Ever notice JK aiming a 10 ft long camera lens in your direction? Pictures from this season’s classes and some rentals will now be posted on our website at http://photos.longshoresailingschool.com. These pictures are free and available for you to download and share. The archives will be updated regularly, so check back in if you don’t see your class yet. Please e-mail us at info@longshoresailingschool.com if you have any questions. Happy sailing!
To start off our 50th season celebration, we have combed through hundreds of old pictures and placed some of them on a slideshow under Our History. While this is just a small selection from our archives, you can get a feel for the huge transformation Longshore has made over the past 50 years.
We’d love to hear from old students and employees that made this place what it is today. If you have photos, old diplomas, or stories to share, please let us know. Send us an e-mail at info@longshoresailingschool.com.
The May 16, 2009 Safe Boating class will be held at Staples High School in room 188. Class will begin at 9:00 am and last until 5:00 pm. Please bring a pen, pencil, and bagged lunch as we will have a working lunch break.
Staples High School is located at 70 North Ave in Westport and is close to both I-95 and the Merritt Parkway. After turning into the Staples entrance, bare left at the fork and park in the student parking lot. Please enter at the Sports Complex South entrance, where you will see a Longshore Sailing School employee to check you in and guide you to the classroom.
Longshore Sailing School’s annual Tide Table is now available! The local tide prediction information is compiled and edited annually by the staff at Longshore Sailing School in Westport and is the most accurate local data available.
For simplicity, only diurnal tides are shown. Adjustments are made for daylight savings time switch overs and length of sunlight throughout the year. Nocturnal high and low tides may be estimated by adding 12 hours and 26 minutes to the prior daytime high or low tide.
Annual publication and distribution of the local tide table is a free public service and a tradition which goes back over 30 years. The sailing school first provided a tide table handout as a convenience to its summer boat rental clientele. Because most boat rentals occur on weekends, John Kantor, the school’s founder, had the weekend dates shaded in blue to make them easier to find without a separate calendar. And, since not all tides are equal, he also included the predicted height for each daytime high tide. The tide table design became so popular that soon everyone with and interest in the waterfront – boaters, beachgoers, clammers, waterfront homeowners, watermen, government agencies, realtors, wedding planners, fishermen, etc. sought them out.
Donny O’Day, Longshore Sailing School’s Operations Manager, is the tide table’s editor. He points out that, “NOAA (the federal government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) used to provide the raw data for local tide tables, but they cut back to only the larger reference stations a few years ago. The nearest is Bridgeport. Smaller ports in between were left out. So now we do the local calculations ourselves.”
Since the first tide table was printed in 1978, according to Kantor, “each year we printed more, but it never seemed to be enough. People wanted multiples, one for the refrigerator door, one for the office, one for the car, and one for the boat. Currently we distribute at least one tide table for every man woman and child in Westport and tens of thousand more in the surrounding towns. A lot of people depend on it”
Additional free tide tables are available at The Boat Locker, Westport Outfitters, Elvira’s, Westport Dep’t. of Parks & Recreation, Longshore Sailing School, Greenwich Community Sailing, and a variety of countertops throughout the local area.