Are you wondering why there are sailing images all over this website? Well, sailing is in my blood!! My maternal grandfather started sailing and racing boats around 1920 and passed his love for sailing onto his oldest daughter, my mother! My dad raced boats with his brother as a teenager in the 1930s. So, guess what the oldest daughter/granddaughter did? Of course, she learned to race boats and loved it!! So here are two of the leadership and life lessons I learned along the way.

1. I learned persistence: The first summer I raced regularly was at age 10. My grandfather arranged for an older teenager to race with me and begin teaching me some of the rules and practices of racing. We finished last or second-to-last in every race that summer. The teenage boy knew more about sailing than I did, but neither of us knew much about racing. After these races I would “re-sail” the race with my grandfather, and he would begin telling me the secrets of racing—like knowing when the tides changed and if they were incoming tides or ebbing tides during the race. If we knew what the tides were doing we could take advantage of the tides that were with us or avoid tidal currents that were against us. Gradually we did better when we paid attention to the tides and the tide changes. 
   
2. I learned teamwork: It is one thing to sail as small boat, like a sunfish, that only requires one person to handle it. It is quite another thing when you need two or more people to handle the boat. My sister and I had to learn to work together when we raced our 15’ planing-hull boat. We took turns at the helm (and being the “skipper”), so we had to learn to listen to one another and what we needed to do then. Setting or trimming sails often involved two of us—one on the mainsail, one on the jib, or both on the spinnaker (that’s the colorful sail off the bow of the boat, used going downwind). We had to learn to trust one another, respond quickly to changes, and do what the “skipper” said. It took time, but when we learned to work well as a team, we were winning more races.

But sailing wasn’t just about winning races. It was also a lot of fun: a week on a larger boat that slept 4-6, exploring different ports, sailing in Nantucket Sound or along the Maine coast. Or those days when we would go with our cousins and explore the smaller inlets around our area. From childhood, I have loved being either “in the water” or “on the water.”