Well the summer is winding down as the kids go back to school, and the temperatures start to fall. Some of us are feeling a bit bummed by this, but some of the best sailing is on the way. Fall is the time for strong winds and beautiful surroundings. As the leaves start to turn there is no better place to be than on the water. The mountains on both sides provide an amazing setting with the water all around and the reflections on the water of fall colors on the trees. Last summer I had the privilege of working for the Green Mt Club and spent the early part of the fall on the top of Mt Abe. The views for the tops of the mountains are spectacular but the times I went out on the water and saw the fall colors from the lake perspective it seems to be a whole other world. The feel is also different, even though you have the wind in your hair for both the splashing of the water against the hull and in your face puts you in another place and transfers your problems far, far away. Now that happens anytime of year with sailing, but having the beauty of the fall coloration of the trees kicks it up a notch. No matter where you are or what you’re doing, fall is a great time of year. I invite you to take your fall leaf peeping this year out on the lake and get a wide perspective of our beautiful landscape.
As summer winds down here at the CSC, mornings and evenings are becoming quite chilly and sailors are becoming fewer and further between. One might think that this would make for a boring work day, but indeed there is still a lot going on here on the waterfront. Our staff is hard at work planning and carrying out our great fall programming, continuing our rental program, and preparing the facility for the winter. Even though our summer youth camps and adult classes are over, private lessons and other new activities, such as the Youth Environmental Stewardship Program, are in full swing.
One exciting change that has taken place is that the UVM sailing team is now here almost every day, rigging their fleet of FJs and creating a multi-colored spectacle of synchronized sailors out on Burlington Bay. They are a fun, energetic group and are ready for a great season of collegiate sailing – something that our summer campers can look forward to in the future. Another lively bunch is our Northern Vermont High School Sailing team, coached by our own great instructors, Justin and Mike. Though not quite as advanced as the UVM group, they bring a level of excitement about sailing on which we here at the CSC thrive.
Even though the weather is cooling off and the hours of daylight are dwindling, the Community Sailing Center is still fully enjoying our last month or so of summer – come on down and join us!
These last couple of weeks I’ve been thinking alot about fear. Fear is a natural response to situations we think are dangerous or are unfamiliar. Sometimes fear is warranted, sometimes it is not. Fear of the unfamiliar can paralyze us and prevent us from doing something that we may truly have enjoyed, if we could have overcome our apprehension. For example, its natural and beneficial to fear being far from shore on the water, after all humans can only swim so far
before tiring and needing something to float on. But if we can replace fear with respect we can achieve more than we might first imagine. In fact, as the initial thrill of overcoming a challenge wears off, it is often replaced by a desire to learn more. During the last couple of weeks I’ve mostly been teaching 3 hour group lessons to students with very little or no previous sailing experience. In each group there’s usually at least one, and sometimes several, individual(s) who has a strong fear of the lake. I think one of the most rewarding parts of my job as an instuctor is when I can help someone change their fear of the lake into respect for the lake. Often times, and especially with my younger students, the best remedy is to take them out on the boat and show them that its ok and there’s
nothing to worry about. Before long they’re eager to help steer the boat and trim the sails, while keeping a lookout for Champ (the friendly lake monster), and they get so busy that they forget to be scared. I can see how their new found respect for the water will blossom into a love for sailing.
In the hours and days following the news that Ted Kennedy had succumbed to the brain cancer with which he had lived for over a year, the encomiums that followed were prodigious and predictable. Kennedy, who at the time of his death was the second-longest serving member of the United States Senate, was widely (and quite rightly) extolled for being the firebrand he so often was, the official standardbearer of a certain type of hardheaded and pragmatic liberalism – Kennedy Liberalism, one might call it – characterized by the belief that government should, above all else, provide for its citizens. As the biographical details of his political and personal life were picked up, dusted off, and mulled over, we were treated at length to renderings of Ted Kennedy the Senator, the Health Care Advocate, the Patriarch, the Failed Presidential Candidate, the Lion, the Survivor. Whatever the angle, there existed, throughout many of these portraits, what amounted to mostly fleeting references, anecdotes, or asides to a role that Kennedy took up with particular zeal and relish, one that very likely looms large in the mind of those with any sort of impression of the late Senator: Ted Kennedy the Sailor.
This was the Kennedy who, upon his release from the hospital in May 2008, following his initial diagnosis, proceeded forthwith to his wooden schooner, the Mya, so he might race in the Figawa, an annual Memorial Day regatta from Hyannis, MA to Nantucket, in which he had participated for nearly 30 years. Upon returning to the Senate later that summer, following a brief convalescence, Kennedy was presented by his close friend and colleague Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) with a song, “Headed Home”, written by Hatch and Phillip Springer (who wrote “Santa Baby” for Eartha Kitt, in 1953). The song, overwrought though it was, meant a lot to Kennedy, as it metaphorically associated his return to the Senate – for what would be his 47th and final year – with the sport that, since foregoing the opportunity to play for the Green Bay Packers in favor of a career in politics, in the late 1950s, had become his consuming passion, with the refrain, “America, America, we’re sailing home, we’re sailing home.” “Everybody who hears it, loves it,” Hatch said of his song at the time, hyperbolizing just a tad, one imagines.
Sailing, it seems, had long been for Kennedy the reward at the end of a long workweek. In honoring Kennedy last week, Senator John Culver (D-Iowa) shared a story with mourners gathered at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library, in Dorchester, Massachusetts, one from the summer of 1953, when he and Kennedy were both attending Harvard’s summer school. “One Friday, Ted said to me, ‘Why don’t you come with me this weekend to the Cape. There’s going to be a sailboat race called the Nantucket Regatta, and I want you to be part of my crew.’” Culver, grateful as he was for the invitation, nevertheless declined, reminding Kennedy that he came from Iowa and, as such, had never been on a sailboat. “The only boats I ever saw were barges on the Mississippi River,” Culver quipped. Kennedy, assuring Culver that there was “nothing to it,” finally persuaded the Iowan to join him. Driving south on Massachusetts Route 3, from Boston to Hyannis, Kennedy and Culver caught a news bulletin that warned of an incoming storm system, and strongly advised all recreational crafts to get off the water at once. “Well, I guess sailing’s off,” Culver said, upon listening to the report. “Oh, there’s nothing to it,” Kennedy responded. At about 4 o’clock that afternoon, the two young men went down to the docks at the Kennedy Compound, where the 26-foot sailboat Victura, belonging to then-Senator Jack Kennedy, was cleated. “I did what I could to help us get out in the water, but there were huge waves by now. There was thunder and lightning. The sky was black. And he’s at the tiller, or whatever it’s called, and suddenly this friend of mine, who I thought I knew quite well, starts screaming at me. After a while, I was more terrified of him than the storm. And he kept screaming at me, The spinnaker! The jib! Portside! We’re bouncing all over, and it’s my fault. And we only got two hundred yards out, and I lost the [previously prepared] sandwiches…I’ve never been so miserable in my life.” After reaching Nantucket, and thereafter convincing a salesman from Cambridge – who, for his part, had little to no sailing experience either – to be the requisite second crew member, Kennedy met the qualifications for the regatta. “The races start and all I remember is Ted yelling and yelling, for me to get up on the left side of the boat, and him the right side. I couldn’t see what was happening, but we kept going around and around, in circles. Somehow, at some point, this race was mercifully over…and Ted seemed satisfied. I had no idea why. And I was satisfied, probably because I had lived through it.”
At his funeral on Saturday, Kennedy’s son, Edward Kennedy, Jr., similarly spoke of his father’s dedication to the sport, and his memories of sailing together when he was a child, near their home in Hyannis. “During the summer months, when I was growing up, my father would arrive late in the afternoon from Washington on Fridays and as soon as he got to Cape Cod he would want to go straight out and practice sailing maneuvers on the Victura in anticipation of that weekend’s races. And we’d be out late, and the sun would be setting, and the family dinner would be getting cold, and we’d still be out there practicing our jibes and our spinnaker sets long after everyone else had gone ashore. One night, not another boat in sight on the summer sea, I asked him, ‘Why are we always the last ones on the water?’ ‘You see,’ he said, ‘most of the other sailors that we race against are smarter and more talented than we are, but the reason we’re going to win is because we’ll work harder than them, and be better prepared.”
Sailing was, furthermore, a way for Kennedy to contextualize and find peace with the many tragedies that touched his life. Kennedy biographer Lester David wrote that, after his brother Bobby’s murder in June, 1968, “Ted sought consolation from the sea aboard the Mira, a rented yawl, sailing alone westward on Natucket Sound, past Wood’s Hole and up into Buzzard’s Bay. Or he would cruise north along the coast, as far as Maine, for days at a time, watching the changeless sea.”
In the last weeks of his life, as he began to have trouble speaking, Kennedy would steal his energy for those days in which the breeze over the North Atlantic picked up. Less than two weeks before his death, his nephew, Robert Kennedy, Jr., spoke to the media about his uncle: “He’s sailing. I saw him out on the boat yesterday. He’s going…every day.”
So the High School sailing team is back underway for their fall season and I’m the assistant coach. It’s kind of weird; I was on this team back when it first started. I was one of the first groups of people that got this opportunity. Now I’m one of the people that are helping to give that same thing to these students as well. Looking back for me the High School sailing team was one of the best experiences I had in High School. I met my girlfriend during those times, even though we haven’t been dating quite that long. But this team is one of those things that you don’t forget throughout the years. There’s not much better than being out with a group of friends on the water and these are kids from all different schools in Chittenden County. I’m still great friends with most of the people that I was on the team with. We still keep in touch and go racing together and this is all due to the fact that we were given the opportunity to race together for years. Most of us went on to college sailing, or instructing in sailing at some point in their lives. It’s good to see all these kids here taking part in this as well. I can really see myself about 10 years ago in them. Its really nice to see the amount of students that have taken an interest in this sport and I hope that it continues to get bigger and bigger as the years, progress.
The Fall 2009 High School Sailing season is in full gear! With the promise of sunny skies and big breeze, we have another huge turnout for the Fall 2009 sailing season. We held our first official practice on Monday with a steady 8 knot breeze and warm temperatures. We had another record turnout with 36 sailors out on the water for the first day. Fortunately we had all twelve of our 420’s in full working condition for the busy first day. Most of the sailors had been practicing their skills all summer. Many sailors raced in the popular youth events held down on Lake George, such as the Cheeseburger Regatta. Other high school sailors participated in a racing clinic held at Harvard University in August. With boat handling skills fresh in the minds and muscles of our sailors, we are ready for a competitive season with our NESSA events. Our team has officially signed up for 4 events all over New England. We most recently signed up for the Gleekmann Funfest qualifier held on the ever so popular Charles River in Boston. The combination of these NESSA sanctioned events as well as our “Fun” regattas here at the CSC should make for endless opportunities to sail this fall and advance our skills in the boat. See you out on the racecourse. Coach Mike
Sailing is a thrill no matter who you are; the moment you feel the force of the wind on you’re boat and it sends you out across the water, you’re hooked! Most sailors have felt that countless times, but there is always one moment that sticks out. For me that one moment happened this past week. While out on a lazy sail, on what seemed to be a regular Lake Champlain light evening breeze, Cory and I were cruising a long towards the outer limits of our boundary when we turned back in toward Burlington on a run. We set up the spinnaker ready to have a sweet ride back to the docks; little did we know that Mother Nature had a surprise for us. As soon as we realized we had a gust of wind on us, we were in the beginning of a 30 mph microburst. Cory was the first to feel the effects, as the spinnaker sheets were almost ripped out of his hands. The next thing we knew, we were up on a plane traveling at lease 15 mph, throwing us both back screaming “OH YEAH WE’RE ROCKIN’ NOW!!!” Trying to ride the wind it shifted and took the spinnaker for a ride, and w hile trying take the spinnaker down it wrapped around the jib. With tangled sails and lines on our bow our first reaction was to clean up the mess and get the spinnaker down. As we worked to get the spinnaker back in, and trying not to sink the bow into the 3-4′ waves we were surfing, we found ourselves abruptly tossed by the wind and capsized the boat. Cory was separated from he boat for a few minutes, but was lucky picked up by some boaters out on the lake. After getting ourselves together and cleaning up the mess of sails and lines (while capsized and relentlessly bashed by massive whitecaps) we got the boat upright and sailing. Looking back at this awesome sail, I find myself even more addicted to sailing. The thrill of launching forward with the spinnaker up and the gusts almost throwing us backward out of the boat was one of the wildest rides I have ever been on in a sailboat. I also felt humbled by the lake a took a lesson out of this whole thing… Although you may never expect a small ripple in the water to be anything major, always try to ride out the wind and weather, for if you act too soon you may wind up on your side sailing away from your mates.
So at the CSC we had been thinking for a while now that we should try and get a picture of the whole fleet on the water. And last Thursday the wind was blowing about 5 knots and it was sunny and warm out so all the instructors decided that at 3:45 we would all bring our boats together. Several of the water front coordinators came out on the water with
cameras VASS brought their boat in and even Kate and the Burlington Free Press came sailing in through the mob of boats. As 3:45 started no approach the boats started to trickle in. Sara and Craig’s class came down from lone rock, fallowed by Aidan’s level twos who were all on the same tack in a big line fallowing him looking really sharp, then Robert and my class kind of swirling and capsizing in to the front of the CSC. Eventually everyone made it we had just about the whole fleet of boats sailing in one big mob in front of the wave attenuator. And all I was thinking was man this is crazy! So everyone with cameras started running around the fleet taking pictures from every angle they could. It lasted for about 2 minuets, and then everything started to fall apart. Several Bicks capsized. And all the instructors at the same time just turned their boats around and headed in to the swarm of boats. There several close calls but in the end no one was hurt, no damage was done, and we got some good pictures of the fleet.
After an eight month absence from the sailing center it feels good to be working around the water again. I have been working at the Community Sailing Center on and off for the last five years. Each time I come back I am amazed at how much the sailing center has grown. My first year teaching we were very excited to have 6 brand new 420s. Since then our 420 fleet has doubled and we now have the rhodes 19s and 9 BICS. I was pleasantly surprised this year to discover that a couple of my former students were now my coworkers! Even though the sailing center continues to grow it has never lost the feeling of a friendly community. Every summer there are past and present students that I get to catch up with and new students and sailors I get to meet. Although, every fall I am excited for the school year’s adventures, every spring I find myself anxious to get down to the sailing center and on the water.
- Anna Taylor
On a windy, hot August day I had two people come down for a private lesson. They hadn’t sailed in years and had wanted to take out a sailboat on their own but didn’t have the sailing knowledge to pass the renter’s test. So instead they signed up for a private lesson and I was lucky enough to take them out. Luckily the wind was howling and they were up for a wet and super windy ride. I started by taking out just one person at a time. Within seconds of leaving the dock we were on a plane, and the boards were humming in that “oh man we’re going fast” kind of way. After cruising around for 20 minutes we flew back to the dock and picked up the other student. So with the three of us in the boat I knew things were going to be cramped, but I figured that the wind was so heavy that we could have all three people on the rail and might still have trouble keeping the boat flat. As soon as we took off, they were hooting and hollering and hiking out like rockstars. Even with the heavy winds we were fully sheeted and going as fast in a 420 as I’ve ever gone. After an absolutely exhilarating 2 hours they thanked me for the lesson, but really, I should have been thanking them.
The summer is winding down, although it really feels like it’s just begun. July felt sort of like Alaska, but August is feeling like the tropics. Even the lake is feeling a little too warm. But as instructors, we’re fickle. Too warm and the students get sun burnt and dehydrated. Too cold and they freeze in t-shirts and shorts. Too much wind and boats tip over left and right, making our jobs slightly more difficult. But too little wind and we sit parked in the hot sun for hours. Luckily the forces were in our favor for what would be the last really big week of the summer. All and all it was a good week, filled with hot weather and a decent amount of wind. But it was Friday of all days that turned into what most of us would consider the perfect day. Sunny, toasty warm, light breeze, and warm lake water. We sailed, we swam, we basically owned what turned out to be one of the best sailing days of the summer. Although I feel exceedingly fortunate to spend almost every day on the water, it was days like that that really made me feel grateful for being able to live in Burlington and work on the water. So here’s to the Community Sailing Center (imagine that I’m lifting my Nalgene bottle in a metaphorical toast) – thanks for the good times, good sailing and good weather!
