Does sailing need to be saved? Nicholas Hayes thinks so.

A sailor and business consultant who lives in Shorewood, Wisconsin, Hayes is the author of “Saving Sailing.”  The book, to be released Oct. 1, posits that participation in sailing has declined precipitously—dropping 70 percent since 1979—and that an intervention is needed to ensure it continues and thrives.

Sailing has been relegated to the backseat, Hayes contends, and is often perceived as simply a hobby, rather than a pastime offering benefits on both the individual and societal levels.

“Until we position sailing rightly where it belongs, as a life pursuit that matters, what we’re going to do is just hollow it out until it’s completely meaningless,” he said.

In his book, Hayes outlines the rise of sailing as a pastime taken up by a large, newly prosperous middle class of World War II vets who were acutely aware of life’s brevity and motivated to use their time well.

For a few generations, sailing hummed along nicely as a popular activity enjoyed by legions of American families. Baby boomers, the children of the World War II generation, continued sailing as adults, driven by happy memories and an emotional link to their childhoods.

But in the 1980s, Hayes says, Americans’ priorities shifted. Families moved to the suburbs, taking on greater debt and long commutes that sharply reduced their free time. Prosperity became increasingly defined by material possessions. Parents enrolled their children in competitive sports, hoping for college scholarships.

And sailing became viewed as just another children’s activity, a competitive alternative to soccer. Junior programs created skilled sailors, Hayes says, but the vast majority dropped out after reaching adulthood. Sailing became less of a family activity, which Hayes says reduced its emotional impact and eroded people’s devotion to it.

Nicholas Hayes, his wife and two daughters race together on their B-32, Syrena.

“In 1979, we were sailing in family groups about 89 percent of the time,” Hayes said. “In 2008, we were sailing in family groups only 10 percent of the time. Because it isn’t done in family groups, it doesn’t yield devotion.”

That lack of devotion, Hayes says, decreases the likelihood that sailing is considered a priority. Consequently, sailing falls by the wayside or worse, isn’t taken up at all.

Time a major culprit

Hayes’ book comes at a time when the national boating industry is struggling to pull itself out of a protracted, recession-related slump. A handful of groups have sprung up around the country over the past year with the combined goal of involving more people in sailing and helping the boating industry rebound. Among them is Puget Sound Sailing Renaissance, a Seattle-based coalition that formed in the spring.

The idea for Hayes’ book grew out of research he began conducting almost a decade ago to help regional sailing clubs and the racing authority in his area understand what was causing a decline in sailboat racing. Over a three-year period, Hayes polled about 750 sailors in the Milwaukee area, sharing his findings with local sailing leaders.

Then in 2006, Hayes and a team of his colleagues was commissioned by a major boating industry player to conduct a global study of sailing (under an agreement with the client, Hayes declined to name the company). The team surveyed cruisers and racers, retirees and children, professional sailors and amateurs in various places—Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand—about their participation in sailing.

“Through all of this work, I built this body of knowledge that I realized was pretty significant,” said Hayes, 47, a researcher and partner at FiveTwelve Group, a Milwaukee research and consulting firm.

Hayes ultimately interviewed more than 1,200 sailors worldwide, combining his research with data from boating magazine publishers and industry associations to develop his thesis. As his book took shape, he came to the conclusion that the decline in sailing had little to do with any of the usual perceived barriers, such as difficulty and cost. It was about the way people choose to spend their time, he reasoned, the failure of society to value pursuits that reward through personal challenge rather than instant gratification or material gain.

“How we choose to use our free time ultimately speaks to who we are as a people—as a society, a community, a nation. It’s in those individual decisions that bigger things start to happen.”

Lifelong learning under sail

Hayes sees sailing as a pastime that can strengthen families by removing the distractions of daily life, creating opportunities for collective problem-solving and providing quality time together. And at a time when many Americans are reevaluating their priorities, whether by necessity or choice, Hayes believes sailing is ripe for a resurgence.

“We can use this time of economic trouble and fear of war and turmoil in politics to just be afraid and let the time pass,” he said, “or we can use it as a motivation to say, ‘Maybe the choice to spend free time together was really the definition of prosperity and maybe we ought to do that again.’”

Hayes acknowledges that making a commitment to sailing isn’t always easy. It can mean putting off that new car purchase or corralling a busy, reluctant family for a Saturday sail.

“If we want more people to sail, we can never suggest as sailors that it’s not easy or it’s not big. It isn’t easy,” he said. “We are absolutely making enormous compromises to be able to do more of it. That’s the truth. Hard things matter, and they matter so much that we make compromises to do more of them.”

And sailing itself, the science of propelling thousands of pounds through the water by wind alone, is challenging. That’s exactly why it’s so fulfilling, Hayes says.

“I think what most sailors know is that it is a never-ending quest for new information and new techniques and new ideas and new ways to solve problems,” he said. “The fact that it’s complicated is exactly what drives us to keep doing it.”

Nicholas Hayes with daughters Kate, left, and Elizabeth. Both girls are accomplished racers who have been sailing since they were infants.

Mentoring is key

Hayes is proof that becoming a sailor doesn’t require a sailing lineage. His father fished but his parents didn’t sail until Hayes took them as an adult. Hayes learned sailing as a teen at summer camp, and he and wife Angela have arranged their life around it. They race with their two daughters, Kate, 15, and 12-year-old Elizabeth, and sail every weeknight and weekend they can.

In their 22 years of marriage, Hayes and his wife have never been without a sailboat. When their daughters were born, it was a given that the family would sail together. Hayes sees family sailing as crucial, since it offers the mentoring he believes is key to creating devoted sailors.

“Mentors are what inject the emotional ingredient into sailing that makes it nostalgic later in life, and that’s why we keep doing it,” Hayes said.

He acknowledges that family sailing may not be feasible for many people—for example, single-parent families or adults who want to take up sailing—and says sailing clubs and groups need to step up to the plate to fill in the gap.

“I think a chief role of clubs and sailing communities ought to be to try to match mentors to apprentices in sailing,” he said. “I think that’s one of their clear responsibilities.”

Hayes’ book has generated buzz among maritime booksellers in advance of its launch date next week. Talking with people about the book, Hayes says, reaction has generally fallen into two categories. Some people refute the suggestion that sailing is declining, he said, and will point to a proliferation of boats in their town or enrollment in one sailing program or another as proof.

“But that’s been countered with a sigh of relief from a lot of people that there’s a clear action plan for thinking about the outcome of these broader social issues in the context of sailing,” Hayes said.

“There’s been a sigh of relief that the discussion is not about handicaps or racing or costs, all the usual discussion points, but that it means something much more important than that, and that we ought to frame it that way and start the discussion over.

“The way to fix sailing,” Hayes said, “is to fix the systemic problems in society that prevent people from going sailing, and use sailing as a tool for that.”

Five percent of proceeds from sales of “Saving Sailing” through the book’s website will be donated to the Milwaukee Community Sailing Center’s COMPASS program, which introduces at-risk children and their caregivers to sailing.