How Sailing With My Grandparents Has Impacted Me

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How Sailing With My Grandparents Has Impacted Me

by Travis Pehoski

Sailing Dreams

There are many, many people who dream of a laid back, fun, and casual sailing lifestyle. There are people who dream of sailing to all sorts of islands, towns, and cities with their families or loved ones. All these things are awesome aspirations to have, but what happens when dreams become a reality? This was the case for me, as I’ve had the incredibly special and rare opportunity to go on sailing adventures on a consistent basis from a very young age. Read on to get to know a little bit about me and how sailing has played a prominent role in my life.

Some Background

I am extremely fortunate to have adventurous grandparents on both sides of my family. For as long as I can remember, there’s never been a time when I’ve questioned the necessity of adventure, activity, or fun with any of my grandparents (even considering the great grandparents). However, sailing is what I’ll talk about in detail, so that’s where Tony and Julie Pehoski, or Grandpa Tony and Grandma Julie as I know them, come into the story.

My grandparents met at a summer camp near a lake and have been on an adventure of some sort ever since. “‘Can I help you with that?’ I offered as Tony was putting the dock in the water at Camp St. Croix, summer 1979. For the first few days of camp staff training, he kept calling me Judy, but eventually learned my name was Julie. We became close friends over the summer. During our breaks from campers, you could find us sailing on Lake St Croix. …And we’ve been sailing through the seasons of life together ever since, literally and figuratively!” (Julie Pehoski, Terrapin Trails Blog).

Even getting married and having kids didn’t stop my grandparents from adventuring! In fact, one of the main reasons I ever got to go on the boat with my grandparents is because they brought my dad and his siblings on sailing adventures every summer (since Grandpa was a teacher). Because sailing was such a big part of my dad’s life, he wanted me to experience it as well. Even 27 years after my grandparent’s initial adventure-sparking interaction, when I got taken on my first sailing trip as a 2 year old, Grandpa Tony and Grandma Julie were still sailing and spreading the joy of the boat life.  Roughly 14 years later after sailing on three different sailboats in the Great Lakes, the Gulf, and the Atlantic respectively, I can look back on my experiences and confidently say that sailing is an amazing experience with many benefits and positive effects. I’m confident that my love for it won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.

Benefit 1: A Strong Relationship With My Grandparents

One effect my sailing adventures have had is a strong relationship with my family, specifically my grandparents. The first sailing trip I went on was in 2006 when I was 2 years old (turning 3 in August). The trip wasn’t long, and I was accompanied by my immediate family. However, the trips with my family eventually got longer and in 2007, I started being able to go on sailing trips with my grandparents by myself! At first, I only spent a couple of days alone with my grandparents and then my family would join us for a week or so. This was the case for many years, as I was pretty young. Eventually, though, I extended my stay to a week… And then slightly over a week… And then a couple weeks… And with a bit of convincing, my most recent sailing trip elapsed just over 3 and a half weeks.

As one might imagine, all of this time spent with my grandparents over the time span of 14 years has given me a particularly strong relationship with them not only as family, but as friends and as fellow adventurers. My relationship with my grandparents has grown on the boat through conversation, social interactions, helping each other with difficult tasks, learning together, making each other’s days and dealing with it even if one person or another may not like it, and much more.

Make Each Other’s Day

One example that shows how our relationship grew is when we sailed in the Apostle Islands with a lot of hiking destinations. I didn’t think that hiking was particularly interesting, so I didn’t want to go hiking. However, there was a free tour for one of the lighthouses going on and grandma really wanted to take the tour of the lighthouse (which involved a hike to the lighthouse, taking the tour, and then hiking back to the beach where our dinghy was). I was young, so I wasn’t very subtle with my dislike of the idea, so I sat down with grandma and grandpa and we had a talk. They explained that sometimes it’s best to do something that I may not like in order to make someone else’s day. I reluctantly complied, but looking back on that story I now realize that I was taught a very important lesson.

Understanding what the people close to you want and knowing when it’s okay to do things one isn’t fond of is an important skill and I have my grandparents to thank for showing me that concept in action. My respect for them knows no bounds.

Benefit 2: Developing Boating Skills And Life Skills

Boating with my grandparents has not only strengthened my relationship with them, but it’s also helped me learn and practice important skills for both boating and for life.

Obviously, boating for so many years has helped me learn about boating things. I’ve learned how to operate a sailboat (and other types of boats such as the dinghy), I’ve learned about both lakes and the ocean, I’ve learned about marinas, harbors, and anchorages, I’ve learned about the VHF and its various uses, I’ve learned about weather, storms, and general boat safety, and many other things which I could go on about forever. The list is seemingly endless.

Life Skills

“There’s a lesson that I can learn from almost every single day spent on the boat for as long as I can remember.”

Travis Pehoski

Something that people may not expect is that I’ve gained so many valuable life skills from sailing. There’s a lesson that I can learn from almost every single day spent on the boat for as long as I can remember.

For example, there was one day in the Apostle Islands where almost nothing went our way. The day started out fine with clear skies and light winds. However, on our way to an island, the inflatable kayak that we were towing behind the dinghy took a nosedive. Since there aren’t any brakes on the wind and there wasn’t enough time to take the sails down, it was very difficult and costly to get the kayak’s bow out of the water. We changed our route in order to get into more protected waters so that Grandpa could get in the dinghy and deflate the kayak. That venture didn’t go as planned either, though, as Grandpa almost fell overboard twice!

The next mishap occurred when we tried rolling out the jib sail to take advantage of the strong winds and zoom over to our newly determined anchorage. However, our plans to “zoom over” to the anchorage were foiled because of a tangled line in the drum that held the line that we had to let out in order to let out the sail. Both grandparents needed to be on the bow of the boat to fix the problem with the jib, so they entrusted a 10 year old me with the wheel after briefly discussing what to do if something unfortunate happened. The amount of trust required for that maneuver shows that I had developed my boating skills enough to be trusted with a potentially threatening situation. Fixing the problem with the jib delayed our travels yet again, but after a long time pounding into the wind in choppy waves and heavy winds, we finally fixed the problem!

Immediately after that, the wind died and we failed to make any forward progress whatsoever, so we had to motor the whole way instead of sailing which cost us even more time. On top of all this, our dinner was crunchy (the main ingredient was rice) and took forever to make because we were low on fuel for the stove and because of the choppy conditions.

Mishaps On A Boat

Mishaps are a given while living aboard a sailboat, but even though facing all of those problems made our day frustrating and disappointing, those types of experiences helped me learn the valuable skills of flexibility and looking for the positives in any and every situation. Because my grandparents always stayed calm and adjusted to the situation, mishaps also gave me confidence in my abilities and trust in my grandparents. Additionally, I got some simple but very special motto’s out of the not-so-great days that we had on the boat.

Motto’s For Boating and For Life

Benefit 3: Joy

Boating has played a significant role in strengthening my relationship with my grandparents and helping me develop valuable skills, but the upside of staying on the boat with my grandparents doesn’t stop there. One thing that I’ll always remember about life on the boat is the sheer joy that it has brought to my life. There are things in life that always make me happy or that always get me excited. Sailing with my grandparents has always been and always will be one of those things.

The Big Things

There are so many wonderful and awe inspiring things that I’ve been fortunate enough to experience over my years of sailing. I’ve been to remote islands that people can only reach by boat or seaplane, I’ve explored sea caves and forests, I’ve seen many historic lighthouses and other impressive landmarks, I’ve seen more unique and amazing boats and water vehicles that I can count, and I’ve seen an abundance of beautiful wildlife and scenery! All these things are truly amazing, but there are also little things.

The Little Things

The little things like skipping rocks, drawing, creating, swimming, doing water activities, cooking, and simply spending time with the people onboard and people I’ve met during sailing trips, they all spark joy in my heart. For that, I will forever be grateful.

Sailing With Grandparents

In summary, sailing with my grandparents over the summer has strengthened my relationship with them, it’s helped me learn and develop skills for both boating and for life, and it’s provided me with a staggering amount of awesome and joyful experiences. Sailing with my grandparents is an amazing privilege that I’m proud of and thankful to have experienced and one I hope to continue in the future.

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