HARD ON THE WIND Sailing is a combination of freedom and power. Its been called boring or sheer terror during high winds when you are tipping over and crashing through the waves. After I sailed a couple of summers with the older kids at the Greater Wildwood Yacht Club, I got my first sail boat for my 11th birthday in late September and I wasn’t waiting until the next summer to sail it even though it was a cold windy day. My cousin, Jack and I, dressed like we were going to a Thanksgivings Day football game in heavy clothes, launched my new boat in the bay for her maiden voyage. I thought Jack, who was my crew would add the extra weight that we needed, but because of my inexperience as a skipper, the boat tipped over. It could have been a disaster, because we weren’t wearing life vests and had to swim back to shore in our water soaked winter clothes. Its hard to believe that none of us sailed with life preservers and in retrospect it was poor judgment not to, but it certainly instilled self-confidence, if you capsized the only way back was to swim. I turned over so many times my first year sailing that they referred to me as Bob over Bobby. My friend Buck won the first 7 races the next summer, all by wide margins. The 8th race, which we still talk about 50 years later, was sailed in very high winds and was watched by a full gallery of people along the bay front and by all of our relatives from Sterlings Dock, which was situated just a few yards from a turning buoy, that we had to round 3 times during the race. It was also the final mark that needed to be rounded before sailing to the finish line at the yacht club, a short distance away. I recall the race because it was my best. Buck relives the duel on the bay that afternoon because I had broken his perfect winning record of 7 but in reality it was the age old story of the Turtle and the Hare. Buck was sailing by himself in high winds and had fantastic boat speed sailing down wind and reaching across the bay, and I, like the Turtle, was much slower on 2 of the 3 legs but I would always pass him and build up a big lead going AGAINST THE WIND because I had taken a crew to help control my boat. My crew gave me the extra weight I needed to sail against the wind, while Buck, who was sailing by himself, couldnt control his boat on the beat to windward. Every time he tried to move up wind his boat would heel way up on its side and come to a stop as he let his sails out to avoid capsizing. However, no matter how big of a lead my crew and I established sailing to the windward mark, Buck would always catch us on the reaching leg where he was sailing at super speeds and surfing down the face of the waves in the stormy weather. Three times he caught up to us on the reaching leg as we zoomed down the bay side by side fighting for the lead. We dueled the full length of the bay for the 3rd and final time at max speeds, with our boats flying over the crests and screaming down the walls of the waves, sometimes burying the bows of our boats almost up to the cockpit, on our way to the final mark in front of Sterlings Dock from where it would be a short up wind finish at the yacht club. Buck screamed passed me with a 3 foot rooster tail shooting up from his rudder right in front of Sterlings Dock which was filled with family and friends and beat me around the last mark by a couple of feet but the moment he came “Hard on the Wind” he wasn’t able to control his boat and I sailed passed him with my crew to the finish line to win my first race. Im convinced that these early sailing experiences that we had were the catalysts for our later entrepreneurial activities.
Posted on: Thu, 31 Jul 2014 14:29:43 +0000
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