Your recent email mentioned that you wanted news of events from nonprofit organizations. I have one upcoming: my 75th birthday. Since retiring, I have certainly become nonprofit, and I’m as organized as my wife can make me.
Although I’m no Methuselah, I am well past my “best before” 3 score and 10. My best certainly came well before my 75th year. It might have been at age 10, when I managed to win a Turnabout race in Bar Harbor.
For those who have never had the pleasure of sailing a Turnabout, it is an agonizingly slow 9-foot catboat, once the preferred kids’ sailing trainer in northern New England. It didn’t train sailing skill so much as patience. It was stopped by any substantial ripple and took forever to get back up to speed, up to speed being about 3 miles an hour.
Looking back from the mountaintop of 75 years, I must admit that in one sense my early years of sailboat racing were not my best. I would abuse my young crew, taking all credit for doing well and blaming him or her for any failure. I was overbearing in victory and surly in defeat. I had much to learn about human relations.
I did learn, though, with much help from my family and years of waning testosterone levels. Now I am approaching my big event with equanimity. I have, at least temporarily, retired from sailboat racing. I’ve been told that the way to retire from the sea is to put an anchor over my shoulder and walk inland until some farmer asks what in hell is that thing I’m carrying. Although the Anchor would be much easier to carry, I won’t be lugging it inland. I’m happy here in Harpswell.
Win Fowler, Great Island
