If you’ve ever spotted, on Lake Mendota, a yellow and orange boat with a little sail and one or two people in it, you’ve seen what’s called a Tech dinghy. These sailboats are typically used for training, and have been around in one form or another since the 1930s.
This summer, the Hoofers Sailing Club were able to restore a few of their Techs to their former glory–new paint, new rigging–thanks in part to the generosity of Joe Silverberg. Joe donated money to Hoofers for the Techs on a couple conditions: that he could name the boat and be the first one to sail it.
This past Sunday, Joe got his wish. And the JoJee VII set sail with Joe at the helm.
Joe is 93, and has lived in Madison most of his life. He’s been sailing since he was 13. 80 years. For much of that time, he’s been an active member of the Hoofers sailing club. He started there in 1947. And though he took a break in the middle to raise a family and run a temp agency in Madison, he returned in the 1990s as an instructor.
Dan Patterson manages the Hoofers fleet of Techs. He did most of the restoration work himself. But remembers being in Joe’s introductory sailing class, called “Ground School.”
“So, when I had my Ground School, I had it with my daughter. And we’re sitting there waiting. And all of a sudden this older gentleman walks in, kind of slow. And I said ‘is this old guy gonna learn how to sail?’ Well it turns out Joe was the instructor. Now I asked Joe a question, I said ‘how do you get on those big keelboats? ‘Cause that’s really what I’d like to sail.’ And Joe said ‘Look. Anybody can learn how to sail one of those things. You spend a summer sailing a tech, and you’re really gonna learn how to sail.’”
“The big boats,” Joe says, “actually sail themselves.”
It seemed that just about everyone we saw on the dock had had Joe as a teacher for ground school. But in all that time, Joe says, not much has changed about the Hoofers Sailing Club: “This last year, it’s gotten raunchier.”
I asked Joe what kept him coming back to sailing after all these years…”The wind.”
So where does the name JoJee come from? “It comes from,” says Joe, “I am Joe, and my wife of 68 years was Jeanne. And all of our boats, after we got married, were named JoJee. This is the seventh one.” Though Sunday’s light breeze wasn’t ideal for sailing–an experienced sailor, Joe took a paddle just in case–he managed to make it out past picnic point, and make it back in one piece.
To anyone interested in taking the JoJee or any other sailboat out on Lake Mendota, Joe had this to say: “Well, if you live in Madison, and you don’t take advantage of Mendota and the Hoofers Sailing Club, you are, in my humble opinion, N-U-T-Z.”
