By Rich Jepsen, US Sailing Board President
Yes, there’s sailing in Arizona! That is the answer that Arizona sailors at several yacht clubs in Arizona have to give often to their out-of-state friends.
I traveled to Arizona recently to speak on all things US Sailing at the invitation of Bob Naylor, commodore of Arizona Yacht Club and on advice from my dear friends (and US Sailing volunteer leaders) Ed and Debbie Huntsman. I asked the three of them if I could meet with local leaders to learn what sailing means to them and challenges they must overcome sailing in the desert. They were delighted to organize my two days accordingly.
Bob Naylor is a smart, funny, kind, enthusiastic retired businessman; a connector and comedic talent who gets anyone he talks to enthused. He escorted the Huntsman’s and I to several local sailing organizations for me to visit and tour. He also ably MC’d the monthly Arizona YC membership meeting, keeping the crowd laughing!
Ed and Debbie are avid cruising sailors, Arizona Yacht Club members and dedicated volunteers. Ed has spent several decades in boating safety professions including the US Coast Guard and the State Boating Law Administration. Debbie is past president of National Women’s Sailing Association (NWSA), remaining on the board. She and NWSA have done incredible things for girls and women in sailing. They picked me up at Sky Harbor (neat name) Airport, PHX, and brought me to a wonderful restaurant nearby for an early lunch. Bob joined us and shortly afterward we were off on our tour!
First stop was the Tempe Town Lake. Arizona YC and the Arizona Sailing Foundation, a community sailing center, are co-located on there, a reservoir in Tempe. The sailing area is small but works very well for dinghies. They have a great inventory of performance and basic sailing dinghies in a beautiful boat yard that has easy access to the reservoir.
Arizona YC is the epitome of grass roots. They call themselves a ‘paper club,’ where the most central parts are the relationships and the camaraderie rather than a brick & mortar building. They rent the club room of a local golf club to hold their monthly meeting/speaker series.
Arizona Sailing Foundation teaches adults and children of the community on a bootstrap budget with an all-volunteer teaching and admin staff. Amazing!
Next stop was a meeting with local leaders of AYC, ASF and Lake Pleasant YC where they presented their missions, challenges and strategies for the future. I learned that the challenges and plans are similar to other local sailing organizations around the country. I’m optimistic that drawing them closer to US Sailing will pay dividends to them as they tap into the reservoir of best practices available.
Lake Pleasant YC is also a paper club that sails more on the larger reservoir, Lake Pleasant, named after the engineer who designed it rather than after its very, very pleasant vibe. Small keelboats are the coin of the realm at Lake Pleasant. Lots of Catalinas, from 18’-36’ and lots of PHRF racing. Members also regularly join organized cruises to Catalina Island, using member and charter boats out of Southern California.
As you might imagine, there’s substantial crossover in membership between AYC and LPYC even though AYC is mainly dinghy racing and LPYC is mainly small keelboat daysailing and cruising.
We traveled to Lake Pleasant itself to visit three commercial operations doing great things for desert sailing!
Tiller and Kites
Owned by Victor Felice, (pronounced Fel-ee-che) a Swiss American sailor, Tiller and Kites is a Lake Pleasant based commercial sailing school with all types of boats from venerable Star Boats and flying Scots to Melges and J24s to three Nacra 17s! And they have 10 Etchells! Tiller and Kites loaned a J24 to an all-female Argentine team to sail in the Worlds at Corpus Christie placing 13th and winning the trophy for top women crew. It sponsored and supported the efforts of Michelle Lee, a blue water rower, who is about halfway from Baja to Sydney, Australia as I write.
Tumbleweed Sailing Club
This operation has a shared ownership model using Catalinas on Lake Pleasant. It has enough Catalinas that boats are almost as available to members as if they owned one themselves. Bruce, the owner, also provides concierge service so many of the annoying tasks an owner has before and after a sail are taken care of. He’s got big plans to expand the computer-based reservation system to other underserved lakes and reservoirs around the West and Midwest in years to come.
Sailboat Shop in Scorpion Bay Marina
Tom Errickson has been at this 2nd chapter business for 30 years now and rides around the mammoth marina at Scorpion Bay with a portable electric bike to give his knees and back a break. But he teaches basic and intermediate sailing and, as always, it was fun to compare sailing school owner observations, discovering just how similar our opinions about safety, seamanship and the art of teaching are, even though SF Bay is quite different than Lake Pleasant.
Over the two days I gathered a ton of great data and recognized that these were all exceptional organizations dealing with challenges that operations in more traditional locales needn’t face. Water levels varying scores of feet depending on the local agriculture needs and water available from the Colorado, daytime high temps in the summer up to 115 degrees, but seldom below 100, a population in the Phoenix/Scottsdale, Tucson region that is one of the largest in the country, but with a population that didn’t grow up with sailing and doesn’t realize it can be done in Arizona. And the immense difficulty of getting instructors properly certified in an area with fewer organizations and sailors than in more famous sailing locations.
The monthly meeting had the energy of most annual meetings with awards given, US Powerboat course certificates issue as well as basic sailing certificates issued. One of the joys of my position is sharing those milestones with sailors. The big award of the night went to a woman, who with her family as crew won the ‘female driver’ regatta named after the founder of Arizona YC, Ruth Beals, 65 years ago! Amazing legacy started by a woman when women were almost invisible in sailing. Lori Lorenz, on her brother Dave Newland’s sailboat won the regatta and I got to award her the perpetual trophy. Very cool.
I was incredibly well received and enjoyed my speech and the wonderful questions and suggestions that I got from the audience Tuesday Night. My hosts had a nice glass of wine waiting for me at our table after the speech and I enjoyed great conversations with sailors, one of whom is a graduate of my old sailing club and another the son of a good friend of the late Bob Billingham, Olympian, San Francisco Bay sailing leader and beloved crewmate of so many, including Paul Cayard.
We are all making plans to host each other for sailing and sailing regattas, I can’t wait to return to the land of the Saguaro Cactus to sail under its silent gaze.
Rich Jepsen
Board President, US Sailing