Berkeley’s sailing club: “Sail here, you can sail anywhere”

July 7, 2011 12:00 pm by Guest contributor

Wednesday night sail with Berkeley's Olympic Circle Sailing Club (OCSC)

By Niclas Ericsson

At the Olympic Circle Sailing Club in Berkeley sailing is for everyone.

“We wanted to reinvent sailing”, said Anthony Sandberg, club owner and veteran skipper, who holds an open house every week.

It’s a Wednesday evening in June and Anthony Sandberg is showing Berkeleyside around the campus of the Olympic Circle Sailing Club (OCSC), while explaining the philosophy behind his life achievement.

“Many don’t think that they deserve sailing until they get to a certain point. It looks like it’s out of their class.”

It all started in 1978 when Sandberg needed to make a career choice. After leaving home at age 16 to sail around the Pacific, he was eventually accepted at Dartmouth to study political science and city planning. In the years to come he went from being “a skipper for rich people” in Europe to teaching hygiene and “pulling out teeth” in Nepal, working for the Peace Corps. Now he had to make a choice between a job in the insurance business and entering law school.

Sandberg took a two week time-out and lived on the beach, reflecting on his future. And he came up with something quite different from working in law or insurance.

“I just got the idea that I’m going to take sailing and make it as accessible as tennis,” Sandberg said.

He started looking for the best possible location for a sailing club on the West Coast. Back then the municipal garbage dump was located north of the Berkeley Marina. But the spot seemed perfect: the winds, the spectacular views and the fact that larger ships would stay out of the way in the deeper water further out in the Bay.

“Everything pointed at this dump,” said Sandberg.

The city of Berkeley was about to close the facility and Sandberg was able to lease the property in 1979. The first six months he lived in his van and only had one boat. Thirty-two years later, he and his business partner, Richard Jepsen, employ 85 people in high season and own 12 of the 50 boats in the three docks next to the club house. The remaining 38 boats are private investments and the owners rent them out through OCSC to other members of the club.

While we are talking, people are starting to gather for the Wednesday Night Sail, a weekly event from April through September. Some are members and have brought friends along to go out in a chartered boat. Others are newcomers with no sailing experience and pay $40 to be set up with a group and a skipper. Sandberg is taking out a company of twelve friends on a catamaran, with long-time employee Ray Wichmann as the skipper.

Between 20 and 25 boats will be going out this afternoon, according to Wichmann. But, as it is an open house, the number of boats vary, and as many as 45 boats will sometimes be going out on Wednesdays. ”Every Wednesday is a new adventure”, Wichmann said.

The core activity at OCSC is teaching people how to sail and they have over 45 courses to choose from. The club has a chartering service, including skippered charters for non-members. Adventure
sailing trips to destinations all over the world is another part of the business, as well as numerous social activities.

The Wednesday Night Sail in itself is not profitable, said Sandberg. But to OCSC it’s an alternative to marketing themselves through advertising. ”It brings people to the club. And we make friends”, said Sandberg.

Sandberg says it is an opportunity to show that sailing can be an alternative to the values of everyday society. ”Americans are consumers today, as opposed to participants. We live in a world where people want pills, they want quick action. Sailing takes time to master”, said Sandberg.

He sees it as his mission to make as many people as possible discover sailing in general, and especially sailing on the Bay. ”The Bay is one of the finest water areas in the world. It’s a playground.”

Niclas Ericsson is a columnist, novelist and freelance journalist reporting from the Bay Area for several Swedish media. He is currently interning at Berkeleyside.

10 Comments

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  • Eric

    *One of* Berkeley’s sailing clubs.  Cal Sailing Club is in the same marina and has a similar mission but with very different economics and time commitments.  I’m an OCSC member, but it’s not the only way to get on the bay in Berkeley.  There is also Cal Adventures, which has yet a third model.  And then there’s the Berkeley Yacht Club, which is the more conventional scheme, but as it’s still Berkeley, it’s hardly a snooty place.

  • EBGuy

    Eric,  Thanks for your comments about the other clubs.   I’m a cheap SOB (and, ya know, kids don’t come free) so I’m looking at Cal Sailing Club to get back out on the water.  I was a junior skipper many moons ago.  Only $75 per quarter (with a 2 hour time commitment).    Compare this to $1000 for the introductory course at OCSC.  I would appreciate others chiming in on the differences between the various options.  From what I can tell, OCSC courses can also get you a US Sailing certification; you’ll need two courses to be certified for the most basic level.  I believe these qualifications can help you with boat rentals in other locations or when you go on vacation.  Can anyone comment if they’ve been able to rent a smaller boat elsewhere by showing their Cal Sailing Club ‘Junior Skipper’ card.  From what I can tell about Cal Adventures, they offer moderately priced courses ($200 for four days, 4 hours per day).  After taking the Intro and Intermediate classes, you are eligible to rent their boats.

  • Paul Kamen

    I need to echo the sentiment:
    OCSC is only *one of* Berkeley’s
    sailing clubs. Actually, OCSC is more commercial sailing school than club. It’s
    one of the best sailing schools in the Bay, but there are other ways to learn
    to sail, some of them at much lower cost.

     

    Cal Sailing Club is far and
    away the best resource on the waterfront. Learning to sail there costs about
    one twentieth what it costs at OCSC, and they teach in small, fast, responsive
    modern sport boats. Ask anyone who doesn’t have a vested interest in telling
    you something different, and you will hear that the best way to learn sailing
    is in the smallest boat. Nick Hayes, author of a recent book on the future of
    sailing, really nails it in an article appearing in an East Coast
    magazine:  http://tinyurl.com/3omq9t9

     

    There are other options,
    too. Berkeley Yacht Club runs a low-key race for larger sailboats every week,
    all year round. Friday nights in summer, Sunday afternoons in winter. http://www.BerkeleyYC.org to find out how
    to hop a ride. Yes, there’s an entry-level crew position called “sand
    bag” and you work your way up from there as you acquire racing crew skills.
    All free.

     

    If you have an interest in more
    primitive marine propulsion, the Berkeley
    Racing Canoe
    Center invites drop-in
    paddlers to any of their regular dragon boat team practice sessions. The boats
    are 50-ft replicas of traditional Chinese river boats, powered by 20 people
    with paddles (as seen in the opening photo of this article). http://www.BerkeleyRCC.org
    Kids and dogs are usually welcome to ride along.

     

    And don’t forget Adventure
    Playground if you’re too young to go sailing, or the rocking chairs on the
    Berkeley Yacht Club porch if you’re too old.

     

    Paul Kamen

    Chair, Berkeley Waterfront Commission

  • Eric

    That’s pretty much the gist of it.  There’s also the sailing program at Oakland’s lake merritt.  Great kids programs, including summer camps.  Richmond Yacht Club also has a strong youth program at reasonable prices.

    OCSC will teach you to sail a keelboat.  Given time and money, you’ll learn on smaller (24′) boats and then eventually move up to larger, wheel steered boats.  The other places are more about dinghy sailing.  Cal Adventures is exclusively about dinghies.  Cal Sailing Club has keelboats later on in their program.  These are all fun ways to sail, but they put different demands on you and your crew, in terms of skill and physical involvement.  We’re fortunate to have a broad range.

    Note that you can challenge the US Sailing certifications at OCSC — take the test without taking the class.  If you have skills, that might be a way to save tuition for one pricey course at least.  If you interested in the larger boat route and don’t want to do the volunteer hours at CSC, OCSC is a great club and their fleet is better than the other, similar clubs in other marinas on the bay IMO.  It’s also a good place to learn how to handle spinnakers, which you ought to do if you want to get into racing (which is a way to sail for free, possibly every night of the week).

  • Eric

    Folks, Paul is solid an authority on this question as you will find.  Chairing the Waterfront Commission is quite literally the least of his many, significant contributions to all things nautical in the area.  And chairing that commission is pretty damn significant!

  • Guest

    CSC also has a fleet of 5 keelboats which you can take lessons on once you have your junior skipper rating. The CSC program also works so that after you pay the membership fee (and complete your work hours), sailing and windsurfing lessons and equipment use are free. There is no “junior skipper card” that you receive from CSC, the rating is primarily within the program and works so that you can sail their dinghies by yourself or with guests.

  • deirdre

    Niclas, your stories are great.

  • http://www.niclasericsson.se Niclas Ericsson

    Thanks, Deirdre, that was sweet of you! = ) 

  • Yves Parent

    I am really amazed at the flexibility, simplicity and efficiency of Cal Sailing Club. With 5 years of previous single-handing experience I was able to get my junior skipper rating within a month, and this was more about learning to sail with people since I knew the ropes already. I can sail for free if I give at least 10 hours of teaching every 3 months. Now I’m good until Aug 2012.

    Also recently I saw a new female skipper get her junior rating within 3 weeks without any previous experience.

    I am now doing their keelboat program to get my senior rating and I am very pleased with the precision and attention to safety from the various teachers. There I can learn everything, including MOB on the sail and how to fix the keelboats.

    Also I am with BYC and as such I can enter my friend’s boats in their weekly races.

    It seems that OCSC has good navigation classes that I could use, even if I know the basic theory, such as celestial and off-coast  navigation. i am going to check that out.

    CSC has an open house tomorrow, 1 – 4 PM, free boat rides for anyone.

    Yves Parent, junior skipper, CSC.

  • Phyllis Ritchie

    As Paul mentioned, dragonboating (see first foto) is a great way to get the kids out on the water as well as sailing. OCSC has always been a big supporter of DragonMax, Berkeley Racing Canoe Center’s dragonboat team and we would like to thanks them for their support. In fact, because OCSC so generously donates the use of their picnic space to us,  we will  again be having our yearly Padde and BBQ event on Aug 6, 12 – 4. (Free boat rides,kids dragon crafts, food and music). Come on down.