Second Wind by Nathaniel Philbrick

Author:Nathaniel Philbrick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2018-03-06T05:00:00+00:00

What Ifs

AS WE SAILED out to the course on Sunday, I felt numb. Here I was, into my third and last day of the Midwinters and I was in the precise middle of the fleet. Two months earlier, I would have been horrified at the thought. So why didn’t I even seem to care?

The wind was light. Since they wanted to sail three races, the race committee got things off quickly. I managed a reasonable start in the middle of the line and came in twentieth.

The next race marked the first time that I felt like I might be able to sail at my old level. I finished eighth and was, for a change, not losing boats toward the end. Bob Findlay won, virtually assuring him the regatta win, and the race committee decided to go for one more.

My expectations were high, but at this stage I just didn’t have what it took to break into the top five. I finished fifteenth. Once again, it was not a bad showing in relation to the overall standings, but it was not the phenomenal finish I had been yearning for.

After packing away all my stuff and venturing back to the clubhouse, I was astonished to see that my day’s racing had taken me from fiftieth to twentieth overall! I did a few “what if” calculations. If I hadn’t been over early in the fourth race, I’d have ended up around twelfth overall. If I had maintained my third-day average throughout the series, I’d have cracked the top ten.

I’d been through a three-day process of spiritual breakdown and reconstruction, a necessary catharsis if I was going to approach the North Americans in four months with any hope of doing well. I now had a whole new laundry list of goals and objectives, and above all, I now realized that the ponds on Nantucket, each with its own peculiar demands, were very appropriate practice waters. It was not strength and endurance I needed, but sensitivity and smarts.

Unfortunately, Alan was not going to be able to sail in the North Americans. We both agreed that seeing each other had been the highlight of our Midwinters. Neither one of us had done as well as we had hoped, but as Alan reminded me, “This time we didn’t get stuck in an elevator.”

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