Coop's Corner

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.

For 12 days from May 5 to the start of the transtlantic leg to Lisbon on May 17, the Race Village will be open at Fort Adams. To the majority of sailors/spectators, the VOR is a sailboat race, albeit a grueling circumnavigation, often at hair-on-fire speeds. But behind the scenes, the VOR is big money in action.

By any measure, sailing is a male-dominated activity. This is slowly changing. In over 35 years in the sail & boat game I had not had one woman call me to inquire about equipment for herself. Yet in the past 12 months I’ve received calls from four women, and after chatting for a few minutes it was obvious they were shopping on their own account for sails for their own boats.

It is rare today that one hears anything about sailors effecting jury-rigs after an equipment failure at sea and making it to land under their own steam.

There are several groups in Newport that were founded by people with a desire to do something about this trash in the ocean problem. I am sure there are many more, but these are four I interact with in Newport, RI.

I am consulting for Hood Sailmakers and the other day I was handed a letter by Dawn, “She Who Keeps It All Going.” Yup, a letter. An honest to goodness, real life, business-size manila envelope with a hand-written address. There was even one of those little stickon return address labels you could order from the back of The New York Times Sunday Magazine years ago.

By Joe Cooper At the conclusion of the Ida Lewis Distance Race in August, I brought the Class40 Icarus back to the US Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, NY, through whose great graces we were able to use her in the Storm Trysail Foundation Junior Safety at Sea seminars and the Ida Race. When I got home the next evening, I was totally pooped. I had been going non-stop since January in about seven volunteer things,…

If you are going to start tossing “Who’s gonna win the Volvo Ocean Race?” darts now, you better have an idea of the background for criteria on how you decide.