14 minute read
Sailing Away
Come Sail A
im Flaherty was born andJ
raised in
Pittston. He met his wife, Sheila Redding, in kindergarten. Jim graduated from St. John’s High School, Pittston, and later, from Penn State University, Scranton, with a degree in mechanical engineering. He began working at Chamberlain Manufacturing in July 1963. “I like to keep things simple; I have had one job and one wife,” he quipped. Eventually, Jim became the president of Chamberlain. When the corporation was sold to General Dynamics, he stayed on as general manager for four years, retiring in 2010.
As a family in Northeast PA, the Flahertys always had a fondness for water. They spent vacations at the shore and had a motorboat which they enjoyed at places like Lake Wallenpaupack and Harvey’s Lake. “Just before I was transferred to Massachusetts, my wife and I were out in the San Francisco Bay. My wife looked at me and said, ‘Whatever you do, when we relocate to Massachusetts, do not get a sailboat; they all look like they are going to tip over!’” So Jim bought a powerboat and used it for their first New England summer. One day his neighbor told him that he needed someone to crew for one of his upcoming sailboat races. Jim responded that he had never been on a sailboat
Away
“J’Erin,” Flaherty’s boat named after Jay and Erin
Jim Flaherty
before, so the neighbor suggested that they go out and “practice” that night. “When I arrived home I told my wife that I just had to buy a sailboat as I had fallen in love with the concept of sailing.” The day Jim bought his sailboat he came home at about 3 p.m. and there happened to be a race at 5 p.m. Of course, he entered it!
“It was dark when I finished the first race. I had no idea what I was doing, so I came in last. But I stayed with it, continuing to sail frequently until I became more and more proficient at it,” Jim said. By nature, Jim was in the habit of doing a lot of research. He carefully followed many details involving sailboat racing in an effort to avoid making mistakes that others had.
Did Jim’s engineering and physics experience play into his interest and ability in
sailing? “Yes, I believe it helped,” he said. “I started navigating for people for longer distances and better understanding the process of navigation, the currents and how it all works together,” he recalled. His teams began winning races, and the skippers often gave any winning credit to Jim for his navigational abilities. A good crew for competitive sailing is absolutely imperative; it must include people who are like-minded and have great chemistry together. “That’s the secret to a successful team,” Jim said. So too, is having good equipment, taking care of it and avoiding any type of breakdown. Putting in the time and preparation for a race is key also; for example making sure that the keel is the correct shape and the bottom of the boat was as smooth as could be.
Jay Flaherty
Jim and his team began participating in the Newport-
Bermuda Race in 2000. This event includes approximately 150 to 200 boats that sail from Newport, Rhode Island to Bermuda. The average crew has 10 men or women. On the third Friday in June, the boats depart from Newport. It takes more than two hours to get all the boats started in their six While a good portion of Jim’s crew for the NewportBermuda race was from New England, there was also a local, Northeast PA contingent that was involved.
Joe Murray owned the North Pocono Bagel Shop in Moscow, PA. One of the toughest crew positions to fill is a cook. Joe liked to sail and cook so that was a win-win. Art Philipp owned Philipp Auto Body Shop in Scranton. He had a sailboat that he enjoyed taking out on area lakes. When assembling a crew, it’s easier to get the race crew together rather than the return crew. “My son Jay was instrumental in gathering the return crew and Art was a part of that. Art’s skill in making the bottom of the boat extremely smooth also proved to be vital. Johnnie Bonacci, another friend I met from the North Pocono Minisink Lions Club had a garage where we would store and work on the boat. The technology and electronics of the boat were crucial, too. I met Scott Sherwood at work and his technology and electrical skills aided our competitive advantage. Scott happened to have an athletic background as a rock climber, experience that also gave us an edge. Competition required not only having the best technology but also someone (not afraid of heights) who was willing to go to the top of the mast while sailing should there be a glitch.” In 2002, Jim’s team came in second place in his division in the Newport-Bermuda Race. In 2004, they won first place in the whole class. “The NewportBermuda race is 650 nautical miles. We figured we could do it in less than 100 hours. With a crew of six, two people are on watch at a time. We would split the watch - three hours on six hours off. We would split the two on watch at a time by 1.5 hours so that at all times, you had 90 minutes to transfer information and discuss the winds, strategy, etc. This was not a common way for crews to split the schedule but we felt it also gave us an advantage. The extra time needed
to communicate in an unhur-
ried fashion was vital. You definitely do not get a lot of sleep and it is exhausting so having adequate time to relay information really worked out.” “We spent a lot of time in the off-season getting the boat ready. The less mistakes we made, the more we would win. We won every race that there was to race in New England.” The more successful his teams became, the more they became “the team to watch.” Jim recalls one race where they were in the lead and actually made a wrong turn. Because the other boats assumed they were correct, they all followed them. “We had made a dumb mistake but several others followed us,” he laughed.
On the East Coast, Jim says that the sailing meccas can be found primarily in
Marblehead, MA, Newport
and Annapolis. If you wanted to do real competitive sailing likely find your way to Annapolis where on every single night in the summer, racing is happening. If you were a diehard enthusiast and didn’t mind the cold, you could participate in the Frostbite Series in Newport. Racing in the cold was not for Jim, however. “My
rule was that if the water was colder than my drink I didn’t
sail,” he laughed. There is a saying, “old sailors never die... they buy Trawlers.” Trawlers are a heavy boat that provide slow, comfortable travel between six and eight knots, ideal for those more interested in comfort rather than going fast. Jim and Sheila’s children had plenty of exposure to sailing in their younger days. Son Jay would take the helm at about age five and daughter Erin Flaherty Culkin who still lives in the region also had plenty of experience changing sails on the boats. Jay wanted to enter the military and quite logically chose the US Navy. After 25 years in the Navy, Jay retired and today works for Yacht Tech specializing in Nordhavn boats. These very high end boats have extremely complex electronics system and Jay provides hands on instruction to the owners while transporting the boat along the coasts. Today Jim is retired and lives with his wife in Stuart, Florida. Sailing out on the bright clear water is something that seems to be in his blood. And all it took was a neighbor who needed some help to get him started. We asked him for some advice on getting young people involved with sailing. “It’s
an excellent skill that teaches self-reliance and dealing with
adversity. If I could round up a crew I’d sail tomorrow. However my wife often comments that it would have been less expensive if I had developed a drug addiction instead,” he laughed.
The Flaherty Family
ustin Burke, Scranton, learned how to sail on LakeA
Michigan one summer when he was studying for his bachelor’s degree at Northwestern University.
“The student sailing club is really good there and they had great instructors. The course even finished with a capsize test: Purposely tip a small sailboat, which was harder than I expected, then right it.” He remembers being surprised at how quickly the boat responds. “When you see a sailboat from a distance, it can seem to turn gradually, like there's some time after they move the tiller but before the boat actually begins to turn. But really there's no delay at all. The boat responds instantly, just as fast as a bike turns when you move the handlebars.”
When he got back to Pennsylvania, he rented a sailboat for a few seasons and eventually bought a used boat, a 22-foot Catalina which he would sail on Lake Wallenpaupack. “A few years ago, my wife, Christine, got me a birthday gift of a week at JWorld, a sailing school in Annapolis. That was incredible, but a real working vacation. About a dozen boats, four students on each, nearly eight hours a day for five days. We did full race training on the Chesapeake, taking turns as navigator and skipper. And sometimes surprise "man overboard" drills,
where the instructor would toss a seat cushion in the water to see how fast we could rescue it. I set the week's record: less than a minute.”
Austin was part of the crew in an annual charity race in New York City that Prudential Financial, a former employer, sponsored. “The organizer would charter a fleet of J-boats, the same kind we'd sailed in Maryland. Each boat had a professional captain, and we made up the crew. We raced from the World Trade Center to the Statue of Liberty and back again. But since we were on the Hudson, we also had to yield to commercial ships. One racer pushed his luck trying to cut in front of a massive barge. They looked like they were going to get squashed when the barge blasted its horn and forced them back.”
He shared an interesting aspect of sailing: “When you're sailing in the same direction as the wind, the sails act like you'd expect, kind of like a parachute. But when you're sailing across the wind or even a bit upwind, the sails behave more like airplane wings, flying through the air, pulling the boat forward the way a wing pulls the plane up.” Ironically, Austin is reminded of the song “The Leaving Of Liverpool” when he contemplates sailing. “It's a sad song about a sailor who must leave his love. It’s not about great sailing, though. One line goes, ‘I have signed on a Yankee sailing ship, Davy Crockett is her name. And Burgess is the captain of her. And they say that she's a floating shame.’” There's lots more going on these days with family responsibilities and his work at Berkshire Hathaway GUARD Insurance “But I still manage to sail on Lake Wallenpaupack with the family a few times each summer,” said Austin.
For the novice sailor, Austin has this advice: “Start with some good instruction. A few hours on land learning the basics can save tons of grief on the water. But then get out there, the more the better. If you have a friend or relative with a boat, get on it, help rig it, help steer it, work the sails, get a feel for it. Also, most of the bigger lakes around here have sailing clubs that are very welcoming.” H
–Christine Fanning
Lake Wallenpaupack,
enjoyed by thousands today, did not exist until construction of the dam and hydroelectric power station in
1926. In the early 1900s, engineers recognized the value of placing a dam across
Lake Wallenpaupack Wallenpaupack Creek. The 1,280-foot-long dam, powerhouse and flow line carry lake water to the hydroelectric station. Water from the bottom of the lake travels up the flow line, a large pipe that spans 3.5 miles. The water powers turbines at the station, generating enough energy to sustain approximately 35,000 homes. Construction of the dam also created Lake Wallenpaupack. Encompassing 5,700 acres, it is one of the largest man-made lakes in Pennsylvania. Lake Wallenpaupack has 52 miles of shoreline. H
Lake Goers of Long Ago
For hundreds of years families have travelled to the lake to refresh, recharge and
relax. Envision images of Victorian ladies and gentlemen loading into a wagon, train or trolley for trips out of the sweltering city to enjoy cooler hours by the lake. Places like Harvey’s Lake, Lake Ariel, Moosic Lake, Newton Lake and Chapman Lake were options for leisure in
Chapman Lake and Moosic Lake photo credit: courtesy of Lackawanna Historical Society Harvey’s Lake photo credit: www.digitalcommonwealth.org
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Northeast PA. Area residents flocked to lakes by the thousands for the summer months. Many offered picnic groves, bandstands, games and even amusement parks to keep lake goers entertained. Enjoy a look back a some past lake visitors. H
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