About MYSC
The Malta Young Sailors Club was officially established in March 1997 but it was actually several years before that its roots were beginning to form. There is no specific person or event that resulted in what the Club is today; it was more the harnessing of the energy and efforts of several individuals who at the time were trying to bring the wonderful sport of sailing to young children.
In the early 90's Arabella and Philip Denvir had been operating the Malta Sailing School quite successfully utilising a mixed bag of whatever dinghies were available but once the children had done a course there was no organisation that was available to provide sailing on a regular basis.
John Ripard Jr, whose eldest son Sebastian was 7 at the time and very keen to go sailing alone, decided to put all his energy to creating an Optimist Class in Malta which did not exist up till then. Buying a home-built wooden Optimist enabled Sebastian to start sailing but what was missing was friends in whose company he could sail. The initial gang consisted of Keith Cutajar, Kai Merten, Emma Micallef and Danny Calascione all of whom had been to Arabella's school and together with Sebastian this group would meet from time to time.
Other early Optimist sailors joined in this way and these included Peter Valentino, Yasmin de Giorgio, Zak Borg, Andrew Selvagi, Matthew Fleri Soler and Benjamin Tabone.
John wanted to achieve 2 things very quickly before the initial enthusiasm died down. One was to grow the fleet of optimist sailors and the second thing was to organise a structure whereby these children could meet and sail together on a frequent and regular basis.
In 1996 John and Jost Merten individually decided to sponsor young children to take sailing courses provided by the Malta Sailing School. John did this by offering a free sailing course to children at the Luxol football nursery enlisting the support and guidance of Pippo Psaila. Jost in turn also offered similarly sponsored courses and from then the whole thing took off. A large number of children responded and to cope with the demand John and Jost each purchased 5 Optimist dinghies from the UK and formed the Youth Sailing Foundation.
The youngsters started meeting every Saturday at The Cavalieri Hotel and with Pippo Psaila in charge The Malta Young Sailors Club was officially founded on the 21st March 1997 with a total of 10 members.
