Mark Showalter

Chief Operating Officer (COO)

Mark has been sailing on San Francisco Bay for decades, starting as crew in beer can races out of Berkeley. For many years, he also sailed his Laser on the Bay, and has since decided that he prefers big sailboats.

In 2019, Mark was a member of the crew dubbed “Kings of the Beer Cans” by Latitude 38.

Mark’s sailing adventures have taken him beyond the Bay to Catalina, the British Virgin Islands, and Croatia. He’s now looking forward to his next international sailing adventure, but doesn’t know when or where that will be.

“I’m excited to take on this new role,” Mark says. “I encourage everyone to come by, say hi, introduce themselves, and let me know how we can take the Berkeley school to the next level.”

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Steve Hood, Basic Coastal Cruising

I would definitely recommend Modern Sailing to anyone who is interested in learning to sail the right way.
Mike, Santa Rosa, California

All of the courses and my instructors (JT and Stan) were extremely professional and full of knowledge and experience. I found I was able to learn from their experiences beyond the scope of the courses, and look forward to future opportunities to do so. I would highly recommend Modern Sailing to anyone.
John Clark

Every aspect of Modern Sailing - training, syllabus, course materials, quality of the boats, quality of the instructors, and the very friendly and helpful staff - exceeded my expectations. Modern Sailing has a first class sailing program in an environment with challenging winds and currents. I look forward to coming back to charter a boat and certainly plan to continue my sailing training.
Emma & George Stubbs, Sausalito

We just took our ASA 106 at a school in Rhode Island as we prepare for 6 months of cruising in the Caribbean. The class was great, but more than anything it made us really appreciate the quality of teaching and rigor at Modern Sailing. Even though we were the newest to sailing, the group seemed to think that we had the best fundamentals. We felt very well prepared and we see why Modern Sailing has the reputation it does.
John Kipping

The meeting room was quite adequate and the location most convenient, but the course outline and instruction were outstanding. Modern Sailing is fortunate to have such a well organized instructor in Mr. Stan Lander who teaches very well from a rich professional background. Mr. Lander was generous with his time and patiently in helping students who needed more attention or time in understanding various aspects of the curriculum.