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Winning The Race by Trickery — World Headquarters of Me pg209–210
Colorful companion to my memoir The Incompetent Psychic
During one gusty evening club race, the well used spinnaker on Evan’s boat split a seam from head to belly. Back on the dock it was three against one to replace it with a fast, new sail instead of fixing it one more time. The one against was Evan, who would have to pony up three grand. To emphasize that his tired, old sail should be retired, I molded parts of it around my body and saw how the triangle points would make a bra and the rest of it a skirt. Our practical captain tried to convince his sailmaker to give it one more fix, but he agreed with us it was a goner.
With the help of a dressmaker I project runway’d the big, dead spinnaker into a ballgown with a forty foot hem. I wore it to the awards ceremony the following fall when we took the season’s trophy. The win wasn’t entirely due to our spiffy new custom sail There were some brilliant brains on the boat — a tech engineer, a scientist, a 747 pilot and, bringing up the rear… an artist.
The evening before the final race of the season we had a devious idea, and went out to see if it could work given the variables… — From Chapter 11
Twenty years later and I still get an evil little thrill recalling how our crew…
