© Alexis Courcoux

The 2011 Transat Jacques Vabre started two days late due to very strong winds and rough seas.

The weather report was ugly. With less than 48 hours before the start of the Transat Jacques Vabre, sailors were looking at heading into the Atlantic from Le Havre, France, in steady, 40-knot side winds with 60-knot gusts and confused seas of well over 30 feet. There was a chance the fleet of Multi 50s, IMOCA Open 60s, and Class 40s could've slogged through the nastiness and made its way across the ocean to Costa Rica, but that was far from certain.

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It was "double-shot weekend" on 98.5 WNCX, Cleveland's Classic Rock—perfect music for sanding. I turned the Panasonic to loud, grabbed a few sheets of 240 grit and a foam sanding block, slipped on my Musto kneepads, and crawled into the bow of the Sled, my dad's Thistle, which I'm in the process of rehabbing in his garage.

Patrick Rynne coaches sailing at Florida's Lauderdale YC.

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.

NUEVO VALLARTA, Mexico (October 19, 2011) – Heading into the scheduled “lay day,” Team USA leads in the Lightning and the J/24 classes and stands in medal position in three others through six races of the Pan American Games sailing regatta at the Vallarta Yacht Club. 

In addition to the two leaders, the U.S. stands second in the Snipe and Sunfish classes and third in the RS:X Women’s (Windsurfer) class.