When she was five years old, Priscilla Givan learned to sail on Long Island Sound and she still thanks her father for the experience. He was a world-class competitive sailor who took his young daughter to the dock and deposited her in a 12-foot sailboat.
“He pushed the boat off from the dock and I thought he was going to jump in with me,” she recalls. “But I looked back and he wasn’t there. I was frightened to death.”
So she grabbed the tiller, turned the boat around and smacked it head on into the dock. Her dad took the front of the boat and pushed it off again — and she brought it back again.
“We went through this a couple of times before I decided, ‘They don’t want me,'” she said. “So I took firm hold of the tiller and sailed halfway across Long Island Sound.”
Her family came after the youngster in the dark with flashlights.
“And that’s how I learned to sail,” the 69-year-old said with a laugh.
Today she is the only female skipper of the Laguna Woods Yacht Club.