Carefree at The Landings initiated a summer time work program for high school and college level students who want to learn boating and the services involved with a boat club business. 

Our program serves the students as a way to experience the club’s operations, participate in the work of cleaning and preparing the boats for members, and meet and greet the members when they arrive at the docks. This work is wholesome, healthy, outdoors, provides guided learning experiences driving a boat, docking the boats, assisting members to load their gear on the boats and helping them board the boats and giving advice regarding weather, tides and current and information about the navigation routes and the use of the GPS’s to get to their destinations. 

The Apprentice Level is part of a career path for youth that will instill key values of service, commitment, dependability, reliability, and the fundamentals of good work ethics. Were they to return or stay on, the career path leads ultimately to Dock Master and Operations Manager. 

This year, we selected two senior level high school students, T J and Lauren, each working at one of our harbors here at The Landings. The past couple months have challenged Randy and Chris with extreme heat and long hours of great days for boating, our young Apprentice Dock Hands were at their tasks and served the club well. Both received promotions from Apprentice I to Apprentice II for their dedication to the work and consistent levels of attendance and performance. Along with that promotion they received an increase in pay. Our members responded warmly to the program and thanked them for the effort to make their boating more enjoyable. 

The program started as a summer job opportunity but both have chosen to work weekends as long as school grades and homework will permit. 

Some of the benefits our students derived from the program are: they earned their Boaters’ Driver’s license, received ‘On-the-Water’ skills training and have learned to dock the boats and put them in slips, the proper way to prepare a boat for use by members and to care for the boats when finished boating, customer service and the social graces required when providing a service, and the overall value of good work habits. 

The program is a solid way that we at Carefree can contribute to helping others while at the same time helping the club and its members. Through daily and routine survey evaluations by our members on cleanliness, readiness of boats when expected, quality of service provided at the docks and the overall CSI index of our members each has exceeded expectations with grades that are higher than the average Carefree Boat Club’s ratings. 

Both Lauren and TJ returned to school in the first week of August and along with them was our compliments for a job very well done, thanks for taking the heat on those extreme weather days. 

This program will continue for those who are interested and want to learn more about boating and how a boat club operates or who want to earn while they learn and learn the fine art of service and work at the water’s edge on the docks.