Sheepshead Bay Yacht Club's Centennial Celebration

Sheepshead Bay Yacht Club will celebrate its 100th anniversary this Saturday, June 7th.

For more information, contact Sheepshead Bay Yacht Club at 718-891-0991.

Yacht Clubs of Brooklyn: Sorta Edition, Sebago Canoe Club

It's finally Spring, which means that we'll be sailing soon. But what do others, who have a passion to breathe the salt-air and experience the aero- and hydro-dynamics of sailing, but have a very limited budget do to start making plans to get on the water?

The simplest thing would be to find a friend with a boat and mooch! (For those moochers out there, the appropriate etiquette is to offer to help the skipper perform pre-season work on their boat, such as sanding and painting. And when you're invited, bring something, whether beer, fruit, water or sandwiches. It will be appreciated.)

Let's say you don't know anyone with a boat, there are still some low-cost options out there for you. One is the Sebago Canoe Club located on the Paerdegat Basin in Canarsie, Brooklyn. SCC has been around for 75 years and is easily accessible to Jamaica Bay after a short sail/paddle under Belt Parkway. As we can personally attest, Jamaica Bay is a fantastic sailing area, but our friends at SCC tell us that Paerdegat Basin "can be a bit nasty at times - particularly when the sewage goes to the storm drains and empties into the Basin, but once out of the Basin and into the Jamaica Bay it is an amazing place to sail and perfect for small boats and truly beautiful."

Sebago Canoe Club's sailing program is very different from a traditional yacht club/sailing club. The club is all volunteer - no paid staff so everything is done by their members - and the sailing committee is quite small (15-20 members) by comparison to the club's kayaking group.
All of Sebago's boats are limited by what can be carried down the ramp that goes to their dock. In terms of sailing, they sail one-design dinghies including Lasers, Sunfish, and Force 5s. The club has several sailors who have larger skiff type boats and some members still have and use sailing canoes. The club's boats include two Lasers, three Sunfish, a Super Sunfish, a Force 5 and a Club 420.

SCC's club boats are available to members who have been "certified." (Information is on their website outlining the requirements.) Additionally the club requires yearly work by it's members as part of the membership requirement. Because SCC maintains all of its boats, their sailing members must be self-sufficient with getting their boats down to the water and launched. Unfortunately, SCC does not offer rentals and does not have a youth program.

SCC has an annual sailing class for members, that includes classroom, rigging instruction, some on-the-ground practice and then on-the-water practice both days - (second day usually includes an extensive cruise, followed by a beaching, setting up buoys and putting the students through the paces of boat handling and capsizing). This year it takes place on June 28th and 29th. Our friends at Sebago Canoe Club limit their classes to members because the class has a 1:1 ratio of students to instructors. In addition, SCC's sailors plan cruises once a month throughout the summer and have races every Friday evening (on the water by 5:30pm). If last year is any indication, SCC is serious about racing. They had more than 16 club races in 2007.

The only time SCC takes out non-members is at their open house, which is scheduled to take place on May 24th.

Considering that family memberships start at $250, individual memberships are $175, this may be one of the best summertime options for New Yorkers looking to get on the water. I'm sure that even Madame X would approve of this expense.

Learn To Sail

Are you one of those people who's always been interested in sailing, but never stepped aboard a boat. If that's you, now is your chance to take some action by enrolling in Miramar Yacht Club's introductory sailing classes. The classes will cover the basics of sailing, including: basic safety, nomenclature, points of sail, sail trim , tacking, jibing, leaving and returning to a mooring, heaving to, anchoring, rules of the road, how to tie basic knots, weather, tides, and chart reading.

The three onshore classes and one lesson on a boat, are a perfect opportunity to test the waters. Classes start Friday, March 28th at 7:30, p.m. and run the same time on April 4 and April 11th. The classes cost $50 per person, $75 for families. Refreshments and materials are included.

For more information, call Miramar Yacht Club at 718-743-5823.

Made in Brooklyn: Bags From Recycled Sails

Reiter8 is a Brooklyn-based company that we love. The owner/designer, Katherine Rasmussen, makes very stylish and durable bags and pillows out of recycled sails, each with its own unique stripe, logo, mark or number. The pricing is reasonable with a large messenger bag costing $125, tote bags $65-$75, pillows $48 and mini wallets for $8.

Reiter8 is available at various domestic retail outlets and online through Etsy. And for you sailboat owners with old, unused and unloved sails in storage: donate them to Reiter8 and get a custom bag made from your sail.

Designed in Brooklyn: Sail Magazine's Best Boat of 2007

We know they used to make sails in Brooklyn, but did you know that modern sailboats -- ones that you can buy and sail today -- are designed in County of Kings? Neither did I.

A number of boat manufactures have recently introduced classically styled daysailors with modern performance. One notable model among this new fleet is the e33, designed by Brooklyn-based Wurmfeld Design. The e33 conceived by America's Cup veteran and sailmaker Robbie Doyle, who collaborated with Jeremy Wurmfeld to create one of Sail Magazine's Best Boats of 2007 .

The boat very thoughtfully designed: it has a huge, 16 foot cockpit, with a nice space to comfortably spread out behind the rudderpost. We've read that the seats are designed with proper lumbar support. Below deck, the cabin is nicely equipped for a weekend or overnight, with an enclosed head, opposed settees and a little v-berth. But where this boat really excels at is sailing. The sailplan is designed to give the e33 a lot of horsepower, especially with the asymmetrical spinnaker hoisted. Its also designed to be easy to sail. All controls leading to the cockpit and the sails can be trimmed without the need for winches, which make for an easy boat to sail singlehanded. All of that, plus the fact that it can be easily launched using a typical yacht club crane, using its built-in lifting points. It really does seem ideal.

We'd love to take it out for a sail. So Jeremy, if you're reading this, keep us in mind.

New York Boat Show This Weekend

While you may be freezing your butt off, its never too early to think about summer. This weekend at the Jacob Javits Convention Center, the New York National Boat Show comes to town. While its mainly for powerboaters (aka stinkboaters), the may have one or two sailcraft in the house.

Adult tickets are $15 and you can order online.

Boat in NYC or Hamptons Share: You do the Math

When Mrs. Salt and I tell people we are Brooklyn residents who keep our own sailboat in New York City, people often come to the conclusion that we are rich. While we're not starving, we are hardly rich. We don't have trust funds, and neither of us work in investment banking. In other words, we need to work for a living. However, we are thrifty, and perhaps we are even crafty. This enables us to enjoy our summers at a fraction at the regular NYC price of a beach house share. We also like the fact that we can enjoy a beautiful summer day, on the water, in the privacy of our own vessel with guests of our choosing. We can also get to the boat from our house in less than 30 minutes and sleep in our own bed during the evening. This seems ideal compared to sharing a house, hours away from your primary residence, that may not be that close to the water.

A two bedroom cottage in East Hampton will cost $7,000 for the month of July, or $8,000 for August. We've seen another house that gets someone "seven prime weekends" for $1,000. And a three bedroom rental in Fire Island during Father's Day weekend is being advertised for $1,100. Any way we look at it, perhaps with the exception of the "seven prime weekends" house, its seems rather expensive.

For $3,500, you can get a classic 28-foot Columbia Sloop. We know she needs a bit of work, so throw in another $1,000 and you could be in the water. If your budget is a bit larger, $6,900 will get you a very well maintained and well equipped 27-foot Catalina sailboat. Its a bit of a deposit, but its about the same price as a month in the Hamptons. But you now own a sailboat.

Now that you have your boat, you'll need to keep it somewhere. At Gateway Marina in Brooklyn, for as high as $84 per-foot (or slip size whichever is larger) for a private slip; $74 per-foot for a semi-private slip. For arguments sake, we'll take semi-private slip for our 28-foot Columbia, which will set us back $2,072 (plus NYC sales tax, of course). At Gateway, the seasonal contract runs from April 15 through October 14.

A few other considerations to think about: winter storage and maintenance. Winter storage for a boat that size can run in excess of $1,000, perhaps even as high as $1,500. This would include pulling the boat out of the water, a power was on the bottom and blocking it up to sit "on the hard" during the winter months. And while owning a boat is fun, they do need to be regularly maintained, particularly if it's in saltwater. Figure on another $1,500 annually for maintenance (which includes bottom paint, engine, and any other systems). And if something really breaks, it will cost you more money. One reason that Mrs. Salt and I downgraded from a 29-foot hand-me down we generously received from Papa Salt was the maintenance. The boat was decent, but it was over 20-years old (which isn't a big deal) and had been raced very hard in her lifetime. By the time we got her, a lot of her systems were starting to fail, and we were spending more time maintaining the boat instead of sailing her. Instead, we sold her for a song, and downgraded to a bulletproof daysailor, which doesn't have an engine or any internal systems like a head, thru-hulls or water systems.

We almost forgot, if you are dying to go to the Hamptons, you can always take your new boat and sail there.

Spring Cleaning

The departure of winter means that spring rituals are about to commence: for some, it indicates that it's time to plant bulbs and tend to the garden; in parts of Ohio, it signifies time to hunt wild turkeys (not the liquid type) or scour the ground for edible wild mushrooms; for boaters, springtime means that boating season is upon us and lots of work needs to be completed (subsequently lots of money is spent) before a boat is launched into the water.

In Brooklyn, the strange weather and the cold early spring delayed many of Kings County's swabbies, including your editor, in the annual maritime ritual of sanding, scraping, cleaning, masking, buffing, and painting. However, this weekend, we did get to the coast and discovered that Barnacle Bill of Brooklyn had taken advantage of the nice weather to get some work done.

For those of you readers who are landlubbers, the job of prepping a boat is very, very dirty and potentially toxic. For the sake of brevity, we are assuming that the boat doesn't need any engine work, work on any internal systems (heads, pump-outs, water systems, etc), nor does the boat need any structural repairs to fix any leaks. We're just giving you the basics here. This typically includes: sanding and scraping any loose paint off of the bottom of the boat in order to prep the boat for a new coat of bottom paint, which protects the hull from becoming a nest of barnacles and other sea organisms. What makes the paint work, is also what makes it expensive and toxic: copper and copper copolymer, which provides a controlled releases of biocide to kill off any sea creatures. The paint is also, very expensive: for example a gallon of Micron CSC costs around $150. That will, if you are lucky, be enough to cover the bottom of a 30-foot sailboat. Because a boat is awkwardly shaped, its not that easy to paint the bottom. A lot of bending and stretching is involved and most sailors will tell you, they'd rather paint a flat wall, than a boat's bottom. Additionally, if the boat has wood above the water line, that will typically need to be sanded, cleaned and oiled (for teak) or varnished to protect it from the sun and salt.

When the bottom paint is finished, granted there are no hiccups in the plan, the boat needs to be washed and dried and then waxed. Like a car, the wax protects the boat's hull from dirt and pollutants For your editor, the washing ritual wasn't so much fun this year. The bay was particularly dirty last year, and we had some oil stains and funky green stains just above the waterline that didn't come out using the powerwash. We needed a magic elixer to remove the stain. Using a brush, we applied Y-10 fiberglass stain remover , let it set for about 10 minutes, but didn't let it dry) and then scrubbed the heck out of it with a Scotchbrite pad. That did the trick for us.

Once all of this is done, your local yard can help you put your boat in the water and step the mast.