Schleswiger Schlei-Segel-Club

The Schleswiger Schlei-Segel-Club is the local sailing organization that gave Hermann’s sudden ambition to own a sailboat its first foothold—and later became the setting for the public afterlife of his failure on the water. In the account, the club is defined less by formal rules than by its harbor, coveted berths, sailing instruction, and close-knit community of Schleswig sailors, among whom one humiliating episode quickly became a story.

The Club and Hermann’s Sailing Ambition

Hermann joined the club before he had ever sailed and before he owned a boat. When a berth became available, he rented it at once, although it was only an empty gap between other boats. He stood with his family beside it, proudly displaying his membership card; over the weekend, dressed in his new sailing clothes, he sat in an armchair practicing knots with a piece of rope. The berth thus became a visible pledge of commitment before practical experience had tested the dream.

Hermann enrolled himself and the narrator’s mother for a sailing examination, and the two began a course. Their approaches differed: Hermann quizzed her on technical facts, while she preferred to concentrate on what the examination required. His first outing left him somewhat seasick and comfortable only while seated, but he did not abandon the plan. He missed several lessons because he was more absorbed in buying a boat than in attending instruction.

The Boat and the Examination

Hermann found an advertisement for the Sepia, a relatively inexpensive cabin dinghy described as easy to handle and, most decisively, uncapsizable and unsinkable. Only five boats of that type existed. He arranged for one to be brought from Cologne to Schleswig before he and the narrator’s mother had earned their sailing certificates. At the harbor, Hermann stood rigidly upright to welcome it; club members had never heard of a Sepia. The boat was named JoMaHe Sailing Yacht, using the first two letters of the names Joachim, Martin, and Hermann, and was christened with a small bottle that dented its plastic hull.

Two months later, Hermann passed the theoretical examination with no errors, while the narrator’s mother passed with four. The practical test took place in a strong wind of seven Beaufort. In yellow oilskins, life jackets, and red wool hats, the candidates were sent out in a small boat under instructions shouted through a megaphone. Hermann fell on the wet boards at the first maneuver, was struck by the boom when he tried to get up, and fell again as the boat hit a pontoon. The narrator’s mother brought the boat under control and completed the remaining maneuvers alone while Hermann lay on the floor, then sat up and vomited into the Schlei coastal waters. The episode exposed the gap between Hermann’s flawless theoretical performance and his unease in actual sailing conditions.

The Club’s Story and the End of the Attempt

After a later rescue on the water, the family returned to the Schleswiger Schlei-Segel-Club and found a crowd waiting. From then on, Schleswig sailors circulated a distorted version of the incident: the Professor had knocked his son overboard, become stranded in calm conditions, and needed rescuing—all without a sailing certificate. The club’s community turned the private ordeal into local lore, while Hermann asked the narrator to keep quiet about what had happened that evening. The narrator concealed the truth from the family as well, claiming that the bloodied cotton plugs in his nose came from hitting the mast; Hermann nodded gratefully.

The story’s comic public version contrasts with the more intimate account of the rescue and the family’s shared embarrassment. Hermann never again boarded his Sepia, JoMaHe Sailing Yacht. The club therefore marks both the point at which his sailing aspiration took concrete form and the place from which its failure became a circulating tale among local sailors.