This firm cruising on open waters

Denise Perreault

04/09/2011

SAILS MOVES: Robert Lawnsby, president of Narragansett Sailing LLC, has been around the water since he was a kid, thanks in part to his father’s naval service. He was able to open his sailing school in 2009. /

Navy brat Rob Lawnsby grew up in Hawaii, attended high school in Connecticut, worked in Massachusetts and spent time in Georgia and Illinois when in the Air Force.
He “always dabbled” in sailing, he said, and learned how to build boats while in Georgia.
Settling in Rhode Island about 30 years ago, where he still lives on a boat docked in Narragansett Bay, he has worked in various capacities close to the sailing industry since then, including a 10-year stint as a Hunter dealer at Fleet Yacht Sales in Bristol (a position he still holds). So when a new opportunity to start a sailing school presented itself more than two years ago, he was ready.
Lawnsby knew people in Connecticut who had two sailboats and were “struggling big-time” to start a business giving sailing lessons. “I knew I could fill those boats,” he said, so he brought them to Bristol and proceeded to establish his own sailing school, Narragansett Sailing LLC.
“I had absolutely no fear since I had been in the marine industry for a number of years,” Lawnsby said. “I knew there were people without sailing skills who wanted to learn and I knew there would be a steady stream of sailing students, there was no question.”
“All I needed to do,” he continued, “was to put the pieces in place and I would get the students.”
As a result, “I was really busy in 2009,” he said, putting those pieces in place. He obtained certification for himself as an instructor and for his school from the American Sailing Association, based in California. He set up a website (www.narragansettsailing.com). He found sailing instructors “who had been sailing for years,” he said, among his Hunter customers and he had to make sure that they, too, became association-certified.
During the first season, from May 1 to Nov. 1 last year, he had by then acquired two more sailboats for a total of four and had on board six instructors, including himself. He projected that he would have 30 students during that inaugural season, but wound up with 40. “I started this business essentially on a shoestring, with no money, and I’ve been in the black all along,” he said. “I keep an eye on profits, I need to stay in the black.” His business is doing so well, he indicated, that he is currently in the process of obtaining two more brand-new sailboats (from France), adding two more instructors and, as of this month, he opened a second location in Barrington. For the 2011 season, he has 45 students signed up, is already scheduling lessons into June and expects to have approximately 100 students by season’s end.
He limits his classes to three students and his three core courses usually are taken over the course of several months, with each course lasting 20 hours over several days. At a general charge of $800 per course, he is not cheap. “I am pricey,” he said. “I give a quality product but I charge for it.” He does not teach children and he offers special classes for women, with female instructors.
His own introduction to sailing took place almost on a whim in the 1970s.
Then in his late 20s, he bought a boat, taught himself how to sail and moved aboard to live on the boat with his wife and two young children, then 3 and 5 years old. “We took off and we spent the entire summer sailing around,” said Lawnsby, now 61. “We went to Cape Cod, Long Island Sound, down to Georgia,” and he’s taken sailing trips to Maine, Chesapeake Bay and the Bahamas.
Yet there is one place above all others where he finds the sailing to be “superb,” he said. That place is Narragansett Bay, the reason why he moved to Rhode Island. “The winds are predictable, the dangers are benign and there is very little current in Narragansett Bay,” he said. “There’s almost no fog in the upper bay and there are all these delightful little villages” along the coast, such as Wickford and Wakefield.
Lawnsby attributes his business success to several factors. “The market always has been there,” he said. What he has capitalized on is the need he perceived for the kind of sailing lessons he provides. “A lot of schools in Rhode Island teach racing, but few teach cruising,” he said. “There is no question I am a cruising school.”
Many of his students – the average age is 45 to 50 – are baby boomers approaching retirement, he added, with a “wanderlust” for new adventure as well as “the means and money” to make it happen. •

COMPANY PROFILE
Narragansett Sailing LLC
OWNER: Robert Lawnsby
TYPE OF BUSINESS: Provides sailing
lessons for cruising
LOCATION: 99 Poppasquash Road, Bristol, and Cove Haven Marina, 101 Narragansett Ave., Barrington
EMPLOYEES: 7
YEAR FOUNDED: 2009
ANNUAL SALES: $200,000 estimated for 2011