By Tom Darling, Conversations with Classic Boats
Ever wonder what seasoned amateur marine writers do in their free time? More often than not, they are having a “gam,” somewhere, anywhere. For those of you not conversant in whaling terminology, a gam was a timeout at sea, an opportunity to sit around and shoot the breeze. In his novel Moby-Dick, Melville brought this seagoing social media format to life in chapter 53, defining it thusly:
“Gam (noun) – A social meeting of two (or more) whaleships, generally on a cruising ground, when, after exchanging hails, they exchange visits by boats’ crews, the two captains remaining, for the time, on board of one ship, and the two chief mates, on the other. They would exchange the whaling news and have an agreeable chat. For not only would they meet with all the sympathies of sailors, but likewise with all the peculiar congenialities arising from a common pursuit and mutually shared privations and perils…”
That’s the two of us, Coop and Tom, out there on the cruising grounds, sometimes captains, more like mates, writers for WindCheck, hopefully appreciated. Gathering for this gam are myself, Tom Darling, founder of the Conversations with Classic Boats podcast series, and Joe Cooper, WindCheck Contributing Editor, creator of “Coop’s Corner,” interviewing wizard, boating polymath, teacher, beloved coach, pundit…what did I miss?
Oh yes, you can find him at joecoopersailing.com.
You may hear the gam in its entirety this month on my podcast site for Conversations with Classic Boats (conversationswithclassicboats.com.) If there ever was a Classic Conversation, this is it. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. Joe Cooper = C and Tom Darling = T
Listen to Tom’s podcast to learn more about classic boats…and classic sailors.
The Gam
T: Hi, this is Tom Darling, your host for Conversations with Classic Boats. Today, we have a Classic Conversation with a sailing character from Rhode Island by way of Sydney, Australia. Hi, Coop. How are you, or should I say G’Day?
C: (Chuckles)
T: OK, you can see me but I can’t see you, but that’s alright. I know what you look like. (At this moment Coop appears on the Zoom screen) Oh, there you are.
C: Yup, so here we go.
T: Thanks for coming on. I’m a big fan of what you write, but please understand that for this article we are going to have to issue an English language version.
C: No, American language…OK, English will be fine.
T: I call these episodes Classic Conversations, which reminds me of a word, gam, that I love. I sail and spend time on Nantucket, and the word gam, basically sitting around talking, always appealed to me.
C: Shoot the xxxx, as they say. I get it.
T: These Classic Conversations are different from my regular podcast episodes, which are personal essays that I write and add an interview or two. Today’s session is pure gammin’, and it’s our second release here in 2024 in our Season Six!
C: That’s not bad. It’s barely the end of January! OK, So, how did I get here? The very short version is very good Finn sailor. Got invited to the ‘77 America’s Cup program with Gretel II with a guy named Gordon Ingate and we came over to Newport and got beat by the Swedes in the semis. Went back via Europe. Worked at Elvstrom Sails again for a while.
I was recruited by a guy named Lee Killingworth, who I knew by name only but he was part of the Bondy (Alan Bond) 1977 Australia program. He called me up and basically said, “Hey, you want to go do that again?” I said, “Sure. What else is there to do? There’s no Olympics. The Afghanistan conflict cancelled the 1980 Games. And so he got me hired by Bondy’s group, Warren Jones. It was Sydney in June of ’79, and I flew out to Perth to Fremantle. And I lived out there until Christmas, when we put the yacht on a ship to go to Sydney for some more practicing.
Then we put it back on the ship and sent it to New York. Took it off the ship, put it in the water. I wrote a piece about going up the East River with the tender and we started to sink. The Coasties came out, then we almost split the mast, and missed the bridge by about three inches.
T: Did you know that the East River is one of the few American straits?
C: Yes. I referred to it as the East Strait (chuckles)…but then, everyone looks at me like I have a square head. So, we came up to Newport. We put the thing together, went out and we sailed. We broke the mast and ended up building the bendy mast down the street. Opposite of O’Brien’s (a Newport tavern) was a concrete block building. It was a fishermen’s shack. The guys kept their lobster pots in there, and the smell…oh boy!
We took a race off Dennis Conner and were in front when the time limit expired in another race, but he got the better of us and we surrendered 1-4. I think of that as the beginning of the end, because Bondy came right over to the boat right after we finished. We still had sails up. He pulled up in the RIB and jumped on the 12, and he was in full Toad of Toad Hall mode. His house on the Swan River was affectionately known as Toad Hall.
T: That is a perfect characterization of the guy.
C: If you ever saw him, he was full on. He was telling us, “We’re gonna go back and Bob (Miller) is gonna draw another boat and we’re coming back and we’re going to beat these guys.” Something else, Bondy was.
The next thing I knew I was getting a job from a guy named Bob Sutherland who was Turner’s captain on Tenacious, so I spent the fall and early winter driving up and down to Barrington, Rhode Island where the boat was.
T: Ah, my hometown…72 Rumstick Road
C: Well, the boatyard is now a Safe Harbor yard but then it was a family yard called Cove Haven Marina. And we were there with Tenacious getting a new keel and doing a bunch of stuff. I think it was probably between Christmas and New Years and I was trying to put the boat in the water and go down south for the Circuit (SORC). It was a very, very cold winter. I have a picture of Nantucket Sound a sheet of ice between the mainland and the harbor. They were driving supplies to the market across the ice in an 18-wheeler. And Cove Haven was frozen like you can’t believe. I had called up Turner a few days before and said, “Hey, you know we got a bit of a problem here.” So, I kid you not, the morning the boat was going in the water, it was in the slings and up into that little cove came a small Coast Guard icebreaker. Ah, there we go. We just looked at it and said, “Well, OK, it’s Ted.”
T: So, when did the true Cooper invasion of Rhode Island come?
C: I got married in 1995 My wife gave birth to our son in ’96. After some time in New Zealand, we were tossing around San Francisco, Annapolis and Newport. And Newport just kept coming out because that’s where my ecosystem was. That would have been early 2001. So, I went back to work at Hood and worked there for nearly a decade. When I left in 2010, I was pushing up against my 40th year of being in the sail making game, one way or another. I thought, “I’m just gonna go out and hang up my own shingle.”
On a side note, the slogan on Coop’s business card is “All Things Sailing.” That means versatility. He’s the coach of his son’s former team at The Prout School, stalwart backer of Sail Newport, winner of the doublehanded class in the Vineyard Race, and the owner of a to be reconstructed Ranger 33. That’s a lot to keep track of.
T: You specialize in getting new sailors to figure out what’s what.
C: Yes. It’s a lot of on-the-boat coaching with sail trim, simple sailing. I like it. I’ve done rigging consults. I don’t do the rigging myself, because that’s not the best use of my time. You know, what you buy when you get me is from up here (points to head) and the last sixty years of sailing.
T: Coop, what’s your idea of the ideal boat?
C: It depends on what you want to do. But to me, a J/105 is one of the best value boats around. Right? And you know, if we didn’t have the Ranger, I could easily go out and race a 105 and use it for cruising. I remember we had a singlehanded race years ago on a borrowed 105. My then girlfriend, now wife, came and we stayed on it at the yacht club. Perfectly fine to me…spend a weekend on it.
T: Your reputation as a coach and youth sailing mentor is considerable. How did you become the Sailing coach at The Prout School?
C: My son Ned was in middle school and ready for high school, so we ended up visiting Prout in Wakefield. The son of a friend of mine had run a sailing program there a few years ago and he said, “They have a sailing program.” OK, they sort of did. When we went to the open day at the school, there was a 420 parked on the apron outside the gym. I went down, of course, and started talking to those folks. They said, “Come and help.” I said OK, and Ned was accepted. I sent an email sailing, “OK, my son has been accepted. What’s the story?” So, I started sort of auditing the sailing program.
T: So that’s how you became the coach?
C: Yeah, right. They had a coach, and he was adequate. His daughter was graduating so he was leaving, so I took over.
T: What about the America’s Cup today?
C: I don’t think anything will be as exciting as that last race in 1983. Right now, I think it’s people watching drag racing more than watching sailing.
T: You know, it reminds me of Formula 1 racing more than sailboat racing
C: That’s kind of what they’re trying to do. I think they’re hoping to try and get the Formula 1 audience. It’s just not going to happen. If you go to Pennsylvania and mention the America’s Cup, they start talking about ice hockey. You know, it’s not on anybody’s Richter scale.
T: Thanks so much for this, Coop. In addition to the magazine, it’s be on the Conversations with Classic Boats podcast channel in a month or so. Get it wherever you get your podcasts!
C: Thanks, mate. Keep up the good work. ■
Not a formally trained historian nevertheless a boat storyteller, collecting and reciting stories for the boating curious, Tom Darling is the host of Conversations with Classic Boats, “the podcast that talks to boats.” Tune in via Apple Podcast, Google Podcast or Spotify, and online at conversationswithclassicboats.com.
