Youth campers sail on Lake Arthur with Moraine Sailing Club
MUDDY CREEK TWP — For Carol Startare, learning to sail is like learning a language. Reading ripples on the water, Startare can track the wind’s direction and watch for signs of a current before telling you how to adjust your sails.
The conditions on Tuesday, June 18 — a balmy, nearly windless day in a heat wave — were less than ideal for sailing, but provided their own share of teachable moments at Watt’s Bay Marina to the young sailors out on the water.
Slowly cruising on Lake Arthur with fellow instructor and volunteer Dave Masse, Startare watched the campers of Moraine Sailing Club on the water, guiding them from a red, rigid-hull inflatable boat as the children practiced capsizing their sailboats before breaking for lunch at noon.
The week-long, volunteer-run youth camp for children ages 8 to 15 ends Friday. Campers begin by learning how to identify boat parts, which is essential, Startare said, to learning how to sail. They learn how to rig their boats and how to tie different rope knots, from a bowline knot to a square knot.
“A lot of parents are throwing eight-year-olds into these boats, and you can only talk to an eight-year-old for so long,” she said. “Nothing you’re saying is going to matter. What matters is what you’re doing. When they get in the water, they can do it. And so we try to give them the words. That’s not a thing anymore ... it’s a rudder, it’s a daggerboard. Now that they know that, we can converse in the same language.”
“These are just some of the skills they learn, and these are lifetime skills,” Startare said. “They also learn wind direction. They learn wind speed and how to identify the ripples on the water. There’s texture on the water, and if it’s reflecting you, there’s no wind there. If it’s rippling, then guess what? You’ve got a little bit of wind.”
“(Sailing) is a great physics lesson,” she said.
Masse and Startare, equipped with sunglasses, hats and sunscreen to beat the sun’s glare, called to campers from their boat, telling them to flip over and capsize.
“Your sail kind of looped around the wrong side of the mast,” Masse called to a camper. “We’re going to kind of unspin you, and if you can’t unspin yourself, we’ll come in and we’ll drag (the boat over).”
“There you go — perfect,” Masse said, as he watched the boy go through the steps from a distance.
“It’s a crazy feeling capsizing a boat,” Startare said. “It’s something you don’t want to do most of the time.”
But learning to capsize is important, she said, to learn how to get the boat back up. Heavy winds will knock down nearly every kind of sailboat, she said, and sailors of any age should be prepared.
In their boats, campers wear life vests and are surrounded by instructors on kayaks. In case of an emergency, Moraine Sailing Club has a safety director on staff, and operates using a set of procedures through National Incident Management System, or NIMS, that would allow dispatched paramedics or firefighters to seamlessly coordinate with staff, camp director Amy Barley said. Through Allegheny Health Network, Nico Soler, a paramedic and member of the staff, is also able to respond to medical emergencies.
On the lake, the children — who are required to be able to swim to attend camp — flipped their boats over on the water on their sides.
“And this is how you create excitement on a day where there’s no wind,” Masse said.
At 16, some students graduate to become instructors themselves.
Leah Anthony, 16, is a recent instructor who received her certificate two weeks ago.
“I love the freedom of it,” Leah said from her kayak about sailing.
Arthur Lang, 20, is the lead instructor, and has been attending camp with the Moraine Sailing Club for years. He echoed Leah’s remark, calling sailing “freeing.”
Ethan Barley, 12, said he considers sailing his hobby.
“I like it when there’s wind,” he said. “And the boats go fast.”
When another sailboat is spotted, a race can be expected, Masse said.
“Speed, power — the sails have so much power,” Startare said.
Hearing Startare and the rest of the instructors talk about wind power and boat parts can seem as if they’ve adopted sailing as their native language. But it’s a sixth sense that has been developed over years of practice.
Startare was 14 when she sailed for the first time on a Thistle sailboat with a friend and his father, and took part in races at Prince Gallitzin State Park when she was in college. At 50, she picked up sailing again and bought another Thistle.
“When you put that spinnaker up, those boats just fly,” she said. “The wind comes from your back. It fills that front sail up. That sail is a huge, billowy thing. And man, is that power. You have to guide it with both hands, and that feeling — I love it.”
While some prefer to sail alone, Startare said she enjoys the social aspect of sailing.
“We’re like a family,” she said. “Last night, as friends, once the campers were all done, we took three of our boats ... we were in the middle of the lake with friends just watching the sunset as the sky turned pink. It was beautiful.”
“When you have that knowledge, then you can share that knowledge with someone,” Startare said.
Moraine Sailing Club also offers courses for adults. At the youth camp, children can borrow the club’s boats. The Flying Juniors seen on the dock, which are popular sailboats for college racing, are shared with the club from the University of Pittsburgh.
One boat often seen on Lake Arthur is named Clarissa and belongs to instructor Chris Harlan, who built it himself.
“When I was little, my father had this wooden sailboat,” Harlan said. “...and all I remember about it was either being totally scared or totally bored.”
Years later, in the ‘90s, Harlan said he felt inspired to rent a Sunfish sailboat while on vacation in Cape Cod.
“I don’t know what possessed me — maybe a childhood memory,” he said. “... and it was like somebody lit a fire under me.”
“You are learning to harness the natural power of the wind,” Harlan said.
