Skip Abed, owner of the Santa Barbara Sailing Center, has lived in the area since 1989. He has worked at the sailing center since 1992 and purchased the business in 2020.

Skip started sailing when he was four years old on an O’Day sailboat on Pleasant Bay in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Growing up, sailing became a passion for Skip due to the exposure he had travelling to different parts of the world with his family. This allowed him to sail in the Mediterranean Sea, Persian Gulf, Red Sea, Caribbean Sea as well as the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. When Skip was 12 years old, he fell in love with chartering when he sailed from Rhodes, Greece along the Turkish coast for 10 days on a 61ft ketch. This is when he recognized that his passion for sailing could become a career. Skip enjoys sailing with his wife Jen and their two daughters, Hala and GiGi.