Hoofer Sailing Club

Spray is a cruising boat that the Hoofer Sailing Club uses to teach boat maintenance, seamanship, and living on a boat. She is named after Joshua Slocum's boat used in the first documented round-the-world solo trip.

Beginners Welcome. No Experience Necessary. You can sign up for a lesson on the Instruction site once you have completed ground school.

Contact Volunteer Fleet Captain Barry Rokusek at cruisers@hoofersailing.org.

The Spray (Soverel 30) was donated to the Club in 2003 by a generous, retired UW-Madison professor. A group of members worked together over the winter of 2006-2007 to build a new mainsail for her. The Spray was cruised extensively on Lake Superior and has made twenty or more transits from Green Bay, WI to other ports on Lakes Michigan and Huron, the Mackinac Straits, Hessel, St Mary's River et cetera. Lessons aboard The Spray are open to all Hoofer sailors of all skill levels. The Spray gives students a platform on which they can learn about living on a boat and working together as skipper and crew.

Hoofer Sailing Club's volunteer-taught cruising keelboat curriculum follows US Sailing's Basic Keelboat, Basic Cruising and Bareboat Cruising curriculum, and beyond. This is meant to enable Club sailors to build skills which may enable them to seek a US Sailing Certification on their own or even charter or sail their own boats on the Great Lakes or oceans. You can order these books online, or purchase them discounted at the Hoofer Boathouse. Reference copies are available at Helen C. White Library on Lake Mendota, near the Wisconsin Memorial Union at Park Street and Observatory Drive. The same curriculum is used on The Spray and Knotty Rascal with minor changes for boat differences.

Ratings for the Cruising Keelboats are Crew, Day Skipper and Full Skipper. Lessons are taught in all weather and all of these ratings are heavy weather ratings.