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Learning to sail is kids' stuff
Yachting classes for youngsters gain popularity

Paul McHugh, Chronicle Outdoors Writer
Thursday, August 15, 2002
©2002 San Francisco Chronicle.

Bay sailing -- it's not just for yachtsmen anymore.

Two new, nonprofit schools are launching urban youth into sailing in unprecedented numbers. This adds to outreach by a handful of Bay Area yacht clubs. Success of these efforts could change San Francisco sailing for decades to come.

The youth flotillas also focus attention on public-access and environmental- health issues on two troubled patches of local water.

The newest of the schools, dubbed True Youth, is an offshoot of America's Cup skipper Dawn Riley's America True group. On a recent weekday, the True Youth program put four kids at a table to hear a chalkboard talk at San Francisco's Lake Merced.

Wearing life jackets, they had just leaped fearlessly into the lake, then paddled themselves 30 yards around a buoy to complete a required, preliminary swim test.

Then, all dried off, Kelly Lea, 13, sat and practiced her one-handed bowline knots while instructor Sean Gass, 24, sketched boating diagrams on his board.

Gass preached the rudiments of navigation. A secret to fending off problems,

Gass noted, is "tiller to trouble." Pointing the end of a tiller (the handle atop a rudder) straight at a problem makes a boat turn away from it.

Present for a second day of class, Andrew Guan, 14, Richard Sim, 12, Matt Sim, 11, and Lea seemed to have no trouble absorbing these concepts -- although the boys made wisecracks and feigned incomprehension. Fairly soon, they had to put their newfound knowledge to the test.

"Can't you stick all those boys on a boat together? Just let me go by myself?" asked Lea, in a classic, young teen outburst.

"No, but I will put you with Matt," Gass confided. "Then, you'll be light, and move more quickly. You can tell 'em what we say in racing: 'Eat my wake!' "

The kids boarded X-3, plastic skiffs, on which they had rigged sails. As Gass had predicted, Lea swiftly took the lead. The older boys complained, "Hey, you're moving too fast!"

"Put two boats on the water anywhere, and you've got a race," chuckled Ward Latimer. A grizzled, lifetime sailor, Latimer, 54, spearheads the True Youth program for Riley. Latimer collected the program's 100 summer students by making contact with Glide Memorial Church, Big Brothers/Big Sisters and other urban improvement groups.

"We haven't hit the numbers we want yet. Of course, it's just our first year," Ward said. "We'll teach all elements of the community. Mainly, we want to help underserved kids."

"Wish I'd had this opportunity," said Gass' assistant, Sea Scout Julie Leong, 17. "When I was their age, I thought sailing was only for rich people."

Latimer gazed out over North Lake, a lobe of the 273 acres of natural, open- water ponds collectively known as Lake Merced.

"This is a fine place to sail. Water is warm. Winds are constant, but moderate," Latimer said. "However, Merced has been ignored and neglected. It's suffered decline. We hope bringing our program here encourages people to restore the area."

Fifty years ago, Lake Merced was a mecca of urban recreation, serving rowers, sailors, anglers and paddlers. Since then, the water level has fallen from 27 feet to less than 17 feet, because of extractions from the lake's long,
narrow watershed and aquifer by four communities south of San Francisco, as well as pumping by local cemeteries and golf courses.

A rescue plan is afoot to replace many extractions with recycled water, over the long term. In the short haul, to stem this decline, fans of the lake hope to get an emergency shot of Hetch Hetchy water from Crystal Springs.

The prolonged, low water level let native plants and animals colonize the exposed lake shore. This complicates plans to raise the water.

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SAIL INSTRUCTION

-- True Youth at Lake Merced -- Youth programs continue until the end of August, with 16-hour, one-week seminars in either morning or afternoon series. Cost: $149, but scholarships are available. Youth programs continue on Saturdays through October. Adult community classes stay available midweek at same price. (415) 433-4287, or www.americatrue.org/summer/index.cfm.

College students can take the classes for credit, through the Recreation and Leisure Department at San Francisco State University. (415) 338-2030.

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E-mail Paul McHugh at pmchugh@sfchronicle.com.