Our Programs
How We Do It
Today we live amid a quiet emergency: thousands of post‑9/11 veterans are living with PTSD, addiction, and suicidal thoughts, often in isolation and without a clear path back to community. VetsBoats is part of a grassroots movement to change that trajectory—to raise awareness, offer tangible hope, and create spaces where veterans and their families can heal together on the water.
We work through trusted partners — VA recreation therapy teams, Veteran Service Organizations, and local Veteran Service Offices—to reach the veterans most at risk and ensure they can participate at no cost. Veterans can engage with VetsBoats as participants, volunteers, and community service contributors, while we help connect them back to the benefits and resources they have earned. Through ongoing sails, restoration projects, surveys, and regular outreach, we invite veterans back again and again to work, sail, and share the camaraderie that allows them to support and heal one another.
What Veterans Say
Did this experience help you feel more relaxed, connected, or supported as a veteran?
“Yes, even with the pain there were moments where I could 'just be' and take in the view and think.”
What Veterans Say
Did this experience help you feel more relaxed, connected, or supported as a veteran?
“So much on so many levels”
What Veterans Say
Did this experience help you feel more relaxed, connected, or supported as a veteran?
“It made me feel like I could conquer the world, that I could be able to manage PTSD (with little problems).”
1000+
Unique Veterans served across programs and locations this year
93%
Of total expenses directed to mission programs and Veteran services.
100%
of Veterans recommend our program to fellow Veterans
501c3
Non-profit Foundation
VetsBoats is a nonprofit organization dedicated to restoring health, well‑being, and community for military veterans and their families through mindfulness‑based sailing, hands‑on restoration, and shared maritime experiences.
Our purpose is to help veterans living with PTSD, traumatic injuries, addiction, and isolation move from withdrawal and hyper‑vigilance into connection, confidence, and renewed purpose. VetsBoats advances this mission through therapeutic sailing and peer camaraderie, delivered via a scalable nationwide network of chapters, affiliates, partner organizations, and community volunteers.
Our veteran‑led crews tackle PTSD, injury, addiction, and isolation by pairing on‑water intensity with peer camaraderie, helping participants move from withdrawal and hyper‑vigilance into connection, confidence, and renewed purpose.
We are building a nationwide network of chapters, affiliates, and member boats—anchored in local waters yet unified under common standards—that makes therapeutic sailing as recognizable and accessible as other mainstream veteran wellness services.
Through group voyages, training, and leadership pathways, VetsBoats acts as a connector and catalyst so that wherever there is a willing boat and a veteran in need, there is a trusted on‑ramp back to community and a life of meaning on the water.
