Catching some Englewood sailing this summer
All-volunteer program
Last week at our Monday morning meeting up in the Beacon office, Cheryl asked me, “Hey Anna, what ever happened to you checking out Englewood Sailing?”
What had happened is I was a little scared. A swim test had been mentioned which gave me instant PTSD from childhood swim lessons with my twin brother (I never made it past bubble-blowing, subsequently holding both my brother and me back until we quit.)
Now, I can swim – or rather, not drown – but any sort of physical test of my fitness was not likely to be pretty.
For some background, the Englewood Sailing Association has taught small-boat sailing on Lemon Bay since 2002, almost as long as I have been alive. The Boca Beacon has been a sponsor of Englewood Sailing for over ten years. This all-volunteer program takes children and adults out for lessons from Indian Park Mound. They also have three 5-day summer camp sessions beginning in June.
So, last Wednesday morning, May 22, I found myself pulling up to Indian Mound Park to meet Vice President Cathy Cross. In our emails leading up to Wednesday morning she had suggested to come see the sailing center and that we could “sail or ride on a safety boat.”
I naively sort of thought this would be more of a tour I took from the passenger seat, but when I got there, I was given a life jacket and told to leave behind anything I didn’t want to get wet. We got the two-person boat in the water, and I hopped in alongside Past President and volunteer instructor John Riehl.
It was a beautiful day, and John was an amazing instructor. Also, who else gets to go to basically a two-hour private sailing lesson during work?
John has found an interest in learning styles, specifically how they relate to his sailing teaching. Luckily, I got to benefit from this because his teaching style was not only incredibly honed, but also put me at total ease while trying a skill for the first time ever.
First, he had me work the jib, which is the front sail, for fellow newbies.
Then I graduated to steering which involves tacking and jibing – essentially turning the boat through the wind or down wind, respectively.
Another piece of terminology from my never-to-be-written book of Sailing for Dummies:
The boom is the horizontal pole that attaches to the bottom of the main sail and moves it from side to side (John said that they jokingly call it the boom because that’s the sound it makes when people hit their head on it).
I also learned that there is a fair amount of physics you must be aware of when learning to sail. Luckily, I scraped a B in high school physics – thanks Mr. Bacher.
I asked about a million questions ranging from more valid ones to ones such as, “Does it matter if you are left- or right-handed?” – it does not.
John had an answer to all of my questions, including my most random ones, and by the end of the morning I even started to get a feel for the wind and how to get the most power to the sails. There is a lot to learn when you step into a sailboat for the first time, but thanks to John I never felt overwhelmed or nervous.
About halfway through John told me that we could go in whenever I wanted as long as we were back before noon. Needless to say, we were pulling back up to shore at quarter ‘til.
I headed out with the promise to sign up for the November adult learn-to-sail classes, so stay tuned for future adventures.
Summer sailing camp
The Englewood Sailing Association is offering three summer camps for kids ages 8 to 17. Each camp is one week, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday-Friday at the Sailing Center at Indian Mound Park. On Friday students can take their families for a sail after graduation. Camps are June 3 to 7, June 17 to 21 and July 8 to 12. The club has a fleet of sailboats, including the RS Quest, the Laser Pico, the Hobie Holder 14, the RS Zest and the RS Venture.
Find out more at englewoodsailing.org.
