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My first time messing in a sailboat


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  I remember the first time ever that I went sailing. A friend had invited me to go with him to the Junior Yacht Club in good old St. Pete. (The land of green benches, retirement capital of the south, average age of…really old.)

 

   Speaking of those green benches. The retired folks used to come down town and spend the day on the benches in the Florida sun. Every once in awhile, they’d get up and wander into the 5 and 10 cent stores for a glass of cold water. If it was winter, they’d ask for some hot water and mix in some free dime store lunch counter free ketchup  to make hot tomato juice. Or they would dip a tea bag from home in the cup and stir in some dime store free sugar. Seems that the store owners didn’t take kindly to the free loaders, so they went to the city fathers to solve the problem. Y’all are gonna love this one. The solution was to paint the benches in a variety of pastel colors!

 

   Well let’s get back to the Jr. Yacht club. We checked out an Optimist Pram and carried it from the shed to the water. Then we gathered up dagger board, rudder, and spars with sail already attached and rigged it all up. After a short instructional sail, he let me try it. I was HOOKED! After that, I rode my bike down to the harbor and sailed every chance I could get.

 

   One time I took a friend of mine and got him into his own boat. Everything was fine until a squall came up. He was so scared that he couldn’t get the darn boat to do anything but sail straight down wind. Y’all may remember that we were in the yacht club harbor. You could only go a short way before running out of water---and into a sea wall. And that’s just what he did!  I don’t recall  that I was ever so afraid that I hollered “This things gonna tip over”, but I do remember a girl sailing past and saying “your painters dragging in the water”. Heck, I didn’t know that my painter (I never heard it called that before) was even showing, much less that it was dragging in the water, but I sure was embarrassed! Almost turned over on purpose.

 

 (I know you've seen this before. I separated it from "Levi's first sail".)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well chick,

 

I have to wonder abut this story.  Most likely the sailing master of the St Pete Yacht Club at that time was my good friend Dave Ellis and most of those Optis were loaned out to a group of old lades called "The Salty Sisters". 

 

So, just which group of oldsters did you go sailing with? 

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Awwww, Tom!!!! When my friend took me the first time, there was no one else there. Just us two kids. After that, I went and took a friend. We never went with a group. Sometimes there were some other kids there, but I never saw any old ladies.

 

The main boats there were Herrshoff Fish class sloops. Never sailed them.

 

Were these old ladies friends of yours? And, just how old were you way back then. This would have been late 1950s.

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