Member-only story
Racing as a Team — World Headquarters of Me pg207
Colorful companion to my memoir The Incompetent Psychic
One bright, breezy Thursday evening in May I walked down to the fuel dock with my pack of gear and harness as the racing fleet was sailing out of the marina. By now there had to be be new people who hadn’t hear the old stories. Sure enough, a spiffy little B fleet boat I had never seen was short-handed and swung by the dock for another sailor. I jumped aboard. They were an amiable crew of respectable, 30-something husbands and dads, captained by Evan.
Evan was an easygoing airline pilot who enjoyed the exhilaration of pushing things right to the edge of crashing without the danger of taking a planeload of passengers down with him. There wasn’t anyone rude, mean or crazy onboard and I sailed with them as just ‘one of the guys’ for many good seasons. — From Chapter 11
Any small ability I have to function as part of a team was learned on sailboats. A racing sailboat team adheres to a strict military/ industrial/ sports structure, as opposed to the loosie goose sole proprietor/freelance format that is my life. On a racing sailboat one person gives the orders and everyone else obeys, there being little or no time for debate.
