Sailing club endures rough waters
June 25, 2014
A handful of longtime sailors are trying to keep the tradition of sailing alive and well as economic strains have taken a toll on the southern Illinois sailing community in recent years.
“This is kind of what we do to keep it from dying,” said Bob Winston, commodore of the Crab Orchard Lake Sailing Association, during a biweekly Sunday race of four boats on Crab Orchard Lake.
He said he can remember when the lake was full of boats and the university had a thriving collegiate sailing club.
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Winston, 45, of Carbondale, who learned to sail through the Southern Illinois Collegiate Sailing Club in 2005, said the then club had a “hoard of boats.”
“We had a whole bunch of boat stored and the university basically cleaned it up,” Winston said. “There was no response from folks involved in the club. … I was always picking through the bone yard there looking for parts and what boats are in there to resurrect or whatever and saw it going on – it’s too bad. They trashed a lot of boats and got rid of a lot of stuff.”
Winston said sailors involved in the collegiate club separated from the university in roughly 2011 and renamed the club the Southern Illinois Community Sailing Group in 2013.
“The sailing times have changed a lot even since then,” he said. “[The club] was a great resource to get to come out and sail for almost free and be around other sailors. That’s how that club worked, sailors taught other sailors.”
Amanda Chahalis, a graduate student studying social work who recently joined the sailing club, said she is surprised more students are not involved in the sailing community.
“I guess overtime the club has been losing members, not being able to collect members and it kind of just fell apart,” she said. “It would be nice to see [the club] come back together again.”
Winston said the sailing association still has roughly 30 members although the numbers have decreased over the years.
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Ian Thompson, a graduate student studying curriculum and instruction secondary education who recently joined the club as well, said it is common for registered student organizations to lose members over time
“RSO clubs fall up and then out all the time,” he said. “If you can’t pass a club on to somebody it dies out immediately.”
Chahalis said the sailors consistently teach people who want to learn to sail for a $30 club membership for the season, which is from April to October.
Winston said the club holds four individual races every other Sunday, which last between 20 minutes to an hour. He said sailors use a system that compares boats raced to the individual’s finish time to depict who won, so the first finisher of a race doesn’t necessarily win.
Winston also said he remembers how he originally became interested in sailing and hopes more people become interested in the sport.
“How I kind of started was I took two canoes and stuck them together to make a big platform, just a swimming platform, and I had a tent on it,” he said. “I caught wind one day and I took off down the lake. … It was great.”
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Dick Roush • Jun 23, 2021 at 5:32 pm
I am a ‘67 SIU Grad from the School of Technology. I retired from IBM in 1992 in Atlanta. I founded the SIU sailing club in 1965. I am now living in Wilmington, NC.
Paul James Nolan • Feb 9, 2021 at 1:31 pm
Very sad to read about the decline of the SIU Sailing Club, the Crab Orchard Lake Sailing Club, and sailing in the area generally.. The club was started by two men from the engineering department, Phil Neiman and Dick Roush. Phil was the sailor and Dick was the social engine of the club. Phil was a terrific sailor. As I recall, he had finished in the top five or so at the Snipe Mid-Winters which impressed me then and still does today. He offered me his boat one day and, a half century later I still remember the moment I cast off. The boat was perfect, without a single flaw. Everything was perfectly located, the boat fully shaken down, and the helm! It was heaven, three and a half degrees off the centerline, the boat naturally wanted to climb to weather. Such a feeling ran through me, a physical and emotional exhilaration.
Phil and Dick started the club. One technical guy, one social guy. They started it and they built it. I previously thought racing–top competition–was the way to build a fleet, but they taught me by their success that the social function was the key to a robust organization. We quickly grew to be the largest organization on campus. We had a party every weekend. Free beer and girls! Plenty of ’em! You could be Joe Cool or Nelson Nebbish and you could find girls to talk to at the SIU Sailing Club party. We had some monster bashes, cars and motorcycles parked all over the lawn, the house rockin’, the beer flowin’, Jack Mix (always our cook) roasting a pig…the mild parties would wind down after midnight with many gathered around a dying fire playing a guitar and singing folk songs. The wilder ones would go to two or three am before breaking up. This was, I believe, 1966, before drugs took over. Beer was our only drug then. A year later you might smell, but not see, marijuana. Two years later things had really shifted. By ’69 I was in the Army Airborne Infantry; when on leave I visited campus in the fall of that year nothing was recognizable.
I remember so many friends from the club in those early years. Now I sit here sorting through my memories of them. What’s wonderful is that in my mind, we all look exactly as we were…young, healthy, good lookin’…all of us…happy and healthy, looking forward to the future, full of hope, ambition, expectations. Those really were the days!