Coop's Corner

By Joe Cooper What was it like when you learned to sail? This is a question put to me by one of The Prout School Sailing team kids a few years ago. I had to stop and think about the answer for a moment. There was nothing like “sailing camp” or instruction for kids in Australia, in the late 1950s through most of the 1960s. It was very much “stick ‘em in the boat and push ’em…

I don’t go to church. Or rather, I do not attend church on a regular basis, as a parishioner. In fact, while thinking about this column, I tried to count the number of times I had been into a church, as distinct from going to church. I got to about ten times. This count does not include four months in Italy after the 1982 Sardinia Cup, but that’s Italy; more like ten a week. My parents were…

Thirteen-year-old Wilson Meunier Mott is a rising eighth grader at Monsignor Clark School in Wakefield, RI. For his class service project, he had a corker of an idea: Sailing from New London to Stonington, CT in his Opti, solo, to raise funds for the New England Science & Sailing Foundation’s Fund a Student Scholarship Challenge, so that New London school kids can get time at NESS. I spoke with Wilson not long after he arrived at the…

I spend a decent amount of time working at the Cruising Club of America’s Safety at Sea Seminars. If you have done one, a hands-on one, you will know there is an awful lot of “stuff” thrown at you in eight hours. In the wider sense, it’s unrealistic for folks to hoist everything aboard. Like I tell the new kids joining the Prout Sailing team, after I’ve been pontificating for an hour early in the season, “If…

I have not told anyone about the theme of this month’s essay, nor have I asked if it’s OK to write on the subject. I have thought about one or the other or both for about a week. All the while, each afternoon we gather to sail, watching, mostly, the smiles and good cheer returning. For most, not all, for some still show the pain they carry. I’m fortunate in that I have a lifetime of hiding…

I usually have a decent idea of what I want to talk about here, a couple weeks before putting bytes to silicon. This month’s column was intended to be on the memories we get from our sailing. This is, after all, the biggest and most important takeaway from our sailing adventures. But then there was Pen Duick losing a hand overboard nano-seconds after starting the last leg of the Ocean Global Race, aka Whitbread Redux. This was…

Not necessarily because I come from a family of scribes, though it cannot hurt, I have been musing on writing a book. For some time in fact. One wise wag once remarked, “If you’re going to be silly enough to want to write a book, write about what you know.” Following that wisdom narrows my content field dramatically. Astrophysics is out, though my uncle was just that. Economics? Nah. I’ll write about Sailing. The boats, the adventures,…

By now, hopefully everyone who is engaged by personal challenges, long distance offshore sailing, and helping foster more women in sailing are among the 323,000 followers (as of 1 February) of Cole Brauer on Instagram (instagram.com/colebraueroceanracing). If not, ya outta be. The development – and considerable success of – solo around the world non-stop for the everyman and woman races, like The Golden Globe Redux and Global Solo Challenge (Cole’s race), are starting to crack the American…

Perhaps the most famous example supporting the general proposition that solo sailors are nuts is the Donald Crowhurst story. Crowhurst was an entrant in the original Golden Globe Race, sailing a trimaran, Teignmouth Electron. The Wikipedia entry alone is a fascinating read. With the passage of time, the original verdict related to his proposed depression, and or any other mental state, but at any rate the falsifying of his logs and jumping off the boat to avoid…

One of several remarks I make to the assembled throng, at the first meeting of the Prout Sailing Team, usually in late February, has to do with the amount of time sailing takes up. I mention this in concert with the admonition to use our time on the water wisely. The background to these remarks has to do with the proposition that generally sailing is not the kind of sport where you can come home from school…