don’t have the opportunity. So a lot of them are actually scared of it,” Bertish said. “Actually, sailing is a much easier way than surfing to get those children into a boat, because we’re not immersing them 100 percent in the water. And so they’re a lot more comfortable and it’s a lot easier than getting them used to the water.”

Bertish said that the Little Optimist Children’s Trust was awarded an Olympic Impact Grant by Olympism365 Innovation Hub and Grants, a program, funded by the Olympic Refuge Foundation and others, which awards grants to organizations working at the intersection of sport and social impact, focusing on areas such as displacement, inclusion and well-being. The International Olympic Committee sent out a team of doctors to research and study their programs.

“We’ve had some amazing results come out of our school and all it’s doing is using sailing and the ocean as a form of therapy,” he said. “And really it’s all about broadening their horizons and showing them a world that they didn’t even know existed. There are so many marginalized people around the world that don’t have the resources.”

Bertish said that what Miller is doing with A Walk on Water is certainly commendable work, but what a lot of the research is finding is that therapeutic surfing is more than likely 10 years ahead of therapeutic sailing, and so his goal is close that gap a little bit.

“Bob saw an opportunity to merge the two, therapy and sailing, in Sag Harbor and in the Hamptons and in New York at large, and he saw Breakwater as a sailing community that would be willing to help out,” he said. “I think sailing, as a sport, as a fraternity, is trying to be more inclusive around the world. Historically, worldwide, sailing has been for and thought of for the elitists. It’s been a white male-dominated sport and it’s excluded a lot of people. And you can go around the world to Rio in Brazil, Cape Town in South Africa, the UK and pockets of the USA where there are communities that have never had access to it. That’s one of the things that we’re focused on, giving children an opportunity to sail and to be in and on the ocean.”

While the focus is on getting children into boats, both Miller and Bertish are quick to point out that such therapeutic programs, whether it’s sailing or surfing, are beneficial for people of all backgrounds and of all needs.

“It’s not just for children with autism,” Miller said. “It can also be for troubled youth. Before I even met Greg, I worked with children in South Africa who were from some pretty violent areas and the work it did with those kids was fantastic.”

“When I do my talk Monday night, part of it is connecting all of those people who love the ocean and the solace that they find in it,” Bertish said. “I remember I did a similar talk at two of the biggest yacht clubs in San Francisco and the response there was amazing. I had people coming up to me in their 70s and 80s who said, ‘Greg, I never thought about sailing like that ever.’ And they talk about how when they were going through a divorce, or if their company was just liquidated, they were, without even noticing it, going on their boats. And for that period of time, all of their worries would wash away. Whether you’re a small child, an old guy, whatever chaos you have in your life, the ocean really is therapy.”

Miller said there is absolutely no pressure on Breakwater, but what he’d like to see come out of Monday’s introduction is for the sailing center to create its own therapeutic sailing program. But he’d like to see that community widen and in more than just sailing.

“Ideally, we’d like to see more inclusive programs in surfing, swimming, sailing, hiking, biking, anything. Music,” he said. “Not just for children who are on the spectrum, but those who suffer from anxiety or depression or socioeconomic issues.”

Since it is a new endeavor for the club, Gazzolo isn’t exactly sure himself what’s going to come out of Monday’s events. It’s simply a first step.

“We don’t know exactly where this will lead in terms of future events and programs, but we know the event will be a springboard and energize people about how being on the water can be a source of empowerment and healing for people facing all kinds of challenges,” he said. “Greg, Bob, Scott, those are the real heroes. I’m just happy that we can help in any way.”