Learning to Race
In those days, there were two racing fleets on Lake Lotawana, the Snipes and the C-Scows. Our next-door neighbor, Chuck Schwindler, was one of the Lake’s top “C” sailors and I hung around him like a puppy dog. I was dying to crew for Chuck, but my friends said you had to be 16 to crew and that was a long way off. However, when I was 12, my dream came true. Chuck's regular crew was sick, and he asked if I would fill in for a race. Would I! We did well together, and I became his regular crew, winning often. I loved the competition and learned a lot about sailing and life from Chuck.
Chuck was known as “Light-Wind Charlie” for his ability to sniff out the breeze when there was very little wind. Part of that was skill, the other part was that Chuck was a slight man so, between the two of us, we were by far the lightest crew on the lake. If the wind was too strong for the two of us, we took on a third crew and were still competitive.
In one unforgettable race, we were sailing up the lake toward the yacht club and we were a quarter of a mile ahead of the next boat with one more lap to go. We easily had the race won but as we approached the club, we realized that somehow the rounding buoy was missing. We were running out of lake.
Bob Peet, the judge, yelled from his boat, “Make your own buoy.” So we turned at the place where the buoy should have been and headed downwind. The judges came up behind us and set a temporary buoy for the rest of the fleet.
We were going downwind, more than a quarter mile ahead, when suddenly Chuck said to me, “We’re going about.” We hardened on the wind and headed back. I couldn’t understand what was wrong.
“Chuck, why are we going back? We’re going to lose the race!”
“We went around the imaginary buoy the wrong way.”
By the time we returned to the temporary buoy, unwound, and headed back downwind we were in sixth place, and I was despondent. We had suddenly gone from a quarter mile ahead to a quarter-mile behind. But Chuck wasn’t about to give up. It was just our kind of wind, and we started to catch boats, one after the other. On the final windward leg, we closed in on the lead boat, which was trying to cover us, but Chuck did two quick tacks right at the finish line and won the race. I can still hear the cheers from the crowd at the yacht club.
Of course, none of them could figure out why we’d gone back. I think they assumed we were just giving the others a chance, but I knew I had witnessed an outstanding example of good sportsmanship.
We looked like the Beverly Hillbillies with boats. The Lotawana “C” Fleet felt they were pretty hot, but they’d never really competed with the fleets on any other lakes. In 1946 the group decided to make the 350-mile trip to Lake Okoboji in northern Iowa to see how we would fare against another fleet. Since none of the boats had traveled, we didn’t have proper trailers. Some were hauled on farm trailers that repeatedly broke.
I don’t recall everyone who went but I know the group included Dick Dickey, Bill Linscott, Joe Birmingham, Bill Wicker and several others. We took five boats total.
The Okoboji group couldn’t have been more hospitable. They didn’t laugh at our crude trailers nor what were, in fact, our crude boats.
Back then, we kept our boats in the water, which made them heavy and required constant cleaning to keep the slime off the bottom. At Okoboji, they sailed their boats dry. In other words, they took them out of the water on a lift after every race. We were also a little more interested in comfort. Our boats had floorboards and metal lined drawers to hold the ice and beer. No one was concerned about weight.
It was a fun weekend but to say that we stunk up the sailing course is putting it mildly. The Okoboji sailors, including Jerry Huse and Bob Schneider, left us in the dust. They were better sailors and they had far better equipment.
We only had three or four trailer breakdowns on the way home, but we certainly had our tails between our legs. Actually, it was the best thing that ever happened to Lotawana sailing because we found out how bad we were and how far we had to go in order to compete in the big world of sailing. From then on people started buying lifts to take their boats out of the water, reading sailing books, and, more importantly, competing with other lakes.
I was head over heels in love with sailing. Occasionally Chuck let me borrow his boat for a race and I was able to do well. I was dying to get a boat of my own but there was no money.
At that time, everyone on Lotawana sailed Johnson sailboats, which were made in White Bear Lake, Minnesota. When we went to regattas, (a regatta is a series of races over several days), we found there was another brand of boat, the Melges.
I met Harry Melges and his son, Buddy (see my essay on Buddy Melges) at a Wisconsin regatta. I watched Buddy sail what I thought was the most beautiful “C” boat in the world. I had to have one and finally persuaded my parents into it after my freshman year at Northwestern. The boat was named Creeper. It had a pink deck (my dad called it “Titty Pink”). It was beautiful and it was the first Melges on Lotawana.
Back then, the boats were of wood construction with single-planked bottoms. Leaking was a consistent problem until the wood swelled after the boats were in the water. Johnson solved this by making a double-planked boat that didn’t leak but was fairly heavy. I loved my Melges, though, as it was light. So, I was willing to put up with the leaking problem.
Each lake had a letter designation for the sails. Okoboji was P and Lotawana was MO. My sail number was MO-3. Creeper and I did well right from the start. My two major nemeses during the early years were Bill Linscott and Joe Jack Merriman among some other good sailors on the lake.
During summer vacations from Northwestern, I competed in the local races and tried to go to as many regattas as possible. Paul Koontz, home on vacation from Princeton, was my regular crew. Paul drove out from Kansas City every Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning to race, and he went to a number of regattas with me.
I’ll never forget when Paul and I competed in the embarrassing regatta at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. It was embarrassing because the Lake Geneva sailors were excellent. Not only did we not win, I was embarrassed to be beaten for the first time by a girl! Jane Pagel was one tough sailor.
On the way back we stopped at the S.A.E. house at Northwestern for a free night’s lodging. I wanted Paul to see some of the seedier nightlife in the Chicago area, so I took him to Calumet City. As we walked in the door, an experienced Nick told Paul, “I’m going to the men’s room, but while I’m gone, don’t buy anyone drinks.” I wasn’t gone ten minutes, only to find Paul with a topless performer on his lap. She had about five drinks lined up in front of her. Paul was trying to find out why a nice young girl like Cindy was into that line of work. There are some things they didn’t teach you at Princeton.
That summer, with Paul's excellent crewing, we won both the Saturday and the Sunday series as well as the Labor Day regatta. And, yes, more and more Melges boats started appearing on Lake Lotawana.