By gloria stravelli
Staff Writer
Tom Vought, an instructor at the Monmouth Boat Club in Red Bank, sits in one of the boats he uses to teach adults the basics of sailing.
The sailing lesson started out on a tranquil Navesink River, but the idyllic cruise ended abruptly when a squall blew in.
"A line squall came in from across the river, a big gust of wind. I had my eye on it and was trying to get my student back to the club," recalled Tom Vought, revered sailing instructor for the Monmouth Boat Club in Red Bank.
"I turned, and all of a sudden I felt the wind begin to escalate. So I took over," he said. "We were headed in when all of a sudden I felt the boat start to plane and pick up. The wind came through at 40-45 mph. We were really moving.
"The way you stop a sailboat with no brakes is you turn it around and point it into the wind," he continued. "I came in between the floats and just spun the boat so I could jump off and make fast.
"My student said, ‘Hey, that was fun. Let’s do it again.’ I said, ‘Nope.’ "
Vought is the sailing instructor for adults at the Monmouth Boat Club, which was founded in 1879, making it one of the oldest boat clubs in the United States. The clubhouse, with its three tiers of porches, is listed on the State and National Register of Historic Sites.
The Aberdeen resident uses a Lightning, a small, maneuverable sailboat to teach adults the basics of sailing on the North Shrewsbury and Navesink rivers where, on an ideal day, an easterly wind blows just 10 mph.
Students sign up for an eight-hour block of lessons which Vought generally schedules in four, two-hour sessions to spread the risk of encountering inclement weather.
"In eight hours they attain a basic operating proficiency," he said. "If a student pays attention, reads the book and watches the video, they’ll be able to get around on a small sailboat."
The final lesson is a mini-cruise during which Vought tests students’ proficiency at maneuvers like jibing, tacking and hauling up the sail.
Vought teaches seven days a week beginning around mid-May until mid-October, the last month he deems to be "the best time of the year."
"All the summer traffic is gone, the jet skis, water skis and powerboats," he explained, "and the whole north shore of the river is in autumn colors. You get a beautiful day, and it’s absolutely gorgeous."
A retired advertising executive, Vought grew up in a sailing family.
"I sailed from the time I was 7 or 8 years old," he said. "My mom’s family was from Assonet, Massachusetts, and they had bayfront property. My grandfather’s boat was the fastest in the bay, a beat-up Silver Cup, a big old sailboat."
When Vought moved his young family to Monmouth County from Queens, N.Y., in 1963, he looked around for a place to put in his Sunfish and found it at a marina in Sayreville.
Then he bought the Flying Dutchman, "a 20-foot, skinned-out race machine," he said. "It was an Olympic grade, two-man sailboat, arguably the fastest two-man boat going. It was a real breakthrough in design that got me into races," said Vought, who campaigned the Flying Dutchman for 10 years.
In need of a permanent dock for the Dutchman, which he couldn’t put in by himself, Vought found what he needed at the Monmouth Boat Club.
"I looked around and said, ‘People have a lifestyle like this within one hour of Manhattan?’ It’s God’s Green Acre down here. We found each other."
Vought was a weekend sailor while he commuted to his job in Manhattan, and after retiring in 1982, he began "paying back" by teaching sailing, he said.
"The junior program was such a success some adult members said they wanted to learn more, but the club didn’t want to use junior instructors," he explained. "One day somebody asked me and I said, "Sure, I’ll teach.’ I taught the students and the students taught me. If you don’t, you’re done.
"They taught me how to present it so they can absorb it," he continued. "I know the elements; it’s a question of making the information transfer — that’s the major thing," explained Vought, whose oldest student was a 70-year-old novice.
According to Vought, his students’ biggest challenge is learning about the wind and weather.
"People come to me," he said, "they are box people. They live in a box, work in a box, go to work in a box on wheels, park in a garage that’s a box, take an elevator to a box that’s their cubicle.
"You say wind to them, and all of a sudden, they go out there, and everything they do is affected by it," he explained. "It’s a complete mental readjustment, and it’s always slightly different every day. That’s why sailing is a lifelong sport.
"People have to learn about the wind because in a sailboat everything we do is dependent upon the wind: the direction from which it comes, the velocity, the fact that the source of the wind shifts."
Most students have to overcome the notion that setting a course is akin to steering an auto, he noted.
"Most people are accustomed to a car — it goes where you point it. In a sailboat, that’s not necessarily so," he said. "Also, we live in a circle out there. A sailboat will go in a circle anywhere you point it except one-fourth of the circle, a 90-degree segment, the center of which is the source of the wind — the ‘dead zone.’ If you stick the nose of the boat into the dead zone, the sails don’t work.
"This is where the ‘driving my car syndrome’ is a problem," added Vought. " ‘I’ll point it where I want to go and it will go there’ doesn’t work and that’s what they have to learn. They have to retrain themselves.
"It takes a while to begin to be able to repeat it under varying circumstances," he observed. "I just finished a student. The last lesson he was absolutely horrible. Today he had everything down; it’s a learning curve.
"This is why I enjoy it. Their learning curves all vary and I have to vary my style to be in sync with them so in eight hours they have some ability to control the boat.
"You can sail for your whole life and you’re always learning. There’s always something to learn; the water is different, the wind is different," he noted.
"Sailing is the wind playing games with you and you’re playing games with the wind," Vought added. "For whatever is dished out to you, you’re trying to get the most available to you. It’s an endlessly fascinating pastime."