All You Have to Be Is Curious
Catching the Wind with the Nevada Yacht Club
By Victoria Koelkebeck
This article is told from the perspective of one day aboard the Kahlua, but to capture the spirit of the Nevada Yacht Club, I was permitted to attend multiple sailing events, an exclusive club meeting where I was able to speak with members about the club’s history, and several one-on-one interviews with members to talk about their individual experiences with sailing and musings about what the future holds for this organization.
The Winsornaut sailing past the sunset on Lake Mead.
Just 30 miles outside the neon canopy of Las Vegas the vast grandeur of Lake Mead is unveiled, the largest reservoir by volume and what my East Coast friends describe as laughing in the face of God. The engineered lake defies the natural order and sustains Las Vegas and neighboring regions.
Each year, temperatures climb to triple digits and the bathtub ring circling the lake echoes stressful conversations about how to use our most precious resource in the west — water. While we furrow our brows and stress about how to manage this reservoir, battling brutal heat and higher population densities — there is still time — to have some fun.
That’s how I find myself following around the Nevada Yacht Club (NYC) to explore the sport of sailing on a man-made lake in the desert. I previously thought that when I left Maryland and moved to a land-locked state in the desert, sailing would be a distant memory. When I discover the NYC at Lake Mead, it redefines, for me, what it means to sail.
Sailing no longer means freezing my ass off in the Atlantic Ocean, avoiding sharks and strugging to pull our fleet's FJ’s back up after capsizing drills. Before my yacht club adventure, I was ready to throw my body starboard and port, feeling the rope burn my palms as a seasoned skipper yelled commands at me over the howling wind. Prepared with my sunshirt, a camera, 60 ounces of water, and two Uncrustables, I boarded Kahlua — a 1982 Catalina 30 for a 12-hour sailing journey to learn more about the club.
Kahlua belongs to the youngest skipper in the NYC, Gray Walsh, and is 16 years older than him. The crew consists of Gray, myself and three guests piled into the yacht. While we brace to exit the Lake Mead Marina, Gray studies the motor in the cabin and instructs me to flip a switch and turn the key.
Turning the key is supposed to start the motor, but Kahlua refuses to respond. We try to turn the ignition several times — nothing happens.
Gray doesn’t look surprised. Instead, he begins the process to do what the boat was intended for — using the wind to propel the yacht into motion. We struggle to maneuver the boat out of its slip, or marina parking spot — worrying that we might collide into neighboring vessels. Gray finds a friendly motor boat captain to tow us out of the marina and into the heart of the lake.
As soon as we sail past “the tires,” which is a barrier of tires that separates the cruising area of the lake from the wake-free marina, we catch the wind and begin a zig-zag journey to the east side of the lake. The whole vibe of the crew shifts from uneasy to blissful. Gray turns on his giant bluetooth speaker and plays a remix from Sofi Tukker “I’ve Got Sunshine” originally by The Tempatations. We shed our shirts and apply several layers of sunscreen. We tack every now and then to keep the sails from “luffing,” or collapsing, from lack of wind and stop to meet up with more friends from the club.
I hold on to the sides of Kahlua and snap photos of the yachts sailing under puffy white clouds. When we stop, we cool ourselves off in the lake and hold on tight to a line connecting us to the boat.
Although Gray has only been sailing for about nine months, it’s been a lifelong dream of his to sail. He tells me he had some money set aside that he intended to use for an engagement ring, but ended up buying a boat instead. I say boat and not the Kahlua because Gray actually purchased two other sailboats prior to the Kahlua — an act earned him an award for “Diving into the Deep End” as the guy who just showed up one day and bought a bunch of boats, he says.
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Gray Walsh steering the Kahlua – unbothered by the boat’s motor failure.
The NYC was established in 1963, one year before the Lake Mead Recreation Area was incorporated as a National Park. According to member Jimmy Rosaschi, the club started as a “paper club,” meaning that it didn’t have a facility or clubhouse. It’s been 61 years and the club still doesn’t have a place to call their own, but it doesn’t seem to matter as the club has grown to 150 members.
Jimmy tells me in the early days, the people who bought boats to take out on the lake were high-end doctors and lawyers. Although the boat crews have changed — now you’ll find educators, construction managers, and folks with more varied careers. But many of the original vessels purchased in 1960-1990 are still cruising the lake during the day and tucked neatly into the marina at night.
“There’s no [sailboat] dealers in Vegas, if you’re really into sailing you have to go to Cali to get yours,” Jimmy says. “I mean when was the last time you saw a brand new boat? Jimmy asks fellow club member, Steve Smith. Steve’s face goes blank. He can’t remember.
“Sailors are cheap,” NYC member Joyce Smith adds to the conversation, smiling.
I laugh, “Aren’t we all?”
And so the incestuous boat trading culture endures. The yachts change owners — but rarely locations. With the proper maintenance and care, the vessels survive by their owners breathing new life into them.
After the club's inception, membership took a dive in the early nineties, Jimmy tells me. To increase membership in the early aughts, he and other members of NYC put together a sailing class for A, B and C fleets at the community center at Paradise Park. They took out a ½ inch thick ad in the local newspaper that read: $25 LEARN TO SAIL, with information about the upcoming class.
“We had about 40 people show up — and that was just unbelievable,” Jimmy says. “We were so surprised, we didn’t have enough books.”
Just one week after the class, the members of the NYC volunteered to let sailing students use their boats to put their newfound knowledge into practice.
John D’Acunto, who sits to the left of me during this conversation, was one of those students who saw the ad in the paper, attended class, and has been a member of the NYC since 2001. John, or “Johnny,” grew to love the club and eventually became a chairman for a committee that held an annual regatta to raise money to fight leukemia in 2005.
The first years of the Luekemia Cup Regatta were spent trying to figure out how to spend less overhead and raise more for the Leukemia Society, Johnny tells me. When they figured out how to fundraise, their most successful regatta brought in about $78K to help those battling cancer.
“It was alot of money, and it was a good time — for a good cause,” Johnny says. “Raising money like that through sailing — I mean this is Las Vegas, people think of golf, tennis [fundraisers] — they don’t think about sailing. They don’t even know we have a yacht club or a lake.”
Since the Luekemia Cup Regatta, the NYC has continued to conduct philanthropic community initiatives. In addition to being environmental stewards of Castle Cove and conducting regular clean-ups, most recently, in September 2023, they worked with St. Jude’s to take children who are living with foster families out on the water with their siblings. Many of these children live in separate foster homes and St. Jude’s orchestrates events once a month to reunite those siblings to do something fun, Travis Schwieder, the commodore of NYC, explains.
“It was fantastic. I think the kids really enjoyed it,” Travis says. “I can almost guarantee that none of them had ever been on a sailboat before and a lot of them hadn’t been on any kind of boat before. So they were very apprehensive at first — they were nervous and uneasy — but by the end of it they were crawling all over the sailboats and just having a great time. They loved being down in the cabin. It was kind of like a little clubhouse for them.”
Travis plans on volunteering on behalf of the NYC for St Jude’s again. He said they already reached out and are planning to reunite foster siblings on Lake Mead when it cools down this year.
A day on the water is nothing if not a celebration.
Another group that NYC provides a safe and nurturing environment for is women through the Women In Sailing committee. Inspired by Nancy Cox, who passed from cancer about 20 years ago, the committee’s chair is Dina Meyer and co-chaired by Atigone Dudder. Since sailing seems to be a more male-dominated sport, Dina explains that their mission is simple.
“It’s not about how many women we have on the water, it’s about having the women we have [in the club] confident and comfortable on the water. Dina says. “At the helm, it can be very nerve wracking because you can do something wrong. However, our rule is as long as you don’t hit anything and you don’t fall off the boat — you’re good…and on this lake there’s not much to hit so even if you’re going in circles, you’re just going in circles — which is not the end of the world.”
And specifically when it comes to racing or getting from point A to point B, sometimes as women, we’re not as confident in our abilities, Dina says.
This sentiment is echoed by Joyce, who used to rely on “liquid courage,” but has taken the time to build her own skill set and courage so she could focus on doing instead of simply being a passenger in a sailboat.
Joycee enjoying the view from the bow.
“It took me a while to go back to the lake, because drinking and sailing — it was just what you do. We all did it — competitors did it, we all did it,” she explains. “I think it’s an age thing too, but when I did stop drinking and I got back into it I was much more confident sober than I was drinking.”
Steve, who is Joyce’s husband, agrees that since ditching the alcohol, she has become better than ever.
“Without the liquid courage, she has become an incredible sailor. She knows everything to do and when to do it. She works out three days a week so she has stronger muscles to be able to pull lines and do things that have to be done,” Steve says. “When she was in her liquid courage phase, she was afraid, and she wouldn’t take the wheel.”
Joyce and Steve attribute the decline in drinking for a lot of club members with the arrival of Travis as the new commodore — who has fostered an environment where the sailors have fun and have a drink or two, but drinking isn’t obnoxious and or in excess in club culture anymore.
Joyce reminds me that sailing can be objectively scary at first, but the boat will take care of its passengers. Unlike my college sailing experience in small, motorless FJ’s that will most certainly capsize and leave you flailing in the water, the vessels used by NYC have incredibly heavy keels, which is the structural beam that runs in the middle of the boat from bow to stern. Heavy keels ensure that even in violent weather, the boat can tip 90 degrees and still go right back up without a threat of capsizing.
“Something technical would have to go wrong. We’ve even broken a boom before and it never affected the boat sinking,” she says. “And even if you de-mast — it’s not going under”
So let’s say you have the courage, but not the boat? No problem.
“What’s great about the club is that you don’t have to have a boat, you don’t have to have any sailing experience — you just come in and be a part of it and they will welcome you,” Devon Gifford, a new NYC member says. “It doesn’t matter, they’ll get you out on the water as much or as little as you want.”
Devon joined the NYC because his partner, Jessica Jiang, sailed in college and wanted to attend a club meeting. By the summer, they joined the club. And by the holidays, they purchased a raffle ticket at the club Christmas Party. To their surprise, they won a 1963 yacht that they look forward to repairing and getting back on the water.
“All you have to be is curious and that’s where it starts,” Jessica says.
Member Joycie Bowers is another boat-less member. The first time I met her was at one of the club’s “Happy Hour Hangouts” where she explained she was worried about joining a yacht club. She said she was concerned they would be — she motions to push her nose to the sky, but they weren’t the kind of blue blazer club that scoffed at newcomers.
And she’s not wrong. The word “yacht,” to those who don’t know its literal meaning is “a medium sized sailboat equipped for cruising or racing,” picture a gigantic vessel where those aboard eat caviar and talk about hedge funds — or at least that’s what I thought. But I’ve probably watched Overboard too many times.
Joycie learned to sail first in Girl Scouts in 1967, but recently joined the club in September 2023 after taking their introductory class. Joyce shared that she found the NYC after her husband passed and was looking to make new friends and rekindle the old flame she felt for sailing.
“I took my first class in September and by January I had been on six different boats,” Joycie says. “It’s just relaxing,” she sighs. “I just take a deep breath and it’s just peaceful.”
Joycie reminds me that life is fleeting. She says, “If not now, when? You just have to go for it. It’s really given me a new outlet and even while learning to sail — you know my son-in-law recently passed and I was his caregiver and just having those times that I was going to go out and sail was just refreshing and rejuvenating. And now that he’s passed…I’m not sitting around.”
Beyond the community of the club, what continues to enable the NYC to stand the test of time is its dedication to hosting regattas, or races, club members say.
Other clubs that were focused solely on the social aspect of being on the water have since evaporated, Steve tells me. It's necessary to add another layer of value apart from cruising and community, so the club provides an opportunity to learn the skills required to race and become a masterful sailor.
Apart from practicing with the sailing club in college, I was never able to race in a regatta. So I talked to Steve about racing basics — things a new sailor would need to be onboard with prior to leaving the tires.
“The best thing to do is have fun doing it,” he says. “When it gets really really competitive ehhh, people get kind of crazy and it’s real friendly right now. I’m really pleased with the way things are at this point.”
But after having fun, the next thing to know in a race is that you need to get a good start. When you add the need for speed to sailing, the whole crew needs to exercise caution to avoid a collision — especially because as a racer, you get pretty close to the other boats, Steve says.
“In one of my first races years ago, I was just coming in from the shore and the way the wind was coming from the back of my boat — I was trying to fight it, and I was pulling on the tiller, and the wind was trying to push me in it’s own direction and I hit a friends boat. And that friend was a good friend and he said, ‘Don't worry about it, I have Duct-Tape, I can take care of this,’” he laughs.
He adds that the only way to get experience to learn to avoid issues like collisions is to go out on the water and practice.
Joycie agrees with this sentiment and says that if you can race on a lake with variable wind conditions, you can race anywhere. Lake Mead in particular comes with its own learning curve, something that Clay Ostrom, the fleet captain for the race committee, has spent his entire life studying.
Clay has been described by members of the NYC as the “heart of the club”. He started riding his bike from Henderson to Lake Mead as a kid and began studying how the wind works, earning him the title of “Wind Whisperer,” he says.
“On Saturday when I got my chores done, I could go to the desert, I could go to the lake — I could go wherever I wanted. We have free reign back then as kids,” he explains. “I started water-skiing at eight-years-old and fell in love with that so I used to ride my bicycle out to the marina with my water skis attached and tried to bum rides. And the guy who taught me how to water ski was buying a new boat and he sold me his [old] boat — and at the age of fourteen. I bought it with my paper route money.”
So in 1974, Clay began his journey with sailing by buying a boat for about $250. He explains it wasn’t necessarily a nice boat, it had been put through its paces, but it got the job done.
Preparing to set sail for the day. Photo courtesy of the Nevada Yacht Club.
To date, Clay has been involved with the NYC for 25 years and by taking on the role of Fleet Captain, has provided structure and guidance for races. This role consequently meant that he couldn’t race anymore, but it has enabled the club to be able to host regattas in varying lengths and in spectrums of wind.
What Clay provides that other Fleet Captains couldn’t offer is consistency. In the last 14 years, he’s only missed four races — which is a level of commitment no other captain can reasonably agree to, he says.
When a regatta is scheduled, Clay begins studying lake conditions about a week prior to the race. He uses his Wind Whisperer talents to anticipate what will happen on race day and adjusts the course accordingly. He has to take into account the weather, the direction of the wind, the types of boats participating in the race and thermals — or air movement due to temperature difference on land and water.
“You have to understand what Lake Mead is going to do,” he explains. “It’s a labor of love, in all actuality — it’s just part of my DNA. I just love being on the lake.”
The weather will affect what part of the lake the race will occur and how long the race will be. We talked about how he prepares and conducts a race for another 15 minutes, but in short, hosting a regatta on behalf of NYC is wildly complicated.
After determining what to expect with the weather, he has to set up buoys and flags to mark the course. And finally, he has to time the racers and implement something called “handicaps,” which is essentially adjusting race times based on the model of the boat to create a fair standard for sailors using older and newer vessels.
Because of his efforts to create consistent racing standards for NYC, Clay is one of the few, if not only, living sailors to have a spring and fall race named after him, the “The Ostrom’s Cup,” that does not have a memorial behind it, he says.
As the NYC’s members mature and welcome new members into the club, maybe one day there will be a new Fleet Captain to free Clay to race again. Maybe the NYC will partner with UNLV to create a student fleet. But for now, they use social media, learn to sail classes, and events called “Wet Wednesdays” to recruit new sailors to show them the club that I’ve been privileged to witness.
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On the Kahlua, the sun is starting to set and the heat finally released its hold on my soul. More boats from the NYC surround us as Gray uses his radio to tell them to circle the Kahlua for photo opportunities. Although Gray’s speaker died hours ago, “Free Bird” by Lynyrd Skynrd crackles through the boat's vintage speakers and the yacht parade begins — each dashing in front of the setting sun for their glamour shot.
Since the motor on Kahlua hasn’t worked all day, I feel comforted by the fleet of boats from the club. The Absolute is adorned with tinsel on the bow to celebrate Memorial Day weekend, its passengers striking a pose as my camera shutter clicks.
Absolute passengers striking a pose.
When the sun waves its final goodbye, retreating over the mountains, the stars come out. I’m dazed by the peace I felt on the lake, the hair-dryer wind nudging Kahlua closer to shore where we can smell the smokey perfume of a campfire on shore.
I ask Gray, “Can I sit on the bow?”
He replies, “Yes, just take a life-jacket and whistle. It’ll be easier to find you if you fall in that way.”
I haven’t planned on falling in, but then again, I guess no one does. I lie on the bow of the boat staring at stars — some shooting across the sky, as the boat rocks us closer to the marina.
When we are ready to go back to shore, Gray has me throw a tow-line to Steve who shepherded us back to the marina. When we make it into the slip, Travis appears like magic from the dark, and braces himself on the dock and cushions the blow of the boat grinding into the dock.
I would describe Travis as a pragmatic leader. Unlike my experiences with the ever bubbly Cruising Captain, Harlan Freedman, he does not seem thrilled to meet with me at Starboard Tack on Monday after my 12-hour day on the lake. But he shows up anyways and answers my questions with a level of honesty and vulnerability that I don’t expect from the commodore of the club.
“My joke is: For $100 a year (which is the membership fee for NYC), you get the privilege of letting strangers on your boat multiple times a year,” Travis laughs. “And that’s not a great sales pitch, right? So why? If somebody comes in off the street — whether they own their own boat or not, why should they join the Yacht Club?”
Jessica and Devin taking a dip in Lake Mead during a raft-up event. Photo courtesy of the Nevada Yacht Club.
Later on in the week, I sit with my one-eyed senior dog. She’s whining, wanting to be picked up and put on the lounge chair beside me. I scoop her up and place her next to me, petting her head and enjoying the cooler 85 degree weather.
When someone asks — looking at her greying face, I always say she’s 10-years-old despite the years passing. We present her with a steak every year for her birthday. Time marches forward, more white fur illimuniating around her one eye, and still we celebrate her 10th birthday — over and over again. I struggle to imagine how I will react and cope with her journey over the rainbow bridge; how I will grow and change without her.
In a weird way, I felt comfort at this moment, much like sitting on the bow that night on the Kahlua. I imagined that the NYC is Travis’ version of sitting with a senior dog, grappling with how to make the most of each day — how to take less and offer more to our community, and how he will help steward the club to last another 61 years.
The answer, I fear, is more complicated than I like to imagine. I hope that we see the star blanketed sky beyond the neon and know that there is value in learning to use the wind to propel us where we want to go — in life or otherwise. But at the same time, I hope all nonprofit entities deeply consider that question — what value do we bring? And for some it’s easier to answer, for others it’s more nuanced. I look forward to the day Travis can confidently answer.
But not until he’s wrestled with the unknown, the losses, the wins and the idea that in the end we become specks of sediment, slowly transforming into the shore on the lake, hoping to provide solid ground for sailors embarking on their journey for the day — giving way to where the winds may take them.
