A'hoy. I just got in from a lovely afternoon sailing a sporty little 470 sailboat out on Lake Michigan. My mom has been a dedicated member and volunteer at the Milwaukee Community Sailing Center (MCSC) since the early ‘90s, so I've had access to the sailor's life from a young age, but it wasn't until she bought her own 14-footer that I thought of sailing as active sport.
I don't go sailing too often with my mom since she's an avid racer and usually battles wind and waves far too advanced for my sea skills, but usually once a summer she takes me out for a tour of Milwaukee's marina and south shore area.
I arrived at the Sailing Center moorings wearing jeans and had a sweatshirt, cell phone, camera and half a left-over Qdoba burrito in tow. She laughed. This was all wrong.
She exchanged my cotton zip-up for a water-resistant jacket, put my electronics in her bag that was staying on land and told me to finish the burrito, pronto. There's no time for eating when you've got jib sheets to pull in and let out and pockets of puffy wind to avoid. Plus, "You're going to get wet," she warned.
The 470 is a small, two-person racing boat -- when I met her this afternoon, my mom had just finished a series of Sunday morning MCSC races. A 24-year-old from Italy who is in Milwaukee working for a year was her "crew," which I gather is sail jargon for "the other person on the two-person boat beside my mom."
Hers is not a "relax on the water" kind of boat. Because of its small size, it moves like the wind (uh, literally) and could easily capsize if we don't distribute our weight properly, a tactic that involves me in a harness that attaches to the mast that allows me to hang off the side of the boat to counter balance the increasingly frightening angle at which it tilts against the water.
There is not a moment that passes that I don't envision myself in the drink -- and I realize my mom was dead right. This is no place for a burrito.
But because the wind is in a constant state of flux, we are forced to tack and come-about frequently to avoid collisions with other boaters or the intense wake left from the jet skiers and motorboats. Soon, our little vessel is again parallel (on both sides) to the lake and I'm able to take in the rare westward view of our city's skyline.
It reinforces how lucky we are to live in such close proximity to a Great Lake, and the fact that it's only really usable for a fraction of the year makes it even more precious. Sure, I've been known to curse it for its "cooler by the lake" effect and blame it for my stagnant garden growth, but it's undoubtedly been a key player in making Milwaukee an amazing place to live.
OnMilwaukee.com staff writer Julie Lawrence grew up in Wauwatosa and has lived her whole life in the Milwaukee area.
As any “word nerd” can attest, you never know when inspiration will strike, so from a very early age Julie has rarely been seen sans pen and little notebook. At the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee it seemed only natural that she major in journalism. When OnMilwaukee.com offered her an avenue to combine her writing and the city she knows and loves in late 2004, she knew it was meant to be. Around the office, she answers to a plethora of nicknames, including “Lar,” (short for “Larry,” which is short for “Lawrence”) as well as the mysteriously-sourced “Bill Murray.”
