I was out racing for the first time in a long time this weekend. I was rusty and sailing on a boat that I was unfamiliar with. Furthermore, I didn’t know anyone on the crew. So I started doing what I like to see others do when racing: I just started talking about what I was seeing happening around me. “Do you see that boat over there?” “Hey, look, there’s a puff of wind over there.” “It looks like the breeze might be filling in from over there.” I kept that little monologue u

It hadn’t been a very good race. In fact, it wasn’t an understatement to say it had been a disaster. To Peter Smith it was embarrassing just to show his face in the clubhouse afterward. He was at a complete loss to explain how it had happened. He felt like had just managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. He’d put together a decent crew. There were no rookies on the boat. Everyone knew their jobs and some had even sailed together before on other boats. Some even had

“Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” -Leonard Cohen How’s that for a weird quote? I heard it the other day on the radio and it stuck in my head. It has a resonance for me that I just can’t seem to shake. You see, like most folks, I’m intimately familiar with imperfection. I’m faced with it in many of the projects I’m most passionate about: My writing, my career, my boat… Yeah, I’m building a boat. Technically,

I used to race with a really experienced crew on a J120 (a flippin’ nice sailboat). We were all very hardcore about our racing. Many on the crew had been racing sailboats since their childhood. These guys were good – really good. We pushed each other hard and we expected a lot of ourselves and each other when we were out on the race course. So there was plenty of pressure. I came to sailing relatively late in life compared to some, so I was very self-conscious. I didn’t want

When I used to race sailboats in Puget Sound I got to sail with a lot of different kinds of people. Some people who like to sail are pretty laid back. The Jimmy Buffet types. You know, “The wind will come when the wind decides to come, and in the meantime, how about a margarita?” I really like sailing with folks like that. They are enjoyable and easygoing and that is important when you are trapped together on a cold, wet, boat for 8 hours or longer. On the other hand, there w

I’m reading Ellen MacArthur’s book, “Taking on the World”. She is arguably one of the greatest sailors around. It’s her story of her life leading up to and including her amazing race in the Vendee Globe. Before she ever got to the Vendee, she spent years working on other people’s boats. She would prep them, repair them, and otherwise set them up for the big races. She had to know the systems of these amazing race machines inside and out. These were largely solo racers that sh