Jon grew up in Fair Haven NY; as a baby his parents strapped his car-seat to the mast of the family thistle and since he has spent most of his life in the sport of sailing; both teaching and competing. He started racing at 9 in the Fair Haven Yacht Club’s Jr. Sailing program and crewing for former J/24 class president, Hank Killian. Jon began skippering his family J/24 at 15, winning several club championships and local regattas. He was New York Sates Laser champion, winning 1997 gold medal at the Empire State Games. Jon raced in College at both New York Maritime College and Christopher Newport University. His long list of sailing experience includes Thistles, Lightings, J/22s, Melges 24s, J/105’s, J/35s and Benetau First 40.7s. Most recently Jon was trimmer aboard Mike Ingham’s Brain Cramp, finishing 2nd at the 2007 J24 World Championships.

Jon has dedicated the past 15 years to teaching and coaching sailing at the Junior, High School, College and professional level. Students that he has coached have gone on to be College All-Americans, College Sailing Coaches, and to campaign for the US Olympic trials.

Jon was the Service Manger for Haarstick Sailmakers, in charge of Sailing with customers; teaching sail shape, coaching tactics, and hosting Seminars. He Spent four years coaching the Varsity Sailing team at Christopher Newport University, as well as running the Newport News High School sailing program in Virginia. He was Area B’s Bemis and Smythe cup coach. Jon has also been a Judge for many regattas’s including college sailing’s MAISA championships. The past three years were spent running one of the country’s largest Junior Sailing programs at the Duxbury Bay Maritime School. There Jon helped the program achieve its most successful year ever in 2007, with 1114 students. Jon was in charge of managing 32 sailing instructors who taught close to 300 students a day during the summer sailing season. He was also head coach of the Duxbury High School Sailing team, the largest public high school sailing team in the country. He led a starting line-up of five Sophomores and only one Senior to a 3rd place finish out of the 90 teams in New England (NESSA), qualifying the team for the 2007 National Championships. He’s a US Sailing level 1 and 2 certified sailing instructor, and is in the process of getting a Level 3 coaching certification.