Coop's Corner

Much is made in today’s culture about the balance of life. Soccer practice or violin, drive or train, respond to dumb question or let it pass…As with life, so is sailing all about balance in the moment: Very Zen-like.

If you are sailing in the Newport Bermuda Race this year, even as crew, there is a lot going on. A very important part of all the activity is figuring out the sails. There are three required sails and an assumed fourth one, the mainsail.

Joe, a relative fixture in Northeast solo sailing circles, had thrown a “Thank you” party prior to his departure on a solo non-stop lap of The Blue Marble. The declared intention: breaking the present record of some 137 days or so for such a voyage.

I know this seems like I am knocking innovation, progress, and development. But really, when I want to go sailing, I want to get away from all this stuff and actually exercise a skill and dexterity honed over years of actually sailing. Knowing just the right time to pull hard on the sheet, or grind when tacking so as to get the best result from the effort. I want me to learn, not the bloody computer.

Australian born, Joe ‘Coop’ Cooper stayed in the US after the 1980 America’s Cup where he was the boat captain and sailed as Grinder/Sewer-man on Australia. His whole career has focused on sailing, especially the short-handed aspects of it.

Similarly, at the one in Newport RI, 15 high school sailors spent the day getting instruction on several aspects of sailing big boats safely.

The ‘value’ we all get from it is intangible. It is neigh on impossible to put a dollar amount on the sunsets, beautiful days, a week at BIRW with your mates, landfall in Bermuda and so on that make up a pretty normal round of sailing adventures. Or frankly, the emotions we experience looking at a particular boat that moves us.

September 26, 1983, about 1700 on Rhode Island Sound. Unless you were sailing in the early 1980s or are an aficionado of international business capers gone south, there’s no reason why that time and location or the name Alan Bond ought to resonate. If either of the above criteria applies, the man universally known as Bondy needs no introduction. The fireball of a man who changed the course of sailing, at least the America’s Cup, died 02 June of complications following heart surgery.

After arriving home late from a coaching session in Connecticut that evening, I sat down to do some more detailed research on the Brunel crew from their website. One detail caught my eye: they have a woman as Team Sailing Coach. Not even the ladies on SCA have a woman coach. “I’d better talk with her,” I thought.

After several years of watching the high school sailing population around Aquidneck Island/Newport Harbor growing, it was obvious that Sail Newport was where the local high school sailing action was.