I remember my dad once recalling, how when he was a young man, daydreaming about sailing a boat from place to place. I don't recall a particular destination being part of the conversation, perhaps the journey being more important than any destination. Or maybe the idea of living a vagabond lifestyle without a care, just out for the experience of different places and different people. The memory came and went and I don’t remember ever revisiting the idea.
I graduated from North Platte High School in 1984. One of the following summers, Dad telephoned with an idea of getting a sailboat. I seem to remember being cotton to the idea. He had called a broker in Kearney, NE and worked out the purchase, He asked if I could go check out the boat and bring it home if it looked ok and sent me to pick it up. Off I went, only knowing about boats the basic tenant that if water comes in, it's not good. The broker showed me how to rig the boat, probably gave me a couple of tips i most likely ignored, and gave me a book with which i was to teach myself how to sail. The boat was a 16ft Rebel day sailor. It had a really big cockpit, big enough for all four of our family, and wonderfully colorful sails as was the style back then.
I took the boat home to North Platte and eagerly began pouring over that book. I skimmed through the book, concentrating on how this thing is supposed to move with just the wind, a seemingly magical endeavor. It couldn't have been more than a day or two, the boat in the driveway beckoning to me as I tried to convince myself had this figured out.
"you *can* learn to sail from a book ..."
At last I proclaimed I was ready. My parents and I went out to one of the small interstate lakes, stepped the mast, bent on the sails and launched the boat. Not wanting to get into too much trouble, we hoisted just the smaller sail in the front of the boat, the jib, and set off. We reached and jibed our way downwind as I confidently explained all the maneuvers and how the sails worked to my parents.
Until we got to the end of that lake.
I turned the boat into the wind to make our way back up to the far end of the small lake where the car was parked. As I steered the tiller to point the boat up into the wind, the boat would slow to a crawl and eventually stop. I had to turn the boat back downwind to get speed to steer and then try again. I tried and tried but each time progress would stop until I altered course to point more perpendicular to the wind. The boat would not progress up wind. We could sail back and forth, perpendicular to our desired course, but could not make any headway toward our destination. What had I missed in all the studying of that god-forsaken book? What kind of boat had that broker sold us? A lemon that could not sail upwind-- at all! I was so completely frustrated. And completely responsible. I had studied that book until I was sure I had it all figured out and now I was failing. I snap at my parents as they suggest hoisting the other, bigger sail, the mainsail. The book showed the sails should drive the boat to windward, the sail won’t matter, i think Out of options I relented and we hoisted the mainsail. The sails filled as we got the boat pointed in the correct direction. We started moving. The boat tracked perfectly right upwind, just like it was supposed to in the first place.
I learned a lot of lessons that day. For instance, you *can* learn to sail from a book. And of course, the lesson all young adults eventually learn, Mom and Dad might have an idea or two about a thing or two, even having not read the applicable book.
We sailed that boat periodically throughout my college years. But not a lot in the big scheme of what would become my sailing life. My parents took it out a few times when my brother and I were off in the whiles of Nebraska making our young lives. The boat had its day. It was the casual gateway drug that led to an addictive fascination, an obsessive competitive streak on the water and, ultimately to an alter-lifestyle I hope has not yet reached its culmination.
While I was interning as a photographer at the Lincoln Journal-Star in 1990, I was sent on an assignment to photograph a man and his son who were both sailors at a sailing club here in Lincoln, NE. I had never heard of the Lincoln Sailing Club. I was intrigued as I drove to Branched Oak Lake to cover the assignment. I met some of the sailors, took my photos and watched as the little, motorless, boats effortlessly left the dock to go form up to start a race. The two person crews cast off the bow lines and drifted back from the dock where they had been lined up like cars in a parking lot. The wind blew the boats backwards out of their spots at the dock. When they were clear of the neighboring boats, they pulled in the sails to power up and the boats immediately stopped drifting backward and then accelerated forward. I was reminded of the power sailboats have when they power up. These sailors were so good.. They made it look easy. The boats they sailed were 16ft racing boats called Snipes.
Over the next years, my roommates-- or my brother-- and I rented sailboats at the Holmes Lake Marina in Lincoln. We rented a 14ft catamaran and I, being the only sailor, had to pretty much single handedly figure out how to tack a catamaran. Not at all like maneuvering a small monohull. Catamarans are hard to tack if you have never done it, especially a Hobie 14ft with 600 pounds of college kids. We rented sunfish when no one else would dare go out in the 15-20 mph wind. We had a blast but got head-to-toe skin rashes from the polluted Holmes Lake water.
We rented a hobie 16 while on spring break in South Padre Island, Texas. My first time sailing in seawater. We broke that boat as we sheeted in the mainsail to really get it moving through the Laguna Madre between the island and the mainland. Not the last time the go-fast in me broke a rental or resort boat pushing it further than it probably was used to.
In about 1993, I had no money, two cats, a girlfriend, a crappy car and I wanted to own a sailboat. I looked in the classified ads. Catamarans were too much money. I kept looking. Sunfish, Laser, Snipe- wait, a Snipe? A racing boat for $500? That’s more like it. I remembered my assignment photographing the Snipes at Branched Oak Lake. I made some calls. Somehow I got the number of a member of the Lincoln Sailing Club to talk to as a consultant, Jack Wagner.
Jack Wagner is a legend around the Snipe fleet in Lincoln. He was an enthusiast beyond enthusiasts. He was probably the #1 recruiter of new sailors to the Lincoln Snipe Fleet. He always had boats around for sale, or knew of one for sale. He gave me sage advice, “any boat that floats is worth $500.”
Sold.
My new boat had a faded yellow hull, a faded green deck, the foredeck was mushy, the mast was an undesirable, inflexible design some one had attempted to modify into a flexible one my sawing slots into it. The floor was missing, the sails were soft as paper towel and had a shape similar to a XXXL shirt on a medium body. But the trailer had tires that held air.
Jack talked me into the virtues of the Snipe fleet and the sailing club. I joined and went out to race.
That first boat was not a racing boat so much. It measured the same as all the other snipes, but it was a pig. Remember, “any boat that floats is worth $500.” Well... it didn’t. My brother and I flipped it one time during a race and it filled with water and STAYED full of water. If we sat on the boat in this condition, it sank. It would slowly float back to just awash if we got off and treaded water next to it. We managed to get it to move while we were in the water alongside and then carefully slid up on top of it. But we had to carefully move our weight fore and aft and port and starboard to keep the boat exactly trimmed. If we got too far forward the boat would dive below the surface like a u-boat crash dive. If we were too far aft the nose would come up too high and the water would slosh to the back and the back would sink. We had to steer with the sails.The boat was full of water and so heavy the rudder had no effect. We sailed the boat back to the dock. From a distance we had to look like we were sitting on the water with a sailboat in the vicinity. We got it on the trailer. My little Chevy Beretta wouldn’t pull it out. We unloaded the boat from the trailer and changed the trailer over to a fellow member’s pickup truck. Then reloaded the boat on the trailer, and punched the gas, glad to finally be done with this horrible day. The trailer went six feet up the ramp and both tires blew off the rims from being overloaded with 500 gallons of water.
I think I had that boat one season and the club members found me a better boat. I think they felt sorry for me because I was very enthusiastic and was spending a lot of time trying to make that boat better, but it was a lost cause. The boat they found me, hull number 21604, had been a fleet champion, a very long time ago. The deck was separated from the hull and it need a lot of work. Some very good sailors approved of this boat. I sold old yellow (hull #14xxx) and 21604 was mine. And it came with a camper!
I fixed the boat with a new teak rub rail, put the deck back on the hull, and re-rigged the controls with a lot of new blocks and lines. I re-engineered everything I could because I could not afford new sails. This boat was very competitive in the “B” fleet-- the JV team-- of competitive boats, We had a great fleet in a very tight race for the fleet championship. We raced 28 races, I think. I placed or won the fleet championship by just a few points out of 1500 or so. It was fantastic.
Racing Snipes taught me a lot about situational awareness and maneuvering a boat in tight quarters. You keep your head on a swivel when racing. Racers must watch for other boats that seemingly appear from nowhere, but seem to always be on a collision course with you. At the same time managing all the adjustments of the sails and rig to try to make the boat go fast. And, on top of that, the tactics of racing in a fleet have to be considered constantly. It’s a chess game in the middle of a maritime figure-8 demolition derby.
On my very first day racing that ugly yellow and green snipe, I was fortunate to meet Eric, a young man a couple of years my junior kicking around the racing fleet looking for a ride. The snipe is a two person boat and he was hoping to find a skipper with a snipe in need of a second crewmember. I was reluctant to jump in and race, having never done it before. Eric was confident we could do it. Off we went.
Our first outing was rife with mistakes and I’m sure we were dead last. But fate brought us together for another reason. Eric and his family had just moved to Lincoln from the Lake Erie area and they had a cruiser class racing boat across the lake in the Branched Oak Lake Marina. After that first day, he invited my brother and I to come crew on their racing boat.
The next week my brother and I were introduced to big boat racing. This 26ft boat had winches, multiple headsails and spinnakers, both sized for different wind conditions. With Eric’s dad skippering, we went out for some orientation and practice setting up for what are quite complicated maneuvers. It was amazing fun. Eric was geeked up about boats and we followed his lead. The three of us were on that boat a lot over the next 2-3 years. When we raced we won. We often pulled off near flawless maneuvers and showed off with headsail changes and spinnaker peels.
All this experience made me a better snipe racer and skippering my own snipe made me a better crew member on the cruiser.
Then as now, all winter long as the snow flew and the -20 deg wind chills howled outside, I thought about boats. I read all I could about boats, sail theory, racing tactics and equipment. I was 100% racer. I subscribed to racing magazines and devoured them as soon as I got them. I remember buying a couple of magazines about cruising a boat around some tropical location and thought it sounded so... BORING!
A seemingly natural transition to getting used to living in the small spaces afforded on boats is chartering sailboats in popular cruising destinations. But, to do that a person needs to have some training so the charter companies know you won’t destroy their boat. Although, based on the many accounts of “credit card captains” damaging boats in myriad ways, it’s a less than flawless system. I did not want to be that guy that piled a boat up on a reef somewhere.
Karen and I attended Blue Water Sailing School in June of 2008. We met our boat and instructor, Joe Logan, in Ft. Lauderdale, FL and during the next week motored and sailed a 43ft sailboat through the Florida waterways to Key Largo and back. We did all the training and passed all the tests and were certified to “bareboat” charter. Meaning we could rent a half-million dollar charter boat for ourselves with no requirement of any chaperone captain or crew.
After sailing school, Karen warmed my heart by suggesting she wanted a cruising boat so she could now put into practice the things she learned in the sailing school. I sure as hell was not going to say no to that! Karen hunted around the area and found our boat in a yard near Lake Stockton in Missouri. A Laguna Balboa 24. It’s a very small boat but we can sleep over on it and it sails well. It’s been a perfect training platform.
So, we were all trained up on big boat sailing, navigating and boat systems management. We had our own boat and were out on the lake sailing it regularly. Now we just needed to figure out the logistics of actually chartering a boat. Let me tell you the whole thing seemed daunting at first. We had to pick a location, pick a boat we could afford, figure out what we would need for provisions, what a base itinerary for the day to day sailing legs might be, the travel arrangements. It seemed like a lot more moving parts than our normal scuba trips. Not knowing where to start, exactly, it never did… get started.
But, in 2011 our neighbors, Annette and Cory, returned from a trip to St. John, USVI. Their trip was land-based but they had done a day trip over to the British Virgin Islands-- a sort of sailboat chartering Mecca of the Leeward Island chain of the Eastern Caribbean. They were enthralled with all the sailboats all around the islands, sailing from place to place and swarming the anchorages. They knew we were sailors and that we had done the training. One day Karen came in the house after Karen and Annette had been walking our respective animals and announced Annette had asked if we would be interested in chartering a boat with them. I’m pretty sure Karen and I took about 2.5 seconds to think and say, YES!”
It was quite an endeavor to work out all the logistics. Annette did great work on the tour guide aspects so we could figure out where all our stops would be. We worked out the provisioning-- the whole thing was new to us. On the trip we hit all the popular spots, lived an adventurous night when our boat went adrift in the middle of the night, got a little sick the morning after my Best Birthday Ever at Willie T’s. It was a wonderful trip.
We chartered again in 2012 and 2015. These trips were more training handling bigger and bigger boats in protected ocean areas. I served as the skipper and co-tour director. Although my tour director talents are wanting, I’m sure. And, as I’m probably a little overzealous in my skipper role-- overly conscious of my responsibility to bring back the boat unscathed-- I’m not as laid back as many island skippers.
Thanks to those who have come along on these charter trips. As every day on a boat adds to a sailor’s practical knowledge as well as the less quantifiable seamanship abilities, you’ve unknowingly furthered my sailing experience and helped build my own confidence in being able to handle more demanding situations.