Won one, lost one | Sailing world

in the same space, a year ago, I shared an epiphany I’d had after taking my freeze season on the last day of competition, due to some avoidable mistakes. “Stupid is as stupid does,” I said. I wouldn’t let it happen again, I promised.

The offseason is long, though, and it’s during this time and space that we forget the commitments we make to ourselves and our teammates as we debrief over a beer, glimpse the falls, wash the sheets, and put the boat away for next time. There is always a better season next year. So during my offseason I thought long and hard about why I had been prone to high-risk, low-reward tactics and aggressive starts. I always tried for difficult to win races regardless of the length of the season, which begins on New Year’s Day and rolls through mid-April. There are many races, and many points to save between A and B, so stop trying to win races. See how it goes.

With this mantra in mind, I arrive early on opening day, eager to get the new season underway. My arch-rival and perennial fleet champion, FJ Ritt, is already in the club. He is busy preparing the club’s fleet of N10s (aka Turnabouts). There is a special atmosphere on opening day, and I’m sure he felt it too: a rebirth, a new beginning, uncertainty and anticipation. Corny, I know. But it’s true.

I step to the water’s edge, looking across the slate gray harbor full of winter sticks and mooring balls. It’s light northeast—the one direction I fear. I have flashbacks from that stupid season-crushing race that ended my last season.

Race 1 then goes something like this: I get a good start, and I’m in a close second place on the downwind stretch. And what do I do? Split immediately at the lee mark and sail into a hole. It’s my damn reaction to go the other way and pass. I don’t even bother to look over my shoulder before I hit a tar pit. I deserve the 11 I get as the first point on my card. Thankfully only one drifter raced that day and with the 11th I’m sent packing to the B fleet for the following weekend.

However, I have learned my lesson again, and in the following days of competition I am focusing on climbing into the top five. I’m winning a few races along the way, but more importantly, I’m getting better at not doing stupid things. When I am immediately behind, next to or near the lead boat I am patient. If the opportunity to make a pass comes up, I’ll take it. I stop forcing the win. I’m good with second (or third or fourth)I tell myself as I follow FJ, or speed Missy Hudspeth across the finish line. I accept this.

On 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 really is mine to lose. From then on, Ritt and I fight with an unspoken force – two old men going at it in thin little white boats. It’s our Sunday afternoon raison d’être, and for the rest of the season I stick to my rule: Keep it cool; keep the score. Nothing crazy. No big deal.

It works for me, and in the 23rd and final race of the season I somehow get off to a dream start; full speed, on the line, giant hole to leeward, and launched to a season-ending high. Hallelujah.

It is my gain to report, but I also have a loss worth sharing with long-time and the most astute readers of this paper. You in this group may remember a series of stories long ago written by Sailing worlds former staff about a 26-foot fractional sloop named TO.

This particular pocket yacht is an Albin Express 26 One-Design, designed by Peter Norlin and built in the mid-1980s. It’s kind of like a J/24 but different. Former senior editor and de facto historian Herb McCormick was on hand when the paper’s owners acquired the boat and added it to the employee benefits.

The Another opinion the origin story dates back to the early 1980s, when Murray Davis, publisher of Cruising World, acquired it as a perk for the magazine’s staff to sail and enjoy, McCormick says. “It was actually a bit of a mean gesture. Davis had wanted to trade advertising pages with J/Boats to score the hot new J/24. When he was rebuffed by the Johnstones, he turned to Swedish builder Albin, and suddenly Cruising World was manager of a new Albin Express, a popular one-design on lakes in Sweden. The idea was to smash the J/24 whenever the opportunity arose.”

But there were problems with Murray’s plan, McCormick says. “First, 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, Albin’s blade jib was a serious liability upwind versus a J/24’s overlapping genoa. Someone got crushed okay, it was us.”

For more than three decades, TO served its purpose as the ultimate perk: Corporate paid the shipyard’s bills and brought great joy to employees – harbor cruises, first dates, music festivals, race weeks and PHRF beer canning. It was an editorial project boat for testing new gear and do-it-yourself stories, a Frankenstein’s monster of half-finished projects.

The Cruising World staff would claim it and pile their crap aboard: piles of anchors and useless boat stuff. Furling sails was not their thing. Sailing world editors Dan Dickison and Tim Robinson once whipped TO in true form on Wednesday night. It was stripped to bare bones and lost its luster due to neglect. With company X, Y or Z’s name on the registration, no one was ever willing to put their own money on it. Sweat equity, sure, because it was bottom grinding and seasonal cleaning, but that’s it. Simple boats don’t need much, and this was the beauty of it TO. Ugly in its old age but a fine sailboat in all conditions.

As Cruising World and Sailing worldeditors downsized over the years and the companies eventually closed the Newport office, I became the sole and final caretaker of the company yacht. And over the past few years I have taught many beginners and friends the finer points of sailing through the harbor. I have cruised the lower bay with family and sailed its stretches solo. My wife eventually started her own ladies’ night, a cockpit full of schoolteachers on summer break, slurping in the harbor while sipping cocktails. It served its purpose and we did the right thing TObut like other employees before me, I never sunk an extra penny into it.

Last summer, TO was certainly showing its age: its gray tops faded and scuffed, its white deck mottled and chalky. I’m embarrassed to admit that I used an entire roll of double-wide Dacron sticky back to hold the jib together. The interior was no better – salty and damp. No bilge pump, no battery or work lights and a Home Depot bucket for the ladies. My 13 year old refused all my offers to sleep on board because the interior was “gross”.

Last fall, when I was preparing the boat for a looming hurricane, I tugged at the jib halyards and it wouldn’t furl. The upper swivel was stuck. I pulled hard on the tie rod again, and it came down, okay – the whole rig along with it. The front strut had broken during the tong change. Wrecked at mooring. Now it was a new low for TOwhich we towed north a few weeks later and pulled out for the season at Safe Harbor New England Boatworks.

The farm boys must have guessed TOs fate, backing its transom into the bushes in the dirtiest corner of the yard, where it now sits, presumably home to Safe Harbor’s resident raccoons. At that time I had intentions of ordering a new standing rig and buying a jib. But the Frostbite racing season arrived, along with the winter regatta, and the health visits ceased.

The newspapers were sold to our current owners last fall and in the due diligence it became known that “we” own a company yacht and that it too must be divested. I offered $1. They declined, so I thought that was the end of it until another email came much later, from our former company’s legal department. They had read the storage agreement, and it was their intention not to pay the late fees and let Safe Harbor auction it off.

The thought of losing TO weighed on me when I considered buying it off the block. It’s part of my Newport identity, a ship of memories and comic adventures, a good time. My daughter half begged me not to give TO away, and I tossed and turned for several days, but I had already made up my mind: time to move on. I can’t afford to maintain it properly, and Safe Harbor has exceeded my salary.

Which brings us back to the boat’s original name and to our historian, Mr. McCormick, who informs us that Another opinion was the title of one Cruising World column where boat owners would share information with interested parties about their boat. “Most casual observers who hailed us always asked if we were doctors,” says McCormick. “As a result, the handle (and eventually the two giant letters on its top) was soon shortened to just TO. It was easier for everyone that way.”

Although we are disappointed to lose the company yacht, we take this loss as a gain. It is an opportunity to find one TO-worthy replacement for new adventures.