I was lucky enough to be a camp kid. Every summer, I was willingly shipped off for weeks to practice my archery skills, develop crushes, and learn the benefits of early morning cold dips. I also learned to sail. Kind of.
Silver Lake near Sauble Beach is a small lake with little wind and even less boat traffic. It was the perfect place to practice tacking, jibing, and ducking that pesky boom.
I soon grew confident enough to take my fellow campers out. As we zig-zagged across the lake all afternoon, I fashioned myself a sailor. Then one afternoon, when I was coming into dock, the wind picked and sent us careening towards shore at a high enough speed to cause some damage. I took hold of the sail and steered us south of the dock where we eventually took on enough water to capsize. It scared the crap out of me, and I didn’t sail again for twenty years.
I was lacking the proper training to know how to troubleshoot in those scenarios. That’s because it wasn’t a sailing school; it was a summer camp. Luckily, for those who want to actually learn to harness the wind properly, there are multiple schools in Grey Bruce Simcoe that will turn them from newbies into oldbies.
Collin Young is an oldbie, not in age but in experience. With a sporty moustache and a passion for the water, he is my perfect guide into the world of wind. He’s got boating in his veins. He’s been both coach and Board Member of the Meaford Sailing School for the past six years but has been around watercrafts his entire life.
He likens his experiences circumnavigating Georgian Bay with his family as weeks spent on a floating cottage.
“It’s a great way to go places you wouldn’t normally be able to get to like Christian Island,” he says.
Collin also first learned to sail at summer camp, but instead of wimping out like I did, he kept learning and mastered the art.
“It’s the nostalgia of that memory,” he says looking back fondly. “Part of it is the learning, and then mastering the technique, harnessing the wind and moving the boat without taking the boom in the head too many times.”
He’s invited us to the Meaford Marina to see for ourselves the success Sail Georgian Bay is having with their youth program. After Neil Marshall, the director of Sail Georgian Bay, gives us a tour of the premises, he takes us out in the harbour to find the school and meet up with Collin. It’s pretty cool seeing the water dotted with so many young learners practicing their skills. Neil leads us through a fleet (love this word) of boats skippered by the youth of Southern Georgian Bay until we eventually track down Collin on his keel boat giving a lesson to some parents or some very old looking kids. Turns out, he runs a for-profit business for adults that aims to meet learners where they’re at with the tagline: ‘Find Your Way’. He offers both in-person and online courses, depending on what people are looking for.
A paramedic by trade, Collin says “safety is definitely paramount in my business….that’s always a big focus.” He teaches the mechanics of sailing, and how to troubleshoot when things don’t go as planned (where were you when I needed you, Collin!).
“We’re all lifelong learners as sailors so we’re wanting to learn more,” he says. “Once we untie the lines, we’re really at the mercy of Mother Nature, especially with what Georgian Bay throws at us.”
Lucky for us, Mama Nature’s only sending slight winds and sunshine on this day.
He says sailing shouldn’t be stressful, and knowing how to operate your boat removes that stress – the reason people want to sail is to have a joyful experience and that comes from understanding how things work. I can see a book in the making here – Zen and the Art of Sailboat Maintenance.
I think Wiarton’s ‘Peppy’ might be able to contribute a chapter to that book. He runs the Brakewinders Sailing Club on Colpoy’s Bay and also teaches the CANSail curriculum by certified Sail Canada instructors.
“One day I was working in Meaford and I watched the kids sailing and I thought ‘that looks like the best day you could have,’” Peppy says. “I thought ‘we should be doing that too. I’m not an excellent sailor by any means, but I thought I’d build a couple boats.”
Peppy has two kids, so he built two Opti’s and started a family sailing day every Sunday. When two more people joined, he built two more boats. You can see where this is going. Luckily, he’s been able to buy five Zests through funding from the Great Lakes Foundation. Otherwise, Peppy might have had to quit his full-time job to continue building boats to keep up with the demand.
He was soon encouraged by Liesbeth Halbertsma of Meaford to go the full-fledged legal sailing school route, and when Sail Ontario reached out, he answered the call. Run on a volunteer basis, the school now draws young skippers-in-training from all over Bruce and Grey County. He even got a student from Halifax last summer.
When I refer to them as the new kid in town, Peppy replies: “Not to toot our own horn, but it’s going well.” Toot away, Peppy – you deserve the accolades.
They’re running a CanSail 1+2 program this summer with spots for 16 kids each week in July and 10 kids each week in August for a total of 94 spots. They will also have “Try Sailing” events, which are separate, free events to let kids try sailing out. The first one is on Canada Day in Bluewater Park.
“The first day is the hardest,” says Peppy. “In Wiarton the wind can be challenging.” But this shouldn’t deter anyone. In fact, we both acknowledge that the challenge is what builds confidence. “They come out different kids,” he says and lists off the skills they learn. “We’re a trade school disguised as a sailing school.”
The takeaway from both Collin and Peppy is that sailing is about community – why else would so many people donate their time and equipment? They’re both quick to point out the community members who help make it successful. Peppy thanks the Wiarton Marina for their help, and Collin gives a shout out to local businesses like Giles Marine in Thornbury and Richardson’s in Meaford for keep them running safely with spare parts.
It all starts with an experience. For Collin, it was remembering those afternoons at summer camp, while Peppy recounts his first ‘aha’ moment watching kids sail off the Meaford harbour. If you give people that chance to experience it, a percentage will become lifelong sailors. Peppy hopes that out of every ten kids that take the course, a few will stick with it long term.
“It’s all sorts of people who want to learn to sail,” adds Collin. “There’s no end of the anecdotes I could share.”
His students are varied; some have already bought boats and want to learn to sail them, and some have had a terrible experience and need some guidance.
“You can learn a little on your own or through Youtube, but that will only take you so far,” he says. Instruction from a pro will take you to the next step or just what to do when that weird or scary thing happens.
According to Collin, half the battle is just knowing what to do when you encounter another boat. “We’re not on a road – we’re on water,” he says. “We can’t put the brakes on.”
Makes sense to me, although I do wish that boats had brakes sometimes – would have been helpful for me at summer camp. Peppy offers a last piece of advice that I think will make sense to any kid who’s considering sailing this summer:
“Mind your head is number one. Mind the pinch points is number two. The worst thing that’s going to happen is you’re going to get wet.”
Written by Jesse Wilkinson
Photos by John Fearnall
