Sailing is a Family Tradition in Curacao
Are sailors born or made? That’s a question that Curacao’s Cor van Aanholt and his wife, Marjolein, might answer, “both”. Their four children, Philipine (13), Ard (11), Just (9) and Odile (7), have certainly been on the water since they were born. But, a father who is a celebrity in the sport of sailing with titles such as Sunfish World Champion to his credit is the one who launched them.
“My grandfather had a summer house on a lake in Holland,” says Cor, describing his own start into sailing. “We’d go there for family vacations. My brothers and I learned to sail a Flit. It’s a two man boat that is 12-feet long with a wooden jib and main.”
It wasn’t long before the brothers went from cruising to racing to competing in local regattas, and then national championships where Cor won his first title at age 12. Their father, though he didn’t know how to sail, was a driving force and much enjoyed race organization. In fact, he passed away when Cor was age 18 while officiating at a sailing event. The year before, Cor had won Kiel Week in Germany sailing Lasers. In addition, he was a teenage business owner by this time, along with his brothers, of a sailing and windsurfing school on the same lake they all learned to sail. The year was 1976.
“Back then, you could be in the top with just active weekend sailing,” Cor says.
As the top Laser sailor in Holland, Cor was invited to sail in the Sunfish Worlds. “I saw the boat two days before the regatta and ended up placing 2nd,” he says. The next year, 1980, he won the Sunfish World Champion title.
Cor quit competitive sailing in 1982 and embarked on other aspects of the sport, including international judging, trying his hand at catamaran sailing by competing in the Dart Worlds with then new-wife, Marjolein, and ultimately moving to Curacao in 1994 where he found an active group of Sunfish racers. This spurred him back into competition, where in 1996 he placed 5th in the Sunfish Worlds, held that year in Boca Chica in the Dominican Republic. Cor’s last big competitive push was to represent the Netherlands at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. After this, his thoughts turned towards family sailing.
In 2001, Cor founded the Optimist Club of Curacao with two other parents.
“We started the Optimist Club to get the kids sailing, yes, but also because it was a family thing we could all do on a Sunday with friends,” Cor explains. “We’d have 60 to 70 kids at a time out sailing. It wouldn’t all be competitive. We’d do social things, too, like moonlight sails and treasure hunts.”
Today, the Club owns 15 real Optimists and 45 look-alikes for training, all based out of the yacht club in Spanish Waters. There are two training cycles, one in the Fall and one in the Spring. Kids move through a series of levels from basic bronze to advanced diamond where their sailing skills become honed. Over 250 kids have completed the program over the last four years, some of them aging out of Optimists and sailing Sunfish or windsurfing. To meet this next generation of demand, the Club has purchased a fleet of Splashes. These 12-foot single sail, single man boats are the fastest growing step up class from an Opti in Europe.
Instructors up until this point have been knowledgeable parents, college kids on traineeship from Holland and local teachers with a sailing background. The Club’s membership fee, which includes all activities, is $350 a year.
“We’ve reached a turning point this summer,” Cor says. “To take the program to the next level and for the kids to reach a higher level in international youth sailing means employing a professional coach. We need to decide this. As a father, it’s hard for me to coach, too. It should be someone else.”
Whether founder, coach or father – or all of these rolled into one – Cor van Aanholt and his family have put Optimist sailing on the map in Curacao and assured that kids not born into the sport have the opportunity to make themselves into sailors.
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