Regatta on Madison’s Lake Mendota, August 1934
Here we go sailing past Lessons in the sport have a rich history on Wisconsin lakes TIM SWEET
COURTESY OF STEVE CARPENTER
Anyone listening to pop radio 40 years ago would no doubt remember the Grammy Awardwinning 1979 song “Sailing,” by Christopher Cross.
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LONG PART OF THE COMMUNITY
TIM SWEET
Sailing instructors then and now — Steve Carpenter in the mid-1970s, above, and Henry Pudlo today.
I have always savored the chorus: “Sailing takes me away to where I’ve always heard it could be. Just a dream and the wind to carry me. And soon I will be free.” A high school friend, Steve Carpenter, introduced me to sailing in the mid-’70s, a few years before Cross won his Grammy. Carpenter’s family kept their boat moored in the Neenah Harbor next to Riverside Park. “I remember as a fairly young kid, maybe 10 years old or so, we would go out sailing on Lake Winnebago in the 21-foot lightning class sailboat my dad built out of mahogany in our basement and garage,” Carpenter said. His father helped hone Carpenter’s sailing skills and he eventually became a teenage sailing instructor for younger kids in Neenah. “We would teach students the parts of the boat, mast and sails as well as techniques for reading the wind, tacking and so forth,” he said. Carpenter’s involvement was part of a rich history of sailing, sail training and racing on Lake Winnebago and other inland lakes in Wisconsin, not to mention the bays and broad expanses of the state’s two Great Lakes. Sailing might conjure visions of “champagne wishes and caviar dreams,” a lifestyle for the rich and famous. But in Wisconsin, sailing is generally no such thing.
EUGENE SANBORN
Harry Purinton, founder of the Sail Training Foundation
SAIL TRAINING FOUNDATION
NEENAH HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Nodaway-Neenah Yacht Club races on Lake Winnebago, 1950s
