Who taught you to sail?

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Dick of Sylvan

Self and Others

I longed to sail but never had the chance thru college, so when in grad school I built a sail from the Red Cross Canoeing Handbook, and in 1960 taught myself to sail in my 14 ft. Bastien Brothers cedar-canvas canoe. This rig still sails well as long as the waves are not too big. Also did some reading of sailing manuals, which helped a lot. Eventually my wife and I took the Anapolis Sailing School course at San Diego, to move up to 25 ft Rainbows. That was the best education course I have ever had. A great mix of theory and practice. Too bad they closed out that school. Now sail a Cat 22 with enough confidence that I suspect I could sail most anything.
 
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Ron Searcy

Japanese lawyer

A friend & I took lessons at the Navy's yacht basin in Yokuska , Japan . A retired Japanese lawyer started us with theory in a classroom , then some lessons on a 20' open fishing boat . Finally we were on our own in a O'day Wigeon . This was in 1968 . It gave me a good solid start . It's dry as hell in the classroom . But looking back , it was necessary . Kept us out of the bars too .
 
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Ken M.

Learned to Sail by Crewing for a Racing Boat

I was 23 years old, just out of the Army, in 1970, starting my new job in Baltimore when a work associate asked if I would like to crew on his boat for his Wednesday night race series out of Middle River on the Chesapeake Bay. I told him I had never sailed before and he said, "Not a problem." Turns out he could not get enough folks to go with him. The captain was a "Captain Bligh" but he won most of the time--always finished in top three. I learned a lot from him including handling a spinnaker. He trained me to be his foredeck man so I changed all the sails and handled sheets for five years-- learned important lessons on sail trim, race strategy, etc. Great experience on the Chesapeake Bay! Today I sail my own Hunter 376.
 
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Tom Ehmke

Sunfish sailing in Lawrence, Kansas

When I first learned to sail, I was a graduate student in the Germanics program at the University of Kansas. My roommates and I would go to a man-made lake (Is there any other kind in Kansas?)in the area and race sunfish. I had a motorcycle which I had driven from Bowling Green, Ohio to Lawrence. The bike, a Honda 450, and the sunfish (rented for the princely sum of $5 a splash) were pretty much all that kept me sane while I spent a year of advanced academic drudgery at school. Don't misunderstand. The University of Kansas is a great school. I'm just not the academic type. The following year (1967), after dropping out of graduate school, I returned to my first professional love, carpentry and started to build a wooden sloop. Finished the hull, but couldn't afford the rigging and sails. As life moved me around Northwest Ohio I moved the unfinished hull several times, but it was destroyed in the early 80's in a barn fire. Long hiatus... marriage, divorce, remarried---happily. Lost three close friends to untimely illness in the mid-nineties and decided to get back into sailing before the clock stopped ticking for me... And I love it as we all do. Oh, yeah, I guess I was self-taught in the beginning, but since 1994 am an active member of the Toledo, Ohio chapter of United States Power Squadron, and the classes I've attended and my on the water experience sailing our ODay 272,Tooth'n'Nail, are the most important sources of my sailing knowledge to date. Tom
 
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Steven Novak

School of hard knocks

I first started sailing when I was 15 in a sunfish in the ocean. I worked my way up learning by myself mostly. I had a 22 Seafarer,27 Bristol, 32 Bristol, 37 Alberg(the best) and now a 33 CD. I am still learning, you can teach a old dog new tricks.
 
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Steven Novak

School of hard knocks

I first started sailing when I was 15 in a sunfish in the ocean. I worked my way up learning by myself mostly. I had a 22 Seafarer,27 Bristol, 32 Bristol, 37 Alberg(the best) and now a 33 CD. I am still learning, you can teach a old dog new tricks.
 
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jim dafoe

The Sheet of My Pants

We (my wife Rhonda & I) started with a borrowed 16 foot daysailor and a lot of "I think you do it this way" and some more "don't make it tip so far!" Next we bought a 23' trailor sailor with a book in one hand and the tiller in the other we took turns looking for the page to fit the situation. Finally we took the ASA basic 4 day class and we gained the confidence to learn and experience more through respect than fear. Every time out we learn a little more about our Hunter 31 and "the beauty of sail".
 
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Robert Glasure

Learned to Sail

I got a little practice on a 16 foot catamaran on Canton Island years ago. The next step was to buy an Island Packet 31' and sail/motor from Virginia to the Florida panhandle with my wife as 1st mate. Our daughter and a son crewed part of the way. A good way to learn to sail if you are brave and watch the weather.
 
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Bob

On the desk

One cold winter day in Salsburry Conn. in the early 80's. I was talking with a coworker about how he could not wait for windsurfing season to start (the ice to melt). I was leaving for a Fla. for vacation the next week. I took a few dry lessons on the desk top, and loaded his board on my Mustang and did'nt slow down till I hit Jacksonville.
 
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Jim Westman

Capsized book in hand

I started sailing with Royce's pocket book in hand with an El Toro. After shoving off from the windward beach I immediatly capsized on the beach because I did not have my center board down. My kids howled and I lost their respect as an able seaman. Eventually I sailed off the beach and have been hooked on sailing for ever.
 
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Hal Beck

Newport Harbor, Calif. 1954

When we moved back to California in the early 50's one of my elementary school classmates had a Lehman (sp.) 12. I spent many pleasant afternoons with him on Newport Harbor. By my high school years I had sailed enough to teach another friend. 40 years later I decided to see if I still liked to sail, or even could, so I bought a used Coronado 15. I still can, and I still like it.
 
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Jim McCormack

Sailing the Connecticut River

I learned to sail on a 15 foot Barnegat Bay Cat boat. The boat was small but the fun was large. Down wind the bow would go under water just enough to be interesting. Off the wind she was very fast like most cats. It was wonderful way to spend my high school weekends and a great introduction to sailing
 
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Don

Self-taught from books

I wanted to sail real bad. For years I read how-to-sail and how-to-build small boats books, mostly from the '50's. Finally at the age of 45 I bought a Snark but the info from the book just didn't make sense. Turns out I was being too cautious. Finally decided to capsize it in front of my friends for a joke...so I pulled in the sheet and Boy! did it ever go...and turn...and heel. It was great fun and I forgot to capsize it. The books finally made sense. I still have the Snark but have graduated to a 14' Capri.
 
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Matt Loeffler

Self taught from books

I learned to sail in a Sea Snark when I was in grade school. Got it and a bunch of books. My dad did play a little in the learning curve, but he was a rank beginner too. My understanding of currents, small that it is comes from sailing in the irrigation canal behind my parents house. About 25 to 30 feet wide with a bridge a couple of blocks up wind, down current from my house.
 
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Bruce Jay Bartley

Yours Truly at 9 Years Old

It was late in the summer of 1941. I was a paper-boy for the "Rock Island Argus" and had bought this 10 ft dingy built like an Old Town Canoe resembling todays Whalers. I had been riding my bike down to Lake Davenport just to watch the river barges and the sail boats. I paid someone at the Sea Scout Base $ 25.00 and took off. There was very little wind, however, I finally learned how to go back and forth across the current but could never get it to go back up. It was getting quite late and what little breeze there was finally quit and I was in the middle of the river headed for the locks and dam. I had to jump in with the "clothes-line" bow line in my mouth and swim it to shore on the Rock Island Arsenal. Boy, was my Dad mad when he came down to retreive me and the boat. I still sailed that boat until after World War II using bed sheets my Mom sewed together.
 
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Matt Crunk

Racing is a fast teacher (sailing club)

The first time I was ever on a sailboat in my life, I found myself crewing in a regatta. I'd had an interest in sailing for some time - it was just one of those things I always thought I'd enjoy. I'd read some basic books on the subject, but had never had the opportunity to try it until I met a new friend on a Florida dive trip who happened to own a sailboat. He also happened to be vice commodore of a local sailing club and invited me to crew for him in a race a couple of weeks later. I loved it and couldn't get enough. I soon made other friends at the club and began sailing and crewing with everyone I could, as much as I could, which was a lot. Newly divorced at the time and working as a freelance commercial artist, I had a lot of free time on my hands that summer and just about all of it was spent sailing. I practically lived at the sailing club. By the time I bought my own boat about a year later, I'd become a very proficient sailor.
 
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Jeff Harding

Sailing for Dummies

I purchased a Watkins 25 and the book Sailing fro Dummies about 7 weeks ago. This weekend my slip naighbor ( a licensed captian) took me out on my boat for two hours and wow what a treat. She taught me more than I learned in the time I owned the boat. Thanks Carol.
 
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Paul Wetmore

anyone seen my motor?

An education costs money as they always say holds true to sailing also. Started in a sunfish and windsurfed for years but the real education started when I was given a Clipper 21 in need of some TLC. From the trailer axle breaking enroute to its maiden voyage to the engine going overboard in 5' swells (with a 1 mile river to navigate without motor on the return voyage)it was an education you can only get as self taught sailor. Between the books and the motor I could have flown to florida for a course and still had money to put towards my O'day 25. But I'm hooked and still learning every time I go out.
 
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John Averell

Bedsheet U

I taught myself to sail. Had a 13' rowboat at our summer home in Massapequa, Long Island. Got the idea one day to hoist a bedsheet up a tall pole, row accross to the "flats", turn around and let the wind blow me home. The feeling was so exhillerating (really !) that I looked at some sailboats, saw things like centerboards, and nailed a 1X6 to the side of the rowboat. Now I could (sort of) steer the boat from side to side - still rushing out of control before the wind. Looking back, some of the best sailing I have ever done - really !
 
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Mike

Summer camp

I have always been entranced by sailboats, but I think the first time I actually sailed was at summer camp on Schroon Lake in the Adirondacks. I must have been 11 or 12 at the time. The camp (which has long-since closed and is now the site of summer cottages) had a "fleet" of about six Sunfish and Sailfish. I don't remember any lessons per se, but that some of us knew how to do certain things and we showed each other. I particularly remember one of my bunkmates who preferred sailing on the smaller and less comfortable Sailfish (remember the Sailfish? It was smaller than the Sunfish and had no cockpit for your feet. It really was a surfboard with a sail) because it was easier to capsize. The highlight of the sailing season was the bunk sailing trip to Schroon Lake Village at the other end of the lake. Schroon Lake is about nine miles long, and the camp was at one end, the Village at the other. We would leave for the Village right after breakfast, arrive at the Village in time for a pizza lunch (what a treat!), and sail back in time for dinner. Of course we would make both legs into races. Winds fail? No problem. The ski boat would be dispatched to tow us home. Great sail training.
 
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