After days of dark skies and rain, it was hard to say what the waters of Cowpet Bay would offer the guests at the St. Thomas Yacht Club. Sunday was St. Thomas Sailing Center’s “Open House” event, where the public could sign up for a free sailing lesson.
It was a lesson made special by one of the instructors – 1988 Olympic Silver Medalist and America’s Cup Skipper Peter Holmberg. Three passengers set out with Holmberg in an IC24 sailboat under partly cloudy skies and a light chop on the bay.
For roughly half an hour, the group sailed away from the dock at the yacht club and toured the bay. Passenger Isaac Peters eagerly took a hand at the rudder under Holmberg’s guidance.
“ … watch what happens; if I go too close to the wind, watch what happens. The sails stop catching wind – the boat stops. All I’ve gotta do is turn the boat, present the sails to the wind again, and the boat starts moving,” Holmberg said.
In between instructions, he told a story of a happy childhood in Cowpet Bay, learning how to sail along with his brother, John. Learning to sail as a child was more like play than work, he said and never posed a challenge until his teenage years when he entered his first sailing competition in Puerto Rico.
“The hardest thing is getting on the big stage and getting any pressure in competition,” he said, “In every sport, every performance that you do, nerves can be your biggest thing.”
Out in the bay, about half a dozen children on Sunfish sailboats bobbed along while their instructor followed in an inflatable topped with an umbrella. The sight of them evoked memories of sailing to sleepovers in Christmas Cove along with his brother and their childhood “sailing posse,” who camp out in different spots along the shore and hop into their boats to stage midnight fights out in the bay.
When asked if the seas seemed unusually mild, given the past three days of heavy rain, Holmberg drew from his wealth of weather wisdom. “Usually when storms come the wind precedes it. We are in the aftermath of this trough that’s going by us right now. Some troughs (low-pressure systems) create storms; some are just quiet – rain, moisture. This one’s not quite so windy,” he said.
While gauging the wind, the instructor taps his nose. By learning to sail in the Virgin Islands and then growing up in the sport to compete at higher and higher levels, Holmberg said he noticed a difference among his competitors.
“We’ve got this sea that nobody else in the world has; we’ve got this special wind and conditions for sailing,” he said. That was not to say there weren’t other places in the Caribbean where he loved to set sail.
But there was also some Virgin Islands pride that carried him through a lifetime of sailing to the biggest stage of all – The Olympics – in Pusan, South Korea, in 1988.
“You look at the Virgin Islands, I can tell you there’s two sides to the coin; we’re small, we’re isolated, we don’t have the big-big funding – the big competition, but at the same time we have a seat at the big table. Growing up, my elders said, ‘Hey, Man, we’re going to the Olympics,’ and they got us a separate nation status.”
“So the Virgin Islands doesn’t compete through the United States. We compete against the United States. We walk on the field as a separate nation; so does the British Virgins – now. My elders fought for this ability here, and I as a little child watched my father go to the Olympics. I watched Rudy Thompson go to the Olympics, and these little sailors – elders in my old club – went to the Olympics,” Holmberg said.
“So it was there for me. That was the ultimate – to go and carry your flag. Go rep and train in our little waters and go up against the big countries,” he said.
He told his tales while guiding young Peters – Sunday’s fledgling – through the bay. He learned how to steer the rudder back and forth and create a zigzag pattern that let a five-mile-an-hour breeze work its way into an apparent wind that made the boat go faster than it relied on the breeze alone.
“This is cool,” Peters said. “I think I’m going to learn how to sail.”
The yacht club promotes the introductory sail to locals and visitors alike as a way to stir interest in a range of sailing courses. Volunteer Laura Martin said those interested can sign up for a 30-day membership to take a course and see if they like it.
The St. Thomas Sailing Center offering began in 2016 and has built up interest slowly with help from local residents, many of them families with children, she said. “If they come in for a week, then they can come for a sailing vacation. If they’re here for two weeks they have an extra week to go sailing,” Martin said.
