Coop's Corner

Australian born, Joe ‘Coop’ Cooper stayed in the US after the 1980 America’s Cup where he was the boat captain and sailed as Grinder/Sewer-man on Australia. His whole career has focused on sailing, especially the short-handed aspects of it.

Similarly, at the one in Newport RI, 15 high school sailors spent the day getting instruction on several aspects of sailing big boats safely.

The ‘value’ we all get from it is intangible. It is neigh on impossible to put a dollar amount on the sunsets, beautiful days, a week at BIRW with your mates, landfall in Bermuda and so on that make up a pretty normal round of sailing adventures. Or frankly, the emotions we experience looking at a particular boat that moves us.

September 26, 1983, about 1700 on Rhode Island Sound. Unless you were sailing in the early 1980s or are an aficionado of international business capers gone south, there’s no reason why that time and location or the name Alan Bond ought to resonate. If either of the above criteria applies, the man universally known as Bondy needs no introduction. The fireball of a man who changed the course of sailing, at least the America’s Cup, died 02 June of complications following heart surgery.

After arriving home late from a coaching session in Connecticut that evening, I sat down to do some more detailed research on the Brunel crew from their website. One detail caught my eye: they have a woman as Team Sailing Coach. Not even the ladies on SCA have a woman coach. “I’d better talk with her,” I thought.

After several years of watching the high school sailing population around Aquidneck Island/Newport Harbor growing, it was obvious that Sail Newport was where the local high school sailing action was.

For 12 days from May 5 to the start of the transtlantic leg to Lisbon on May 17, the Race Village will be open at Fort Adams. To the majority of sailors/spectators, the VOR is a sailboat race, albeit a grueling circumnavigation, often at hair-on-fire speeds. But behind the scenes, the VOR is big money in action.

By any measure, sailing is a male-dominated activity. This is slowly changing. In over 35 years in the sail & boat game I had not had one woman call me to inquire about equipment for herself. Yet in the past 12 months I’ve received calls from four women, and after chatting for a few minutes it was obvious they were shopping on their own account for sails for their own boats.

It is rare today that one hears anything about sailors effecting jury-rigs after an equipment failure at sea and making it to land under their own steam.

There are several groups in Newport that were founded by people with a desire to do something about this trash in the ocean problem. I am sure there are many more, but these are four I interact with in Newport, RI.