July 2024 Papoose Article

How I Learned to Sail by Perry Anderson As a child I spent summers at my grandparents cottage on a small lake in Michigan. The man next door had a canoe with a sail. I asked him to take me sailing but he never did. He later told me that he had taught himself to sail and didn’t want to teach me his bad habits. I could only dream what it must be like to sail. While in high school a man came to church with a strange contraption on the roof of his car. He explained that he was a naval architect student and on top of his car was a prototype hull of a catamaran (twin hull) sailboat. He offered to take me for a sail! He also showed me the full-scale boat which he was building to be “tank tested” for his thesis. I helped him with his building project (providing a second set of hands when needed). In return, he gave me the prototype catamaran with the stipulation that I destroy it when I was done with it. At last, I was sailing on that small lake in Michigan! After 2-3 years of sailing the catamaran, the hulls (made of reinforced cardboard) began to leak and I destroyed the catamaran as promised. Next, I found plans for a sailing board, a Sea Flea, in a Popular Mechanics magazine, built it, and continued sailing on that small lake in Michigan. Fast forward to my senior year in college, a friend told me that the University of Michigan Sailing Club was selling their wood Jet 14 sailboats and I should buy one, which I did. When I came to pick up the boat, someone asked if I knew how to repair the boat and I confessed that I didn’t have a clue. He said: “join the club and we’ll teach you”. I did just that; and learned to repair wood and Fiberglas boats, as well as sailing and racing techniques. The sailboats the U of M Sailing Club had purchased required a good deal of maintenance so in a few years the Club purchased Fiberglas Jet 14s, and a few years later a man by the name of Peter Harken offered to build a fleet of 470’s for the Club This sailboat was a 16 ft Olympic class boat. For the U of M Sailing Club, Peter proposed a basic boat with a main and jib sail and extra Fiberglas on the hull to strengthen it for club use and abuse. He also offered to sell a fully rigged 470 (main, jib, spinnaker, trapeze) at a discount to individual members. So I purchased a fully rigged 470. The boat was light (approx. 260 lbs.) with a lot of sail area. The trapeze was a wire attached to the mast, which the crew hooked into, allowing the crew to extend out parallel to the water. With winds blowing 10 or more knots, it was a blast to sail! My wife, Margaret, was very proficient at trimming spinnaker while hooked on the trapeze. As the number of alums with private sailboats grew at the U of M Sailing Club, we alums were asked to leave. Several of us joined a nearby Yacht Club. The club welcomed a new fleet, but we were unable to keep the 470 fleet active. Since the Devil’s Lake Yacht Club fleet was the Lightning, I purchased one. The Lightning is a 19 ft sailboat with a main, jib and spinnaker, but alas, no trapeze. When I accepted a job in Morristown, NJ, I located a Lightning Fleet on Lake Mohawk, so I purchased a home here to continue to sail and race. You might have seen my boat on the lake; it was a royal blue boat with a large yellow block M on each side. Two years ago, I sold the Lightning and purchased a C420. This boat is white with a large blue block M on each side. See ya on the lake!