September 2023 Papoose Article

I was first introduced to sailing when my father took me in a Sunfish on Lake Bonaparte, just northwest of the Adirondack Park, on a gorgeous sunny day, with enough wind to make us go, but not so much that it would scare me. It was one of those early, happy memories, bonding with my father.

  At first, my 7-year-old self imagined one could only sail with the wind direction.  Once I realized that, somehow, you could actually sail toward the direction of the wind, and travel anywhere, my skepticism was quickly replaced by intrigue and wonder.  My skills grew and I was able to make use of this skill at various summer camps to “check out” a sunfish. Little did I know what shenanigans this would lead to. 

My twin brother, who enjoyed a similar in introduction to sailing, helped me experiment.  How “close” to the wind can we sail? How fast can we go? How much wind does it take to flip the boat?  At one point in our studies, on a very windy day, we even went to pick up a friend for added ballast.  The wind was howling, we were having a hilariously good time, and even felt a sense of accomplishment.  For about 10 minutes anyway. Then, with three of us hiking all the way out, we heard a loud snap, followed by a crash - our halyard (the rope holding the sail up), had failed, so the sail came crashing down. With us leaning out, we weren’t in danger of getting hit by the falling boom, but with suddenly no wind force to counter our weight, two of us fell backward out of the boat.  Somehow, I managed to stay in and we eventually got a towed back to shore. Of course, that satisfied our need for any further experiments.

As I got older I was able to race on Lake Ontario as crew on larger boats, and also bought a Hobie 16 to play around with.  I even managed to unintentionally get my dog on the sunfish - she swam after me and I had no choice but haul her in the boat and take her back to shore. 

Fast-forward to today and I feel most fortunate to be able to sail on beautiful Lake Mohawk.  Though I have only been a member of LMYC for just over a year, I feel like I have a new extended family.  I would encourage anyone who is interested to stop down and check out the scene.

John Hirschey