Sailing Education Adventures

It's not widely known that Albert Einstein was a sailor. Indeed his friends gave him a yacht for his 50th birthday in 1929. The sailing magazine Die Yacht described this boat in detail. Sadly, after the Nazis came to power and he moved to America he had to leave this boat behind in Germany, and the boat was eventually confiscated by the state. He continued to sail small boats while working at Princeton.

Einstein spent nearly every summer during the time he lived in the United States at a vacation home where he could be near the water. During the summers of 1937 to 1939, the eccentric German physicist selected quiet Nassau Point as his summer vacation residence. He rented a cottage on Old Cove Road (now known as West Cove Road) where he had access to Peconic Bay, well known for its pristine sailing conditions.

Residents in the area were quite familiar with the strange, straggly white-haired scientist. Though unable to swim, he regularly took out his small dinghy sailboat "Tinef," which was Yiddish for "worthless" or "junk," to sail, drift, and on occasion, even run aground, in the bay in front of his cottage.