Sailing Story: Edi Stan

As an immigrant from a landlocked country in Eastern Europe to a current resident of a landlocked state within the U.S., sailing wasn’t a likely hobby for Edi Stan to pick up. 

“As landlocked creatures all of our lives [my family] wondered how I got into sailing,” Edi laughed. “By a random happening I got a project sailboat on Ebay.”

However, in all honesty, Edi’s 1972 vintage Aquarius 23, which Edi lovingly calls “the project” wasn’t really the start of his sailing story either. 

“The project stayed on the side of the house for 15 years. It was a good conversation starter and a subject of daydreaming but not more than that,” Edi said. 

That was, of course, until his daughter came home and gave him an ultimatum. 

“My daughter who took some classes in sailing too visited home and said your project has two choices. It either goes in the water and it sails or it goes in the big heap north of the city at the dump,” Edi laughed. “That’s how we started the adventure of putting the sailboat in at Dayton.”

Edi and his daughter headed to the dock, without a clue as to whether their sailing vessel was lake worthy. 

“The people over there [at the Dayton Harbor]— I told them the reality that I had no clue if the boat would float or sink,” he said. “To their surprise, my project was perfectly dry— it was floating!”

That’s the true start of Edi’s sailing journey. Not when he bought his “project” 15 years prior— but the day he found out it was seaworthy. From there, he began looking for more opportunities to sail, and more people to go sailing with him. 

He started by taking sailing classes at Go Sail Flathead Lake and then decided it was time to get his wife out on the water with him. 

“I convinced my wife it’s a pleasant activity. It needs convincing, you know,” he laughed. And now that she’s been out with Edi a few times on the water, he’s even given her an honorary title onboard. The admiral. 

“The admiral knows how to ask us sailors what to do but not more than that,” he laughed. “That’s about the extent of her sailing but it’s good enough because I learned how to do single handed sailing.”

With both his daughter and his wife onboard with his sailing lifestyle, Edi is excited to make the most of his retirement, sailing on Flathead Lake.

“That’s my next step is to improve my skills on the Flathead,” he said. However, by next year, he hopes to have enough experience under his belt to sail the Mediterranean in Greece. 

“The Mediterranean, we realized, is just a slightly larger Flathead Lake,” Edi laughed. 

“It’s a very forgiving sea.”