Among Modern Sailing club members, William Le was our most frequent charterer of 2021. It's obvious from his course and charter history that he's fallen in love with sailing. You might be surprised to learn that William began sailing only last September 2020. He writes:
"I'm fortunate enough to have a view of the bay from my house. Combined with the COVID shelter-in-place, I really noticed all the sailboats and yearned to be free like all the people down there. It also seemed like a safe-ish activity. Anyway, I signed up for lessons at MSC and was fortunate enough to get Stan Lander as my instructor. My partner and I fell in love with it."
William says he will never forget that moment when Stan turned the engine off and gave the ASA 101 students a heads-up that the boat would lean. "We did NOT know it was going to do that, but loved it!"
Partner Krysta Yang has been on this entire journey (including every charter) with William. "She's actually at the helm more often than me," he tells us.
Seasickness has been the biggest obstacle to William's enjoyment of sailing, but he has taken some pride in learning to "feel" and move with the boat. While progressing through ASA 103 and 104, he chartered often to keep the learning going.
Of his experience at Modern Sailing, William writes, "I really appreciated how I learned things the 'proper' way even though it scared the living daylights out of me when we were learning about it. I didn't really appreciate it until after our first charter and things weren't as 'bad' as what MSC prepared us to do."
After gaining a lot of valuable experience and confidence sailing around San Francisco Bay, bigger dreams are beginning to form in William's mind. In the future, he would like to do a major ocean crossing and "circumnavigation isn't off the table, either!"
As one of our 2021 Three Flag Commodores, William receives a Modern Sailing logo jacket. As the indispensible partner to our 2021 Top Charterer, Krysta will receive a logo jacket from us. Thank you, William and Krysta, for sailing with us! We look forward to following your continued sailing adventures.
