Brock Callen Jr. insists that sailing 67 miles in five hours on a kiteboard isn’t really that much. “It seems like it is, because it’s on a board, and it seems so small,” he said in a recent interview. What it really is, he continued, is amazing. There’s no other sport that fosters such interaction between sailor, wind and water.
Two weeks ago, Mr. Callen, 35, of Edgartown, and friend Jeff Brock of Newport, R.I., kiteboarded to Block Island for a trip that was part athletic event, part environmental mission. The duo — dubbed Brock2 — partnered with the Rozalia Project for a Clean Ocean, doing shore cleanups at each of their stopping points (as well as Cuttyhunk). They will also hold a beach cleanup with the Edgartown School on Oct. 17, which Rozalia Project founder Rachael Miller will attend. Visits with other Island schools are planned as well.
For Mr. Callen, the trip was a way to combine two of his passions.
Mr. Callen grew up on the water, first learning to row and then starting sailing lessons at age eight. His father Brock Sr. is the director of Sail MV. His mother Hope is Sail MV’s administrative director.
Mr. Callen is now a professional sailor. “My day job,” he said.
It was while living in Newport several years ago that Mr. Callen got his first taste of kiteboarding. He and a friend hooked up a trainer kite to a mountain board, which is “just like a big inflatable skateboard with wheels,” and started practice sessions at the Second Beach parking lot in Newport. At nearly a mile long, the parking lot was the perfect place to work on harnessing wind power.
“We used to go beat ourselves up and get road rash, and we’d wait for big storms and go out in the middle of the night, in the snow,” Mr. Callen said. For a house full of professional sailors, such evening entertainment was the norm.
He received a kite as a Christmas gift from his father, but it wasn’t until Mr. Callen bought a kite from Nevin Sayre in 2005 that he began to train in earnest, doing “what you’re not supposed to do, which is teach yourself,” Mr. Callen said. “It’s dangerous. It’s a lot of power, the kites generate a lot of power very quickly.”
Mr. Callen now has several kites. “In my quiver I’ve got everything from a 6 meter up to a 17 meter.”
At first, he said, most of the training time is taken up figuring out how to manage the motor skills portion of it. “You’re trying to figure out just how to control yourself and things. Then once you figure out the control, it’s just the manipulation and the trim of the sails, the way the board works just like a rudder and a keel.”
“It’s all the same principles,” he said. “It’s all there.”
The Vineyard is home to a number of professional kiteboarders and hosts the North American Speed Sailing Invitational each year. Rob Douglas of Vineyard Haven has held the world record for speed sailing.
In the invitational’s inaugural year in 2011, Mr. Callen was the race director. He placed fourth at the event in 2012.
“I think we have exceptional conditions here on the Island,” Mr. Callen said. “You have all these places that no matter what the wind direction is, we can go out and we can ride.” In other places that have just one shoreline, it can take time to find the right spot for going on the water.
“If you live in Boston, you have to drive an hour and half if [the wind] is out of the west,” Mr. Callen said. Vineyarders are spoiled by a plethora of options, from the swells of Philbin to the glassy waters of Sengekontacket Pond.
“I don’t think there’s many sessions I forget,” Mr. Callen said. He learned partially by going out on the water with his friends, each sailor upping the ante with new methods or tricks, but solo rides were also frequent. Once, before he learned to sail upwind, he was kiteboarding on Sengekontacket and had to hitchhike his way back to the starting point, getting picked up by a BMW whose occupants didn’t seem to mind the sopping wet rider in their seats.
These days, Mr. Callen often goes kiteboarding with his oldest son Finlee, who is in first grade at the Edgartown School.
“He stands in between my legs, and then we ride, which is just unbelievable,” Mr. Callen said. “[It’s] just the best that we get to share it with him now.” Younger son Hugo is almost two, and doesn’t go out on the board just yet.
Finlee was also an inspiration for the Brock2 trip. Respecting the environment is important in the Callen family. When Finlee is out on the beach, he always picks up trash.
“It’s cool to see him get fired up about it,” Mr. Callen said. “You have to teach them at that age.”
When Mr. Callen is out on the water the number one piece of litter he sees is balloons. On Block Island he saw “absurd amounts of single use plastic bottles.”
Mr. Callen reached out to the Rozalia Project for help making his planned passage to Block Island have more of an impact. A ride was great, but what more could be accomplished he wondered? He had met Ms. Miller, the project’s founder, and remembered being struck by her mantra of “Action, not awareness.”
“I just loved what they were doing,” Mr. Callen said. Ms. Miller suggested the endpoint cleanups as well as the school presentations, which aligned perfectly with what Brock2 had in mind. With the success of the Block Island pilot trip, more sea voyages and cleanups are in the works.
“Our kiting is just the vehicle we’re using,” Mr. Callen said of the effort. And 67 miles was only the beginning.
Comments (2)
Comments
Comment policy »