Bidding farewell to sailing season proves difficult when sailors are still enjoying 70-degree days in Battery Park City, but that’s the schedule the Manhattan Sailing School abides by for decommissioning its fleet in the middle of each October.
The approaching winter looms heavily over the school, serving as a reminder to the staff and the school’s club members that their luxurious leisure can only be a seasonal thrill in the northeast. There’s storage space in New Jersey awaiting the arrival of the school’s 24 J-24 sailing boats, and an active winter schedule in place, designed to whet appetites for the next sailing season on the rippling Hudson River.
But the decommissioning of the fleet doesn’t happen without Sailing Club members first taking a Saturday to memorialize one of their own. The Bruce Hagan Memorial Regatta celebrates the life of a former club member and award-winning “Dateline NBC” producer who passed away in 1998. The money raised for the race is donated to charity.
“Every year we do a regatta to remember him,” said Emily Whipple, the school’s Club Director. “It’s usually the Saturday before the decommissioning. Our last race is in his honor, and then we break it all down the next day.”
And breaking it all down is entirely a seasonal decision.
It’s not like California, said Chris Mansour, one of the Sailing School’s dock masters this season. The cold is “not conducive to sailing,” so the mandated offseason provides an opportunity to refresh strategies and perform routine maintenance on the fleet.
The J-24s leave the Dennis Conner North Cove marina for cleaning and repairs after six months of wear and tear. During the season, sailing lessons and club-member rentals take the fleet out to the Verrazano Bridge, or as far uptown as 79th Street.
“Members call into the club ahead of time when they want to rent a boat. It’s like a library book. Members will borrow a sailboat and bring it back. They all go out,” Mansour said of the J-24 rental routines. “Tuesdays and Wednesdays are race nights, but the weekends are for cruising. They can go sailing anytime, but they can only rent it out for four-hour slots because we want to get everyone sailing.”
And with nearly a thousand members in the Sailing Club, it’s critical to Whipple and her staff to keep their interest in sailing piqued. In a place like New York, where there’s always something to do, keeping sailing fresh and exciting for members is tantamount to the offseason strategy. When lectures and drinks run their course, members are encouraged to gather in the Caribbean for a regatta.
“We do tend to deal with people resigning, but that’s the nature of living in New York City and this being a seasonal place,” Whipple explained. “Our peak for the summer was 970, but what happens sometimes, because this is a very transient city, is that our members get transferred for work, or they move, or they start families. We do see a trend in the fall with members dropping off.
“This year, we had 280 members join the club, and maybe about 140 members resigned. We kind of go two steps forward and one step back.”
Once the fleet is decommissioned, though, filling the sailing void is critical for Whipple and the remaining “skeleton crew,” she said. Sailing is an escape from a standard commute that typically involves rumbling through cavernous, unforgiving tracks or buses convulsing over cratered concrete.
The concept of smooth sailing through the city is often as foreign as the cab driver whipping through traffic.
“The offseason can be just as busy as the regular season, but it’s a lot different. We break down to more of a skeleton crew here,” said Whipple. “We open the clubhouse three nights a week for social events, offshore courses … and we have our annual dinner in December to wrap up the season with awards.”
Once the clubhouse docks in the marina, the space also becomes available to rent as a function hall for events like corporate Christmas parties.
And now that the School’s silver jubilee is in the books, building membership and leading the Manhattan Sailing School into its next 25 years is at the top of the agenda. It starts with building the school to teach more students, and continues with acquiring more J-24s. And it remains in line with the vision Commodore Michael Fortenbaugh had when he created the school with the goal “to build sailing and provide that sport for everyone in New York,” according to Whipple.
“We also have two colleges, the New School and the Stevens Institute, that come down and practice here,” Whipple added. “There could be something for college sailing in the future. We could help them build teams, or organize practice sessions.
“It’s a great area to sail.”