The winners of 25 hospice regattas held throughout the nation last year traveled to St. Petersburg, Florida the weekend of April 20-22 to compete in the 2012 Hospice Regattas National Championship, hosted by the National Hospice Regatta Alliance. Among the skilled competitors is South Florida’s Bret Moss, skipper of Magic Marine, the overall winner of the 2011 Hospice by the Sea Regatta.  In addition to competing for national honors as Hospice by the Sea’s representative, Moss and his crew will sail with the heartfelt purpose of raising awareness of the importance of hospice care.

“My grandfather taught me how to sail when I was 13 years old.  During his final days, he was cared for by hospice. He received excellent care and was treated with compassion and kindness. My family received so much support from the nurses and doctors. Sailing in these hospice regattas is my way of giving back,” says Moss, a well-known sailor and highly respected competitor.

In preparation for the Championship, Moss recently participated in and won both the 57^th Annual Miami to Key Largo Race and the 110-mile Key Largo Steeplechase. Though the upcoming Hospice Regattas National Championship is a shorter race, sailors will encounter a variety of challenges, such as being required to sail a different vessel each day and ongoing tactical analyses on the crew’s performance. Moss and his team members, Dalton Tebo, Karl Langfeld and Jason Dagastino, are aware of the hard work required to win any sailing competition and are committed to winning the Championship in honor of Hospice by the Sea.

According to Moss, “Sailing is like life. You have to adjust your sails because you can’t always change the conditions.”

For more than three decades, Hospice by the Sea, Inc. has provided hospice care to patients and families in Palm Beach and Broward Counties. Additional services offered are home health care, palliative care, bereavement counseling, complementary therapies and caregiver support.  For more information about Hospice by the Sea’s programs and services, please call (561) 395-5031, or visit www.hbts.org.

The National Hospice Regatta Alliance is a national not-for-profit organization whose members collectively raised over $1.2 million for hospices in their respective communities last year, netting more than $16 million since 1982. The Alliance’s work is supported by their all-volunteer Board of Directors and committees, as well as sponsorships. Willing hands, money and in-kind contributions all help the organization fulfill its mission to raise awareness of hospice care through charity sailboat regattas. For more information, please contact the Alliance at nhra@hospiceregattas.org.