It’s been a while since the last post. We had a couple of good trips in the spring on friends’ boats, but there were no trips on Zephyr this year. The refit turned out to be all encompassing and is still underway. Zephyr will sail again 2025 and we are looking forward to that. I’ll do a separate post or series of posts on the refit later.
For now, I’ll focus on one of the highlights of the summer, which was teaching American Sailing Association classes at Sailtime, which is a sailing school and fractional boat membership program that has a franchise conveniently located at our home marina of Morningstar in Little Creek in Norfolk.
I just got my captain’s license over the winter and took my ASA instructor qualifier classes this spring. I was a bit nervous at first, but I had background teaching sailing on dinghies at the Lake Manawa Sailing School. First, it’s worth mentioning what a wonderful program there is at Lake Manawa Sailing Association. I’m really grateful for everyone there who helped get me started and I still love to sail there regardless of whether it’s racing, teaching, or just for fun. At Lake Manawa the sailing club and school is all volunteer driven. Here are a couple of photos from one of the beginning sailing classes in June.
OK, back to teaching on the Chesapeake Bay in Norfolk. This year I taught 7 ASA101 (basic keelboat) classes on a Colgate 26, one ASA103 (coastal cruising) class on Hunter 36, and one ASA114 (cruising catamaran) class on an Adventura 37. During the summer, when the winds are light and out of the south, Little Creek is a good location because you are close to the southern part of the bay where there is plenty of room to sail. Some things that are different about sailing in the bay compared to a lake is the boat traffic (some of which are large ships entering the channel) and the current. In the fall when we tend to get wind out of the north, it gets choppy at Little Creek. Fortunately we have a boat over at Willoughby Bay that we are able to use and that is protected from the north, so the water is flat even if winds are high. I really enjoy teaching sailing. I actually found the format of these ASA classes to be quite manageable because there is at most 4 students and we’re all on one boat together. At Lake Manawa, it’s a lot to coordinate 10 students who each have their own dinghy, even with a team of people to help.
In hobbies and at work, I often find myself in a teaching role since I enjoy helping others learn. Of all the things I have done over the years, I feel like I’m best suited to teaching sailing in small group classes so I’m glad to have the opportunity to do that from our home marina. I’ve met a lot of interesting people through the classes, both the students and other instructors. Here are a few photos from my classes this year.
I managed to get in a bit of racing this summer, but I’m planning on doing more next year including Wednesday night races and some of the distance races on the bay on some weekends.
Corrie and I drove up to the Annapolis Boat Show to see that for the first time. It is a way to meet with vendors for all kinds of marine products and since so many sailors attend, it’s a great way to see friends you haven’t seen in awhile, or meet other sailors that you might have only chatted with online through sailing forums before. On the way back, we met up with our friends Jon and Sarah who now live in Washington DC. Jon and I taught sailing together at Lake Manawa. Last year they drove down from DC to go sailing over Labor Day on Zephyr. It was great to see them again!
SAILING ISLAND ZEPHYR 
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