Sailing is one pastime that is very close to my heart.
My father is an avid sailor and has been my entire life. Growing up, he would take me and my little sisters out on his sunfish for a quick sail at Long Beach. I was also so exhilarated (and shocked) by how fast we could go with so very little.
Unfortunately, it became one of those things I didn’t really kept up with as an adult, until this year, when I decided to feed my growing interest in learning how to do it myself. Whenever I’ve gone sailing, I’ve always had my dad at the ready to guide me, but, since most people probably don’t have a seventy-something-year-old surfer dude to tell them each move to make whilst on a sailboat, I thought it would be a good idea to highlight the adult sailing schools found across the East End that can help those who want to learn.
“I think sailors are, or at least they used to be, very clever people, because when you’re sailing, usually something breaks or you go out with the intention of doing one thing and, because of the conditions, you end up doing something else,” my dad says. “It’s never a straight line.”
Apart from scratching the itch to learn how to sail on my own, I wanted to write this story as a sort of homage to my dad, our family’s intrepid skipper, who helped to make sailing an accessible sport for anyone in the Hamptons that wanted to do it, no matter what kind of boat (or money) they had.
Ready to set sail next summer? Read my story on where to learn how right here.
