Taking to the

Wind

Arizoⁱn^{n t}a^he Desert

by Jake Geller

Jake Geller, president of
the Arizona State University
Sailing Club, puts a 16-foot
boat through its paces on
Tempe Town Lake.
Photos by Bill Norman

It’s mid-February. The temperature is 70 degrees, and 20 sailboats are jockeying for position on Tempe Town Lake, just outside Phoenix. In two minutes the race will begin.

I’m sitting in a borrowed, specially adapted sailboat, the 16-foot Martin 16, which allows people with disabilities to compete equally with able-bodied competitors. I can control the boat with a joystick or a puff of my breath. A 300-pound lead keel

hanging several feet below the hull makes the boat nearly impossible to tip over.

Sailing isn’t something you envision a person with a neuromuscular disease doing. And the middle of the Arizona desert isn’t the first place that comes to mind when you think of sailing.

Yet on this glorious February afternoon, Stephen Hook and I are preparing for our first race on this man-made desert lake surrounded by two bustling freeways and giant T-cranes constructing condos and office buildings.