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What I Learned Last Night

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What I Learned Last Night by The Editors

January 13, 2012

No Result, But Plenty of Lessons

by Stuart Streuli
image-120113 robin team
© Stuart Streuli
Skipper Robin Team mans the winch on his J/122 Teamwork as the boat works downwind along the Florida keys in a light easterly during the 2012 Key West Race.

A DNF doesn't define a distance race. There's a lot to be learned from competing and overcoming adversity even if the finish line is never crossed.

I was surprised when, early Friday morning, Robin Team fired up the Yanmar with just six-tenths of a mile to go to the finish line and decided to retire from the 2012 Key West Race. For the previous 36 hours, he’d been the primary reason we hadn’t pulled the plug.

December 12, 2011

Back to School

by Meredith Powlison
image-393546 2345560289766 1572780211 32081613 2146527842 n
© Franny Kupersmith
Possum Bowl

St. Mary's annual alumni regatta, the Possum Bowl, offered some chilling lessons for this recent grad.

I graduated from St. Mary’s in May, and there are a few things I haven’t missed about college sailing: excessively long van rides, sailing in the cold, making myself into a small ball in the bottom of an FJ…

So, logically, I packed up my drysuit and wool socks, hopped into the car for a 9-hour ride from Rhode Island to southern Maryland, and mentally prepared myself to crew in an FJ for a couple of races at our annual alumni regatta, Possum Bowl.

October 24, 2011

The Other Ws

2
by Patrick Rynne
image-rynne368
Patrick Rynne coaches sailing at Florida's Lauderdale YC.

Ask yourself these three simple questions. Your answers could lend a new, stress-free focus to your racing.

Everybody called him “Sully.” In retrospect, it wasn't a particularly creative nickname for a Massachusetts sailor, but with him it really fit. Sully raced J/24s at my local club, drank tons of beer, always laughed, and was the coolest sailor I knew. Nearly 20 years later, I can still picture how Floridays, the name on his boat's transom, stood out to me from my Optimist-level vantage point. But Sully's words, passed down to him from his father, struck me the most. I was about 10 years old, had just won one of my first regattas, and he yanked me aside.

September 26, 2011

Not Dark Yet

155
by Michael Lovett
image-fallbay368 0
© Jenny Everson
Sjoerd-Jan Vanderhorst looks in the rearview mirror during the exciting conclusion to Race 2 at the 2011 George O'Connell Fall Bay Regatta. The blue boat in the background may already have run aground.

The George O'Connell Fall Bay Regatta lets racers stretch the sailing season in the Lake Erie Islands.

I don't like being places after everyone else has gone. It's that circus-has-left-town feeling, and it has always creeped me out. I recall an instance in the parking lot of Pennsylvania's Pymatuning YC following a Thistle fall series regatta a while back. Trophies had ended about 45 minutes before, and the other teams had all driven off, trailers slowly crunching gravel. My dad was taking forever refastening all the tie-downs I had secured, and I was leaning against the boat feeling this inexplicable loneliness.

September 8, 2011

“Excuse me sir, but your negativity isn’t helping me right now.”

198
by Stuart Streuli
image-110908 carey dunking
Had Jim Carey's alter-ego Hank Evans, from the comedy Me, Myself & Irene, been onboard the Crack of Noon for the final race of the 2011 Summer Series, he might've done just this to hopefully restore some sense into the tactician.

Bad luck happens, and when it does, the key is keeping your cool and looking for a solution. But, we're all human.

August 8, 2011

These Are the Good Old Days

121
by Michael Lovett
image-ilya960b
© Michael Lovett
Some mornings, extricating your boat from the puzzle of rafted boats at I-LYA Bay Week is like playing Tetris in reverse.

At Bay Week in the Lake Erie Islands, the spinnakers are rainbow colored and Steve Perry wails late into the night.

The Inter-Lake Yachting Association's Bay Week regatta is as old-school as sailboat racing gets. The 118th edition of this event drew more than 100 boats—everything from windsurfers to multihulls to Tartan Tens—to the heart of the Lake Erie Islands: the town of Put-in-Bay on Ohio's South Bass Island.

July 28, 2011

Working on My Follow Through

171
by Michael Lovett

Rather than actually file a protest, it's a lot easier to just whine about the rule breakers, the cheaters, and the indignant victims who only compound the rules-compliance problem.

This year, I've been involved in a handful of incidents on the racecourse that inspired me to write one of those "it's important to follow the racing rules and also to enforce them" manifestos. But I loathe those rants the same way I loathe teachers' pets, well intentioned though they may be, and I've resisted the urge to whine about the rule breakers, the cheaters, and the indignant victims who only compound the rules-compliance problem by failing to follow through with protests. This is the state of the game, and it doesn't seem to be changing.

July 18, 2011

Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda

115
by Stuart Streuli
image-110718 leewardmark
© Courtesy www.kattack.com
A loose jib sheet scuttles a takedown and turns a second place into a seventh for Team Arethusa during the 2011 Swan 42 National Championship.

In any regatta decided by a tiebreaker, the losing team can usually find countless places where that one key point was missed. The author dwells on one such moment from the 2011 Swan 42 Nationals off Newport, R.I.

As we started the final day of the Swan 42 Nationals, there seemed to be little to gain for Team Arethusa and a lot to lose. We were tied for second, 18 points behind Ken Colburn’s crew on Apparition—who were sailing phenomenally well—and with a raft of boats in close proximity. 

It was a remarkable day of sailing, three grueling races in a chamber-of-commerce southerly that touched 23 on occasion and never dropped below 16.

July 15, 2011

One Thursday Night in Cleveland

129
by Michael Lovett

Nights like last are both the cause of, and cure for, my end-of-summer dread.

About this time every year I start getting nervous. Mid July. Do or die.

June 6, 2011

How Napoleon Caused the Detroit NOOD

89
by Michael Lovett

According to Leo Tolstoy, and me, the French leader has a lot to do with one-design sailing on Lake St. Clair.

I'm just returning from the 2011 Sperry Top-Sider Detroit NOOD. It's been a long weekend, but I'm wide awake. So I'm doing what I often do when I'm ready to fall asleep—reading "War and Peace."

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