This Skipper Proved Her Mettle A Lifetime Ago
“School? I thought that was boring,” says Gerhild Wiendieck over a can of soda in her home in Victoria, British Columbia, from which she can see the bluish contours of the U.S. shoreline across the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Her short white hair and rectangular spectacles accentuate the relief of her face, carved by years, laughs and the salt of the sea. She’s pushing 85, but she’s still vital, with a wry sense of humor, an impish smile and an undying love for the ocean, which was a formative force in her life.
Wiendieck, who hails from Germany, never was a rock star in the yachting scene simply because she never made a big fuss about her exploits. Yet she inspired women to take the helm and venture out onto the ocean, following the examples of such audacious sailors as Ann Davison, who in 1953 became the first woman to cross the Atlantic single-handedly, and Ingeborg Heister, who in 1969 was the first German woman to single-hand a trimaran across the Pond.
Growing up during and after World War II in Germany, she had to break some molds to do it. “At age 13 I was the man in the house,” she chuckles, remembering the hard times. Her father was a POW in the hands of the Red Army. Her mom, once a successful rower, had a broken leg. The family lived hand-to-mouth. Wiendieck had to pitch in by helping an uncle who was a blacksmith. “I learned how to grind knives and shoe a horse.”
She became self-sufficient as she learned to handle the burden of responsibility, which would later serve her well. But first Wiendieck did what women did at the time: She married young. However, that’s as far as it went for traditional roles. The groom was Hans Schippmann, a well-to-do architect who owned two sailboats in the postwar years.
Day sails on the Bay of Kiel and weekend trips north to the Schlei fjord or the Danish isles became a favorite pastime for “Schippi,” as Wiendieck became known in sailing circles. She found work at a government office in Kiel, so she was never far from the water and made friends among the pilots, characters and the sailors at the Baltic Yacht Club, where she’s still a member.
Blazing a Path
“Schippi can do everything and fears nothing,” says Mary Lincke, who was one of the youths at the club and often joined Wiendieck on cruises as a trainee. It was common for young club members to join experienced sailors, but “Schippi was extremely generous and later also let me borrow her boat,” says Lincke.
“Suave, popular, companionable, generous, outgoing, yet incredibly knowledgeable about seamanship and always ready to help,” is how Thorsten Ahlers remembers Wiendieck from their time sailing together on the French- built Sangria, a quarter-tonner that was popular in the 1970s. Ahlers recounts two frightening episodes in Schippi’s sailing life, stuff she’d never bring up herself. She once