Executive Director: Summer Settle
Summer joined Charleston Community Sailing in July of 2023. Having grown up racing Hobie Catamarans with her parents, Summer is a lifelong sailor and has a deep appreciation for the waterways around her new home of Charleston, SC. She currently crews on a sailboat through Charleston Ocean Racing Association. She has worked in sales for the past 15 years, specifically in the pharmaceutical, golf and software industries, and is thrilled that she now gets to call her passion her career. In addition to her career, she has been involved with fundraising for many years for several organizations that she deeply cares about including the Junior League of Savannah and Charleston, her collegiate sorority – Alpha Chi Omega and MUSC Hollings Cancer Center. Summer is a die hard Gamecock fan and alum and a proud mom to her teenage son, Rowland and one very spoiled French Bulldog, Tobie.
Program Director: Kathleen Saunders
Captain Kathleen Saunders grew up a true water child on the Chesapeake Bay in southeastern Virginia. She often tagged along on the bow as her dad sailed, practicing for regattas. Born into a long line of sailors, Kathleen’s dad, and his brothers, grew up ocean racing with their dad, and he with his, and so on… The Saunders name can be found on a number of historic trophies in the Annapolis Yacht Club. But as most know: if you tell a child to do one thing, they will certainly do just about anything else. Despite being raised by nationally recognized sailors, she was not interested in sailing competitively. As a teenager she took a short summer stint working on the SSV Robert C Seamans, a three-masted tall ship and oceanographic research vessel. Once at college, she took a job with the College of Charleston Sailing Association as a deckhand and assisted teaching keelboat sailing classes under Greg Fisher and Ned Goss. However, a year after she graduated with her BFA she headed to graduate school and sailing took a backseat to “big girl jobs.”
Teaching others stayed at the forefront of Kathleen’s interests in life though. After earning a MFA in Studio Art at Florida State University, she accepted an offer to join the faculty at CofC where she taught darkroom photography full-time. After a year, she greatly missed the water and left her professor position, deciding to pursue a career in sailing. Since then, Kathleen has worked full-time sailing for charter services and on boat deliveries in and out of the Charleston area.
Kathleen is the first woman in her family to sail professionally and has obtained her USCG 50-ton Master Captain License. She’s thrilled to join Charleston Community Sailing at the Lead for Women on the Water and share her love of sailing with others. In her free time, Kathleen loves tending to her tropical garden, camping, birdwatching, sewing, and traveling. Kathleen is also an internationally recognized artist. She and her dad still sail together locally racing 420s, Y-flyers, and classic moths for fun. In the future, Kathleen hopes to sail an Atlantic crossing and also plans to follow in her dad’s footsteps by racing in the Newport-Bermuda race one day.
