{"id":78258,"date":"2024-06-18T08:42:24","date_gmt":"2024-06-18T12:42:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/?p=78258"},"modified":"2024-06-18T08:42:26","modified_gmt":"2024-06-18T12:42:26","slug":"won-one-lost-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/racing\/won-one-lost-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Won One, Lost One"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\"Reed <\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n
\n Another Opinion<\/i> served many purposes for its many keepers over the decades, including countless introductory sunset sails with friends and family.<\/span>\n Dave Reed<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\t <\/figcaption>\n <\/section>\n\t\t\n\n\n

in this same space, one year ago, I shared an epiphany that I\u2019d had after tanking my frostbite season on the final day of racing, on account of a few avoidable mistakes. \u201cDumb is as dumb does,\u201d I posited. I would not let that happen again, I promised. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The offseason is long, however, and it\u2019s during this time and space that we forget the commitments we make to ourselves and our teammates as we debrief over a beer, sky the halyards, wash the sheets, and put away the boat until next time. There\u2019s always a \u00adbetter season next year. So, in my offseason, I thought long and hard about why I\u2019d been prone to high-risk, low-reward \u00adtactics and aggressive starts. I was always trying too<\/em> hard to win races without regard to the length of the season, which starts on New Year\u2019s Day and rolls through mid-April. There are a lot of races, and a lot of points to be saved between A and B, so stop trying to win races. See how it goes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With this mantra in mind, I arrive early on opening day, eager to get the new season underway. My arch rival and the perennial fleet champ, FJ Ritt, is already at the club. He\u2019s busy getting the club\u2019s fleet of N10s (aka Turnabouts) ready. There\u2019s a special vibe on opening day, and I\u2019m sure he sensed it too: a rebirth, a new beginning, uncertainty and anticipation. Corny, I know. But it\u2019s true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I step to the water\u2019s edge, look across the slate-gray \u00adharbor littered with winter sticks and mooring balls. There\u2019s a light northeasterly\u2014the one direction I dread. I have flashbacks of that one dumb season-crushing race that ended my last season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Race 1 then goes something like this: I get a good start, and I\u2019m in a close second place on the downwind leg. And what do I do? Immediately split at the leeward mark and sail into a hole. It\u2019s my knee-jerk reaction to go the other way and go for the pass. I don\u2019t even bother looking over my shoulder before tacking into a tar pit. I deserve the 11 I get as the first score on my card. Thankfully, there\u2019s only one drifter raced that day, and with that 11th, I\u2019m sent packing to the B fleet for the following weekend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve learned my lesson, again, however, and over the following race days, I focus on \u00adclimbing into the top five. I win a few races along the way, but more importantly, I\u2019m getting \u00adbetter at not doing dumb things. Whenever I\u2019m immediately behind, next to or near the lead boat, I am patient. If the opportunity to make a pass comes my way, I take it. I stop forcing the win. I\u2019m good with second (or third or fourth)<\/em>, I say to myself when following FJ, or speedy Missy Hudspeth across the \u00adfinish. I accept this.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the Sunday of Week 6, I finally find myself at the top of the standings with a 1-2 on my birthday. What a gift. The season is no longer mine to win; it is indeed mine to lose. From then on, Ritt and I battle with an unspoken vigor\u2014two old men going at it in tubby little white boats. It\u2019s our Sunday afternoon raison d\u2019\u00eatre, and for the remainder of the season, I\u2019m true to my rule: Keep it cool; keep the points. Nothing crazy. Nothing fancy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s working for me, and on the 23rd and final race of the season, I somehow nail a dream start; full speed, on the line, giant hole to leeward, and launched to a season-ending high. Hallelujah. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s my win to report, but I also have a loss worth sharing with longtime, and the most astute, readers of this magazine. Those of you in this group might recall a series of stories back in the day written by Sailing World<\/em>\u2019s previous staffers about a 26-foot fractional sloop named AO<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This particular pocket yacht is an Albin Express 26 One-Design, drawn by Peter Norlin and built in the mid-1980s. It\u2019s kind of like a J\/24 but different. Past senior editor and de facto historian Herb McCormick was around when the magazine\u2019s owners procured the boat and added it to the employee \u00adbenefits package.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Another Opinion<\/em> origin story goes back to the early 1980s, when Murray Davis, the publisher of Cruising World<\/em>, acquired it as a perk for the magazine\u2019s staff to sail and enjoy, McCormick says. \u201cIt was actually a bit of a spiteful \u00adgesture. Davis had wanted to trade out advertising pages with J\/Boats to score the hot new J\/24. When he was rebuffed by the Johnstones, he \u00adpivoted to Swedish builder Albin, and \u00adsuddenly Cruising World<\/em> was the steward of a new Albin Express, a popular one-design on lakes in Sweden. The idea was to crush the J\/24 whenever the opportunity arose.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there were problems with Murray\u2019s plan, McCormick says. \u201cFirst, of course, the J\/24 was also a one-design that rarely sailed in PHRF fleets. But more importantly, as we discovered at Block Island Race Week, the Albin\u2019s blade jib was a serious liability upwind versus a J\/24\u2019s overlapping genoa. Someone got crushed all right. It was us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more than three decades, AO<\/em> served its purpose as the ultimate perk: Corporate paid the yard bills and gave great joy to employees\u2014harbor cruises, first dates, music festivals, race weeks, and PHRF beer canning. It was an editorial project boat to test out new gear and DIY stories, a Frankenstein\u2019s monster of half-finished projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Cruising World<\/em> staff would lay claim to it and pile their crap on board: piles of anchors and useless boating gadgets. Rolling sails wasn\u2019t their thing. Sailing World<\/em> editors Dan Dickison and Tim Robinson once whipped AO<\/em> into proper Wednesday-night shape. It was stripped to bare bones and lost its luster at the hands of neglect. With company X, Y or Z\u2019s name on the registration, no one was ever willing to put their own money into it. Sweat equity, sure, because there was bottom sanding and seasonal cleaning, but that\u2019s about it. Simple boats don\u2019t need much, and this was the beauty of AO<\/em>. Ugly in her old age but a fine sailing yacht in all conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Cruising World<\/em> and Sailing World<\/em>\u2019s editorial staff dwindled over the years and corporate eventually closed the Newport office, I became the sole and final caretaker of the company yacht. And over the past few years, I\u2019ve taught a lot of newbies and friends the finer points of sailing through the harbor. I\u2019ve cruised the lower bay with the family and sailed its stretches solo. My wife eventually started her own ladies\u2019 night, a cockpit full of school teachers on summer break, lapping the harbor while they lapped up cocktails. It served its purpose and we did right by AO<\/em>, but like other \u00adstaffers before me, I never sank an extra dime into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By last summer, AO<\/em> was \u00adcertainly showing its age: its gray topsides faded and scuffed, the white deck stained and chalky. I\u2019m ashamed to admit that I used an entire roll of double-wide Dacron sticky back to hold the jib together. The interior was no better\u2014salty and dank. No bilge pump, no battery or working lights, and a Home Depot bucket for the ladies. My 13-year-old refused my every sleep-aboard offer because the interior was \u201cgross.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last fall, while preparing the boat for a looming hurricane, I tugged on the jib halyard and it wouldn\u2019t budge. The top swivel was jammed. I pulled hard at the luff again, and it came down, all right\u2014the entire rig along with it. The forestay had parted at the tang swage. Dismasted at the mooring. Now that was a new low for AO<\/em>, which we towed north a few weeks later and hauled out for the season at the Safe Harbor New England Boatworks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The yard guys must have sensed AO<\/em>\u2019s fate, backing its transom into the scrub bushes in the dumpiest corner of the yard, where it now sits, likely home to Safe Harbor\u2019s resident raccoons. At the time, I had intentions of ordering new standing rigging and buying a jib. But the Frostbite racing \u00adseason came, along with winter regatta travel, and the wellness visits stopped. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The magazines were sold to our current owners this past fall, and in the due diligence, it became known that \u201cwe\u201d own a company yacht, and that it too must be divested. I offered $1. They declined, so I figured that was the end of it until another email came much later, from our previous company\u2019s legal department. They\u2019d read the storage contract, and it was their intent to default on the late fees and allow Safe Harbor to auction it off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The thought of losing AO<\/em> weighed on me as I considered buying it off the block. It\u2019s a piece of my Newport identity, a ship of memories and comic adventures, a vessel good of times. My daughter half-pleaded for me not to give AO<\/em> away, and I hemmed and hawed for days, but I\u2019d already decided: time to move on. I can\u2019t afford to maintain it properly, and Safe Harbor has outpriced my paycheck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which brings us back the boat\u2019s original name and to our historian, Mr. McCormick, who informs us that Another Opinion <\/em>was the title of a Cruising World<\/em> column where boat owners would share info with interested parties about their boat. \u201cMost casual observers who hailed us always asked if we were \u00addoctors,\u201d McCormick says. \u201cHence, the handle (and eventually the two giant letters on its topsides) was soon shortened to just AO<\/em>. It was easier for everyone that way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While we\u2019re disappointed about losing the company yacht, we\u2019ll take this loss as a win. It\u2019s an opportunity to find an AO<\/em>-worthy replacement for new adventures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The goal of every race is to win, but we don’t need to win them all. Often the ones we lose provides the wisdom we need.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":78260,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"BS_author_type":"BS_author_is_guest","BS_guest_author_name":"Dave Reed","BS_guest_author_url":"","hydra_display_date":"","hydra_display_updated":false,"_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":"","_yoast_wpseo_metadesc":"","_yoast_wpseo_title":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","arc_story_id":"","arc_website_url":"","custom_permalink":"","arc_subtype":"","arc_exclude_from_feeds":false,"sponsored":false,"sponsored_label":"Sponsored Content","sponsored_display_label":false,"sponsored_image":false,"post_right_rail":true,"post_right_rail_ad_1":true,"post_right_rail_ad_2":true,"post_right_rail_ad_3":false,"post_right_rail_ad_4":false,"post_right_rail_recirc":true,"fixed_anchor_ad":true,"post_top_ad":true,"post_off_ramp":true,"post_taboola":false,"labels":true,"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":"","ad_settings_ads_on_this_page":true,"ad_settings_automatic_ad_injection_into_the_content":true,"ad_targeting":"","alternate_title_newsletter":"","alternate_content_newsletter":"","sponsored_url":"","social_share":true},"categories":[159],"tags":[2947,177,178,1498],"class_list":["post-78258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-racing","tag-print-summer-2024","tag-racing","tag-sailboat-racing","tag-wet-notes"],"acf":[],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}