Ayme Sinclair: Fostering Change
Meet Ayme Sinclair, Ayme is currently Vice President of The Woman’s Sailing Association, CEO of Women Who Sail, and Founder of Sailing Noire. Ayme is someone who continues to challenge the sailing community by providing access to those who normally wouldn’t have the tools to learn how to sail.
Ayme Sinclair never sailed until she was an adult. In 2014 she went on a trip with her friends who took her sailing where she immediately fell in love. Ayme took a class through the American Sailing Association to become certified in the basics. Shortly after becoming certified, a co-worker invited her out to race sailboats and once, she did that, she was hooked. The sailing world was where she wanted to be.
Sinclair was lucky enough to be able to join the Sweet Caroline Racing Team. Her team traveled throughout the Northeast for sailing competitions where she started to notice that all the other teams were not as diverse as hers. Her team was very multicultural; with people representing India, Jamacia, Peru, Morocco, and The United States. This experience made Ayme, a former marketing executive, want to encourage other people of color to get involved in the sailing and racing world. It was then that she created the Instagram page Sailing Noire.
Her mission on that page was to inspire others of color, especially black women, to become involved in the world of sailing. She slowly grew her following from 0 to 140,000 people in just over a couple of months. She talked about the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion. After growing her following so large and seeing the impact she was making, she didn’t just want to talk about it anymore; she wanted to act.
Ayme took off sailing around the world. She held clinics where she would put together different groups of people with no sailing experience. Ayme would take them out to the boat as a team and develop their skills over a couple of days. She went everywhere from the Caribbean to Spain eventually making it down to Kenya.
In Lamu, Kenya Ayme found a huge sailing community that participated in yearly races. One thing, however, stood out to her. There were no women sailors. From there she set out to create the first all-female sailing team to compete in their annual Dhow Race Festival. The people of Lamu, so ingrained in their own culture, didn’t believe that women had the constitution to be successful sailors but Ayme was ready to show them all up. She trained a team of girls from all over Africa including one from Lamu who had no prior sailing experience.
None of them knew anything about sailing or racing when they began. In the end, they raced and placed very well even beating out more experienced sailing teams who had done well in the past.
When Ayme came back to America her work did not stop there. She became a part of the Woman’s Sailing Association where she would attend frequent conferences. When she attended, she noticed something that she had seen before. There was no one at the conferences that ever looked like her. In a room full of women, she was the only black one. That’s when she knew, once again, she needed to take action to provide more access to all.
Ayme got more involved in the organization over time and eventually became Vice President of the Women’s Sailing Association. This past summer she helped host a panel on “Increasing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Sport of Sailing.” For US Sailing. In an Interview with SAIL Magazine, she described what diversity, equity, and inclusion looked like and why they are important in the sailing community,
“When I think about diversity, I think about the idea that we’re embracing differences, and also how impactful that can be when we start doing that. When we start embracing the things that make us different, those are also opportunities that can lead to innovating. When I think of equity, I think of fair treatment, which will remove barriers for people, so that we can have equal access. Then lastly, when I think of inclusion, I think of creating welcoming environments, which leads to making it so more will participate, and that also leads back to this idea of fostering ingenuity.”
- Ayme Sinclair
Here at The WaterFront Center, we celebrate leaders like Ayme who recognize a need in their community and work to make a positive, impactful change that allows more access for all in the sailing world.
Like Ayme, we at The WaterFront Center are making moves towards increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion in the world of sailing; that is why in 2021, The Waterfront Center is launching a Youth Competitive Sailing Scholarship. The goal of the scholarship is to provide students from various underprivileged, religious, LGBTQ+, and ethnic backgrounds with the opportunity to learn how to sail and enter the competitive sailing world.
Launching later this season, the Youth Competitive Sailing Scholarship Fund will provide 12 students with the financial support, equipment, and coaching needed to experience the positive benefits of competitive sailing. Sign up for our newsletter (click here) to be notified when the scholarship program launches.
Please share this article if your child or anyone you might know would be interested in applying for this scholarship.
Make sure to follow Ayme everywhere on social media!
Instagram: @Aymesinclair, @women.who.sail, @sailingnoire, & @sailsweetcaroline
Website: Aymesinclair.com & Sinclairsocial.com
