Sailing Experience Matters

In the annals of “Sailing Fails” there lies the successful outcome of a bad situation. While sailing the York River on a magnificent day with his wife and family, Bob Benton recalled his sailing experience from long ago.

“We had 20 people on a 27-foot sailboat, if you can imagine that. Seven of them were adults, the rest children. We went out on Lake Michigan and had a good day sailing. Then we saw the storm approaching. The water turned black in the distance.

“Suddenly the skipper ordered all the kids below deck and instructed the adults to stay topside and to put on our life preservers. The wind hit us hard and he put us all on one rail to balance the boat against the wind. Then the way the wind blew made it faster to sail in than motor. He thought we could beat the storm, and we did. Once we got back to the dock, the storm hit us hard but we were safe. I was 17 years old, long ago.”

Some memories get seared in the mind.

That afternoon, I took Leigh and Barry Lazos out for his 60th birthday. “I lived in Gloucester County for 20 years beginning in the 1980s,” while working for NASA. “I saw them put in the new bridge and saw a lot of growth.”

Today he and Leigh saw a Navy patrol boat stand armed off the Naval Weapons Station pier as we coasted downriver on the spinnaker. It seemed like overkill, but Leigh pointed out that the nation is on a higher alert these days. As the wind dropped, we slowly coasted past. The patrol boat moved along the perimeter as if running interference between us and the pier. I had radioed earlier and was well off the 600-foot limit, but it’s like Leigh said.