Resilience Sailing with Aaron Goldwater in Townsville

Tell me about Resilience Sailing

Resilience Sailing is a sailing-based charity set up to help people who have been through trauma, who may or may not have PTSD as a result. We have worked with veterans, police, doctors, nurses, firefighters, Aborigines and domestic violence survivors who have been through many stresses and issues. We have also had mums, dads, and teenagers who loved to have fights with their parents on board with us. Sailing has rebuilt their connection by helped them understand they weren't bad people.

In 2017 a SE Queensland university was involved by collecting data that showed a significant drop in issues, PTSD and trauma. My findings were based on what people did once the program was finished. I found 80% of people either went back into a job, started a new career or opened their own businesses, and some even purchased sailing boats of their own.

What we do in the program is teach people how to sail. By learning to sail, they learn many other skills, including building confidence, teamwork, and communication as a team. Without those skills on a yacht, the boat will never go anywhere. One of the most tremendous successes about the program is everyone knew that everyone else had something going on. It was a safe environment where everyone understood that whatever was discussed on the boat, stayed on the boat. After 5 years, I can tell you nothing has ever come out as to what was discussed on the boats.

We took several people who had successfully been through the program and gave them advanced training, which allowed them to run yachts themselves. This allowed us to have 3 extra yachts sailing as we had those people who had been through the program actually teaching as well.  This was good for both them and the people they were teaching.

Over the last 18 months, I have worked exclusively with women who have been through domestic violence. They have been an amazing group of women.

I moved to Townsville in 2020, where I started Resilience Sailing, operating out of the local yacht club, however COVID unfortunately set us back. Moving forward, we will be resuming the sailing program but we will also be running additional programs for recovery coaching.  I have been undertaking additional training myself to be able to offer this service. Recover coaching is aimed at helping those who have been through addiction problems as well as trauma by offering a special one-on-one program. Once we come back online in late March or early April, we will be running recovery coaching for those who have been through the NDIS or those who have other issues they need to deal with.

What are your typical responsibilities as a business owner?

My responsibilities include all the financials, marketing, designing the program and running the program. It's kind of like a one-armed paper hanger. Like any small business, the owner has to try and find time to do everything.

What were the most challenging problems you had to overcome when opening?

The most challenging problem I had to overcome was COVID when opening up in Townsville.

The other problem I encountered was getting a university involved to measure the results. The Israeli guy who taught me about the course said, 'If you don't have a university involved and you don't measure the output, then it never happened, and never existed'.  It is very sage advice.

After a year of going through the bureaucratic stuff with the university to get them involved, things were pretty plain sailing. We had psychology masters students from the university collect data along with junior students who were being taught various things. Occasionally we had some students come sailing with us where we learned a lot about them and how they collected the data.  The data was sent back to Toowoomba for analysis. We had 2 of the students write their masters thesis on the program.

Having to start again, I would have got better finance as I was funding it myself, as many small businesses do. This situation is different starting in Townsville. We have an appropriate sized boat coming, where before we were borrowing boats all over the place.  If the boat is too big, it is too daunting for beginners, and if it is too small, you can’t get enough people on it to make it viable.

Where can we find more information about Resilience Sailing?