Turnabout Racing

 By Jesse Deupree

The first boat I ever raced was a Turnabout, a wonderful small plywood catboat developed and named by a man called Turner. Turnabouts were as common as seagulls in many Maine harbors in the late fifties and sixties, and probably about as popular with other yachtsmen when flocks of them took over a harbor or channel. I began racing as crew, but soon graduated to skippering my family’s boat when my older brother moved up a size in our Yacht Club’s fleets.         

A Turnabout sails past  Basket Island

For me, sailboat racing has always been a means to an end. There are times when I have come ashore after a race and commented about a bird I saw, or the way the clouds looked, and received a blank stare in return from someone who may have been more concentrated on the race itself. I admit that if I had won the race in question, the conversation felt more enjoyable, but many of the lessons I have learned from racing (or sailing in general for that matter) have not been easy. “Winning makes you bigger, losing makes you stronger” comes to mind.
 
Those early races taught me about wind and water and whether to pass a given buoy to starboard or to port. I also learned about human nature.

I remember one race well. The course was set inside Monument, Negro and Wood Island – the islands that protected the small Turnabouts from the bigger ocean waves -- using three government marks: a black can, a nun, and a red and black can. 

The sea breeze had steadied and filled in, so the course was twice around a triangle, with a final beat to the finish at the black can that lay at the entrance to the outer harbor. I had taken the lead on the first two triangles. My friend Billy lay a decent second, but the race was mine to win.

As I rounded the leeward mark for the second time, I came across Maggie, who had snagged the mark on her first rounding and become quite stuck. Her mainsheet had caught the mark and pulled the end out of her hand, leaving the knot at the end of the sheet jammed in the block on the boom, beyond her reach, with her sail full and her boat pinned by the wind in a way she could not free. She was not in danger, she was not asking for help, but she was in a predicament, and I sailed right by.
 
Let me say that this story should carry no undertone that women don’t sail as well as men. Sailing was an equal opportunity sport even then. Boys and girls competed equally, no quarter asked or given, especially because we were young enough that other considerations had not occurred to any of us. If I thought anything, it was that Maggie should use her knife, which we were all required to carry, and which most of us kept in a pocket of our shorts, secured with a lanyard, as a badge of professional honor. Besides, I had never been shown how to ask for help.

To my surprise, Billy stopped and set Maggie free. I would ask him what he was thinking that day, but that would require that he remember the incident the same way, and if he didn’t, more would be lost to me than gained. I remember her smiling at him a year or so later during our first game of spin-the-bottle, so perhaps he had an early inkling of those other considerations. Whatever his reasons, his delay meant that my victory was assured, and I set out on a long starboard tack to the layline to the finish.

Billy, smart enough to try something other than following me home, set off on port, which immediately cast him against Monument Island, requiring a series of tacks along the shore. I don’t know at what point he realized he was on to something, I know I didn’t until it was far too late. The fact of the matter was that he had sailed out of the now strengthening tide, and had discovered a tactic that became standard practice for us all in short order. My long final port tack to victory became a slog to second place as Billy came roaring into the finish on starboard, avoiding the tide until the last minute, and easily taking the win.
 
If he felt satisfaction that day, he deserved it. Virtue may be its own reward, but not only had he saved the damsel in distress, he also got the prize. In hindsight, things turned out fine for me as well. I got two lessons, one of which was which side of the course to favor on the outgoing tide.