The Birth of Community Boating in Connecticut: A Story of Horror, Hope, Love, Loss and Futility or My Life as an Urban Pioneer

I was going to do a post this week about an article I read in the Westerly Sun about how private property owners are lobbying legislators to bolster spending on waterfront infrastructure that will protect their private property interests in lieu of re-zoning hurricane flood zones in the wake of Sandy. It irritates me to no end that State officials would rather pony up tax dollars to make sure their wealthy constituents are protected than invest in the youth of this State by creating a school ship for at-risk youth.

 “Our highest taxpayers are obviously people along the water,” said Joseph Mazza, Guilford’s first selectman. “One could say you’d be eroding the future tax base.”

Choking back a mixture of anger and disgust, I blew my top knowing that I am going broke trying to open the waters of Connecticut to all while they are spending billions maintaining the status quo of private property owners over public interest all in the name of funding bureaucratic salaries.

But rather than continue my political rants of late, I thought it would be bit more illuminating to tell you why I get so pissed about things like this. Read on!

Chapter 1

Boating and Me

When I was a kid, my Dad left for the first time when I was three. Prior to that I don't remember much, but what I do remember involves throwing up in a bucket of fish blood while bouncing off the waves in a 17' MFG. Despite being splashed in the face with bunker blood and recycling a hot chocolate and chocolate glazed donut into a bait bucket at 25 knots, I was hooked on boating. It was my birth right and in my blood.

Previous generations of Germans and Pumphreys plied the waves in power craft from Bridgeport to Balitmore and I knew from the early days of life that my future lay with boating. Not sailing, but boating.

Unfortunately, when my Dad hit the road, he took boating with him. When my parents split for the last time in 1982, they sold the MFG and my Dad, a less than attentive father from there on in, made the promise every spring that we would get a center console together and go bluefishing. Every fall that promise fell away with the leaves of autumn.

Little me with a pair of snapper blues-
We had this camper for
about the same time we had the boat.
 When Dad left.
 so did boating

It wasnt until I was 12 or 13 that I learned of the Sea Scouts. A Capt Jim Zsiga approached my buddy Dan at the Birdseye Boat Ramp one day and Dan shanghaied me into being his wing man for a meeting of "BoyScouts on the water" on Monday nights all fall. I had little interest in sailing but needed to build my college resume. Dan had even less interest in sailing but was sweet on some young lady that I cant really remember and needed a wingman so I stuck with it.

Sometime in October, when we were bringing our Pearson 30 back up the Housatonic River, Enya was blaring on the radio and the fall sunset was arching through the condos across the waves. I was at the helm, not knowing what the hell I was doing but loving every minute of it. I was hooked.

Between freshman year, the calm wise advice of Capt Jim and the military bearing of a latent Marine in my father, I settled my brain on becoming a US Coasty. And so it was in July 1994 I entered the US Coast Guard Academy certain I would make admiral by age 25.

It didn't quite take. A short year later, I was doubled over in pain while being prepped for exploratory colon surgery. It didn't make sense to continue given the  prognosis of the military staff doctors and the fact that an otherwise healthy boy was going to be forced to wear a colostomy bag at age 18 if they had their way. Much to the dismay of my Dad, I quit my academy appointment and decided to head to normal college.

4/c German- Me and USCG have
 always been two ships passing
 in the night until I realized it wasn't
the service I loved but the water

While I waited normal college to begin that Fall at UCONN Storrs, I realized it wasn't the Coast Guard I loved, it was the water. And as my Mom nursed me back to health in preparation for drunken debauchery at UCONN, she saw my frustration and did one of the nicest/meanest things a Mom could do. She bought me my first boat.

It was a 17' lofland picnic we called "Sweet Pea"- a little British daysailer that was crispy from years of baking under the hot sun in a Guilford Boat Yard. The gel coat had crazed beyond repair and it had no motor, but a sail and song was all I needed. With fear and trepidation I began the costly lessons of being a boat owner.  My man Dan came back to town one summer afternoon, saw the P.O.S. boat sitting in my drive way and the two of us came together like thieves painting, sanding and prepping the motor for a splash down the Housatonic River. To pay the bills I drove a launch at Housatonic Boat Club, so while I was spending the day overlooking the mighty salt marsh at HBC, Dan was back in my driveway prepping the boat to go to sea. It was great.

The Sweet Pea, Me and My Best Buddy Dan.
Note the drying motor cover on the ladder and the Working
Man's yacht on the left.
We affectionately called this dock "Section 8"

And then on a fateful day in August, we were finally done. We loaded the boat on a trailer I borrowed from a guy at the boat club and towed the 17' dreadnought down to the boat ramp to launch. That is when the nightmare began. We learned quickly that the motor was too small to make way against the currents of the river and that you never want the first slip next to Bonds Dock at the worst boat yard in Connecticut. We learned you need to read a chart when crossing Short Beach because if you dont, you will hear the quiet hiss and sudden stop on the sand bar. And we learned boats cost lots of money, from the fees to use the ramp to the $25 drain plug you drop in the water at least once a year. But mostly we learned boats are fun in theory, but work in reality.

The Sundance (AKA The Freeboat) My one word of advice to the world,
there is no such thing as a free boat

That lead to me a series of other mistakes- the 26' Oday that I was  told was FREE (HAHAHA) only to find there is no such thing  as a free boat. The 17' Aquasport that was rotten from stem to stern but I didnt know because no one told me to look at the split transom and the half-ass repair my "friend" convinced me would hold 100 years. And then came the sailing instructor career I thought would be my savior after I realized a real job was just no fun.

Given my half-baked understanding of sailing from drunken sails on Coventry Lake at UCONN and  12 weeks of big boat racing at USCGA, I thought I was hot stuff in a sail boat. So hot that I took a job managing the fleet at Longshore Sailing School. I knew how to fix boats alright, but I had little clue how to sail them properly. That was when I learned the difference between boating and sailing.

You might recognize this girl. The Chumbucket was the
center console my Dad never managed to get when
he was alive.  I think he would be proud of what I did with CCB
even if he could never understand why I did it. 

Boating is the act of getting in a vessel and going purposefully in one direction on the surface of the world's seas. Sailing is the act of  defecating money quickly, while going very slowly all  the while pretending you can command the weather. Both have a value I suppose, but one is a soulful spiritual journey while the other is a status symbol for those who have more than others and want you to know it. You can decide which is which.

Its not that I dont like sailing, its just that its elitest. From the expense, to the mystery to the ascot-wearing martini-sucking Mr Howls, I hate everything about it. But boating, I love with all my heart.

Whether your powered by weather, fuel or paddle, adventuring on the waves is a thing worth doing. Those that would have you believe it is for The Robin Leach set obviously dont do it right because if done properly, it's a life-changing experience for the ages where W-2's, parents or the kind of car you drive is irrelevant. All that matters is that you a have a solid hull beneath you and a way to go purposely forward. Your boat can be
6 feet long or 600 feet long, with masts or motors, ride on top, between or under the waves and it's a thing of beauty getting from one place to another.

239 LB BIG EYE TUNA Captured and killed off
Baltimore-Wasshington Canyon. This behemoth could have held
 the MD State Record if any of us were selfish about the credit,
but we all shared the glory and the meat.
I will never eat fresh tuna again

I learned that at Long Shore where I saw nannies dropping off kids who could care less about boating and were only there because Mommy had a Mani-Pedi appointment. I saw fat beer swilling old men with pristine white thighs roll on and off the trampolines of hoby-cats making crude sexual jokes to his 20 something trophy girlfriend and the 15 year old  female boat dispatcher- ( I knew they were girl friends because Husbands and wives dont joke on boats, they yell at each other). And I learned that boating is there for everybody in Westport, but a 30 minute drive to the other side of the world for kids from Bridgeport.

That is when I developed my maladjusted view of the wealthy and boating. And that is when Connecticut Community Boating was born.

Chapter 2 

The Birth of Community Boating

This is getting long so I thought I would break it up into parts- This is the part is where Community Boating was born. 

Oh no- I didn't invent Community Boating. It was invented in the 1930s in Boston. But it was my days in Beantown where I learned of Community Boating and how much it pissed me off that Connecticut didn't have it.

While in Boston, I got to play at Courageous Sailing in Charlestown. I also got to walk the docks of Rowe's Wharf, worked at the New England Aquarium and otherwise got to devote 100% of my time to video, learning and science- and I loved it. I loved Boston and everything about it. But I couldn't afford it because everybody loves Boston ( well except Yankees fans and even they like to go drinking at the Black Rose and walk Faneuil Hall).

The Black Rose, a tourist trap that
can not  and should not be avoided in the Hub

Boston is a town where ideas flourish, culture thrives and water is in the blood. An old sailing town of yesteryear mixed with a progressive forward-thinking educated population of youthful souls, some that are young and some that are young at heart. And they even have the Redsox- Im in love.

Boston had to be the place where community boating was born because only there did they have the heritage of a sailing past mixed with the forward thinkers who came up with the T.  They had to be the ones to invent a way for people to share boats in common so that everyone got the chance to go boating with out the cost of owning a boat. And that's really all community boating is- a shared resource to access the water. Only in Connecticut would we say "Oh "community boating": that must be for kids only right?" Why should it be?

Don't adults deserve to breath fresh air? Don't they deserve to harness the wind, hit the waves and go boating without having to mortgage the house? Well in Boston I learned that community boating isnt just for kids. And I learned that there are places where everyone is welcome regardless of who your Daddy is or what you drive. And I learned that Boston is too expensive for a latch-key kid from Stratford.

On the verge of bankruptcy, I came back to Connecticut- more like limped back. I took a job running Battleship Cove Community Boating in Fall River when I left Boston. I lived in Boston and worked in Fall River for a time, then moved to Fall River then back to CT. In the transit I fell in love, got a broken heart and wracked up a huge credit card bill. When I got back to Connecticut, I was spinning from the loss of my love- the town and the girl. And so I got whatever job I could, and regrouped.

Fairfield County was the only place I could find a job that could cover my credit card bill and after a few stutter steps at "real jobs" I landed what I thought would be the coup de gras  for my life. Get the job, get married, have kids and retire. At 29 I was ready to curl up my toes and die because that's what you do in Connecticut when you're no longer in school and have to join the real world as a worker bee. Or so I thought.

I was hired on as the Adult Sailing Director at Pequot Yacht Club. I know I bad mouth yacht clubs a lot, but really there are some very decent people at PYC. Its just the idea that I hate. That people can say this is ours  and you cant come here. Worse still, as an employee of a yacht club, there are some that think just because they spend a small fortune every year for membership they can treat you like furniture. But since my life was over, I thought, "I cant beat them, why not join them". And they paid OK too.

The problem with a paycheck is you are willing to forget certain things to keep getting it. For instance, I forgot how much I liked teaching at-risk kids. For $40K a year, I was willing to watch the kids of PYC and their instructors and say nothing. I couldn't say anything about the fact that the kids didn't know how to do anything on the water beside go in circles really fast. I couldn't say anything about the fact that these kids were being forced to sail when so many others would never get the chance. And I couldn't say anything about the pony rides we gave to black kids from Bridgeport under the ruse "Sailing with Neighbors".

The kids of Bridgeport lived less than 5 minutes from the water but had to be bussed to Southport to be chaffeured around three buoys by old men who took the helm the whole time and taught them nothing. These kids got one lesson from their visits to Southport- this is ours, you can't have it and boy aren't we better because of it.  But I got a paycheck from it, so I couldn't say boo about my displeasure.

That is until I took all I could take and couldn't take no more. It was one thing to tell me to keep my mouth shut about the injustices I saw all around me. It was a whole other thing to expect me suffer silence and do the thankless task of cleaning an attic. Well that was my thinking that day anyway- the day CCB was founded.

Pequot Yacht Club- Friend of Foe?
After a half dozen years, it's a split decision for me.

I was told to do some demolition in the senior club house on a rainy day in March. I was told to do that because at the time, all I was doing was wasting time playing on the internet and my boss at the time, (now a very good friend of mine who is great fan of CCB), wanted me to earn my paycheck instead of sit on it. At the time I was pissed about it, now I think he was probably right.

What he didn't know that was while I was wasting time on the internet, I was researching how to start my own business. I knew I could teach sailing anywhere and hated working at the Yacht Club, why couldn't I start my own business? And so I sent an email and made an appointment the next day to consult with SCORE of Norwalk. It was just  a matter of timing that  I was making the appointment to meet the folks in Norwalk when my Boss started yelling at me to get to work in the attic.

For those of you that dont know me, when you yell at me, I yell back. And there a lot of times you don't even have to yell at me, to get me to yell back at you. But when he dropped the first F-bomb, I unloaded every four letter word combination with adjectives I could muster. I think paint peeled when the two of us squared off from the heat of our words and the singe marks can still be seen on the part of the door in his office that didn't get repainted.  We're friends now, but that day was one for remembering, because not only did I say things I hope to never say again to a grown man, that was the day CCB started.

When I walked into SCORE that next day, I was still seething from the argument the day before. I was also quite scared. Earlier that month I had bought my first house and the largest boat I ever owned. In three short minutes, I committed financial suicide quitting my job in a spectacular fashion complete with an assault of swears that would make the saltiest sailor blush. When Cortez reached the new world, he burned his ships so that his crew would have no choice but to make things work out for themselves or die. I subscribe to similar philosophy I guess, cause what I said and how I said it, I was never going back and that paycheck was never coming again.

I sat down with a couple of very wise old men, Elliot Baritz and Bob Hurwich. Both had more years in business management then I was alive and they had one mission, wrangle this wild-eyed sailor into a business man and help him develop a plan. The first part of the mission they failed at miserably, but still try to this day to accomplish. The second part was more important then they could possibly imagine.

"Gentlemen," I said "Im Chris German and I want to start a community boating program here in Connecticut". Elliot, the wise old sage that he was, began by explaining that I would need to create a business plan and that in six weeks we could start working up a plan to find the funding. I think I laughed at him when I said, "No sir, you dont get it. I NEED to start a community boating program today because I just quit my job". Then he and Bob laughed and laughed. I thought they'd never stop laughing. But when they finally started to breath again, I explained that I had just quit my job and was fully serious about opening Long Island Sound to everyone.

Me during the early days of CCB
sitting on a hunter in the landfill.
More next week about My life in the landfill
as an urban pioneer

And that day, in 2007, after the worst argument I have ever had with a friend. After Boston, Longshore, UCONN, The Coast Guard and a bucket full of fish guts, I decided I would make sure everyone got a chance to go boating regardless of who they were, where they lived or how much money they had in their pocket. I pledged then and there to do it whether or not it killed me, to make it my life's effort to ensure that no child, whether young or young at heart, was stranded, standing on a beach looking out, with no way to get there.


P.S. I have decided I will write a book- and this was the start. Next week, if I feel like it, I plan to post the next chapters, My Life in the Landfill. A story about being an urban pioneer in one of the most disgusting pieces of waterfront in the world. Stay tuned cause it's gonna be good.