MY BOAT: Dedicated family welcomes all kids who want to sail

SANDUSKY — Brett and Katie Langolf grew up on sailboats and see it as their responsibility to pass their passion to a younger generation.They started with their own daughters, but are willing to take any youngster racing if they just show up at their boat, Knee Deep, which spends much of the summer in the Sandusky Sailing Club basin."Educating kids is my life," said Katie Langolf, a literacy specialist at Cassington Elementary School in Bexley. "We've got an opportunity to teach everywhere and make an impact on kids' lives. We firmly believe that the more positive adults kids have in their lives the better, and if we can be that positive adult in other children' lives, so be it.""We take any kid who wants to go out racing," said Brett Langolf, the vice president of client services for the marketing firm Sync Creative in Columbus. "We all learned to sail as kids and if the next generation of kids don't learn from us, then the sport will basically die. That's the attitude we have, so we load the kids up and go around the Great Lakes."Knee Deep is a J34, a 34-foot one-design keelboat class used for racing and recreational sailing. They started with a J24 and went to a J30 before purchasing the Knee Deep as the family grew with the addition of Hadley, now 11, and Charlotte, now 9."Our kids have such enthusiasm for sailing that they've become advocates and bring along their friends," Katie Langolf said. "Our 11-year-old brought two friends up this summer just to be on the water to sail and swim off the back."That has led to more kids coming along to sail."Some of our crew members who don't have kids will bring along their nieces and nephews and neighbors," Brett Langolf said. "In the last three years, we've probably put 25 kids on the boat who have never been on a boat or have never been racing or have never seen a spinnaker."The willingness to sail with kids also caught the attention of marine videographer Andrew Jowett, who filmed a video (https://youtu.be/iYBQfgNACMA) on the family and their willingness to welcome kids to sail with them."He is paid to go on record-breaking boats, but he said he didn't know any regular people in the sport and one of the guys on our crew told him he had some regular sailors for him," Brett Langolf said with a chuckle. "He asked if he could do something with our family and now we've become very close. He's gotten a lot of exposure over what he's done and we're very grateful because it's like a digital scrapbook for our kids."Brett Langolf learned how to sail as a youngster in Port Huron, Mich., while Katie became a sailor with her parents, who hailed from the Detroit area. The two met while attending Michigan State University.They continued to sail as best they could while living in Denver, but a job transfer back to Columbus about 13 years ago got the two looking for a place to dock their boat."I looked at Alum Creek in Columbus, but I grew up on the Great Lakes and I was not putting our boat into Alum Creek," Brett Langolf said. "No offense to Alum Creek, but when you grow up in Port Huron, you're not going to do something like that."Around the same time, a friend who sailed a J24 out of the Sandusky Sailing Club was moving to the Detroit area and asked the Langolfs for a recommendation on where to dock their boat."We asked them where we could put our J34 and they highly recommended the Sandusky Sailing Club," Katie Langolf said. "The following spring we left Columbus and went to Toledo and then came straight across and stopped in Sandusky for lunch and fell in love with the downtown. We loved that there were still hole-in-the-wall places and that it was not over-commercialized, and the accessibility to the islands."The Langolfs, fresh off a third-place finish in their class at the Port Huron-to-Mackinaw race, are making plans for the Kelleys Island Moonlight race, which will be a first for their daughters and two junior sailors from the Bayview Yacht Club in Detroit."We used to put up posts for junior sailors if they wanted to sail. Our dock number is C23 and that we'd be there at 8 a.m.," Brett Langolf said. "Honestly, not enough people take us up on it. We have a crew, so we're not going out with seven 10-year-olds who don't know what they're doing. Our core crew interacts well with the kids. They try to pause and teach and try to help.""In a day and age with so much technology and distractions from the outside world at their fingertips, it takes a special setting to leave that all behind," Katie Langolf said. "I definitely think the water and sailing is that special setting. This is what we do and it's how Brett and I want to raise our family."Katie, Charlotte, Hadley and Brett Langolf pose for a photo on their sailboat, Knee Deep.Knee Deep, right, races another sailboat.Knee Deep races on the open water.The Langolf family -- from left: Hadley, Charlotte, Katie and Brett -- enjoy teaching others how to sail.