By G. M. Donley
When I was first learning to sail, as a teenager in the 1970s, Lake Erie was not a body of water that prudent people would eagerly jump into. We sailed on smaller, less polluted (we assumed) inland lakes.
But thanks to a few decades of steady progress in cleaning up our waterways—and thanks to Lake Erie’s rapid turnover rate which means the water in it is completely replaced every 2.5 years—this lake that was once declared dead has seen a spectacular rejuvenation. People are coming back to it, and not only to the beaches. Many places in this country have nice lakes and reservoirs, but not so many have a legit inland sea.
Of course, being an inland sea, Lake Erie demands a serious level of respect. It’s like a big mountain in that way—it’s a dramatic defining feature of the landscape and even of the weather, but if you want to go beyond just looking and actually get out on it, you’d best do so with an appreciation of its awesome scale and power.
That, of course, is a big part of what’s so cool about sailing on a Great Lake. It’s you harnessing some small whiff of that awesome power. To me, if you live around here near the shores of this inland sea, you ought to get a chance to experience that.
So naturally I’m excited about the Cleveland Metroparks’ recently announced plan to create a year-round community sailing center at the East 55th street marina. The reasons are many.
Sailing for its own sake. Sailing is just awesome and more people ought to do it especially if they live right next to a giant inland sea. Not only do you learn an interesting set of specific skills, but you also come to understand and appreciate a lot more about this literal force of nature that affects your life in many ways. Hopefully you come away with a desire to take great care of your Great Lake.
Improved and broader public access. Many classes and programs will be run in partnership with the Foundry, an organization that already has a strong track record in getting urban youth involved in competitive rowing and sailing—broadening the horizons of those young people and deepening the pool of athletes available to these activities. Football isn’t the only sport that can bring college scholarships.
Sailing might seem elitist to the general public, but this facility and its programs could help overcome that psychological barrier. Most people’s image of sailing conjures a big yacht moored at a dock in a fancy marina somewhere. But most sailboats in this country are under 20 feet long and kept not in the water at yacht clubs but on dry land and in back yards and garages. Indeed, the essence of sailing (even the big yacht owners would tell you this) is in small lightweight boats because they are so responsive to wind and weight. They are also portable, easy to store out of the water, usually simple to maintain, and often very affordable. And loads of fun. Nonprofit community sailing centers around the world (for example the Fraglia Vela Malcesine sailing school in Italy) offer great opportunities for regular not-rich people to learn about and enjoy sailing, and given that foundation, take it as far as they may like—from their local body of water to the Olympics.
The community sailing center and its activities will be built around boats like that. You won’t need to buy your own boat to partake. If you do have your own boat, it appears that the community sailing center will be set up for you to be able to easily and safely launch your own sailboat there also—something that can’t be necessarily said about all the public ramps up and down Lake Erie, which are designed for and dominated by powerboats whose operators don’t necessarily think about the practical and safety concerns of unmotorized sailboats.
Building connection to the environment. The community sailing center fills in a large missing piece in connecting Clevelanders to their lake through recreation. Since a sailboat’s power derives from wind and not from fuels, sailing is one of the lowest-impact ways to enjoy the lake. It’s just about silent as well. The new center is close to downtown and to our developing networks of bikeways, so someone could even, to use myself as an example, ride a bike down half an hour from Cleveland Heights and go sailing on one of their fleet boats without even touching a car.
Furthering the rejuvenation of this region. Northeast Ohio has experienced some rough times, but we can look at our situation now and see, with some amazement, that we have come out the other end of it with many of our greatest blessings not only intact but some of them better than ever: we have the best orchestra in the world, a world-class art museum, a wide range of other first-rate cultural and scientific assets, a terrific park system, the hospitals, the universities, some beautiful neighborhoods, and a reasonably diversified economy (still working on that and always will be). We have a healthy and creative local arts scene and similar strengths in music across many genres. We have managed to preserve a good amount of pretty countryside and productive family farms despite the pressures of exurban sprawl and, miraculously, we have seen the return to health of both the Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie, which not too long ago were smoldering examples of how not to steward natural resources.
There is nothing that sends a better message about a city’s embrace of its environment and the eagerness of its citizens to make the most of its natural treasures than to see people out running, to see kayakers on the river, and to see scores of sails just offshore right next to downtown. The place is alive and vibrant and you really want to live here.
When the Metroparks announced the project, some responded with skepticism. Scrutiny of any significant project is appropriate, and even after such due diligence it can be hard to get fully behind something you don’t think you yourself will likely use. That’s okay. I don’t go to a lot of Cavs or Browns games, but I’m glad they’re here.
On top of that, the sadly predictable internet trollosphere kicked in with the usual range of comments ranging from incuriously ignorant to knee-jerk pessimistic to blatantly racist—You can only sail for 4 months in Cleveland so why bother? The sport is for rich people not city kids. You better have good security, nobody goes to that part of the city. Cleveland is a rough town, so watch out. Stop wasting taxpayer money.
The best guidance for internet trolls in general would be to do your own research using objectively reputable sources and stop repeating stupid things you heard some other uniformed prognosticator say. A lot of these comments would have been made null and void to anyone who had actually read the article on the Metroparks website. The whole point of the project is to broaden access, most funding is private, etc., etc., etc.
Others issues seem more broadly existential, such as dissatisfaction with the change of seasons. The Browns only play a few months a year, so who would ever go to a football game?
In Cleveland’s fabled first heyday 120 years ago, grand public beach houses graced both Edgewater Park on the west and Gordon Park on the east. They were used intensively by the full range of citizens, despite what we know must have been abysmal water quality. In a lot of ways, we’ve got it better now. The makings of a new and even more robust heyday for our region are here already, and the continued visionary efforts of the Cleveland Metroparks to enhance our quality of life by building connections to our natural setting can only strengthen that future.
Collegiate sailing competition at Wendy Park, Cleveland
Sailing on Lake Garda, Italy
Contact: info@gmdonley.com