Spinnaker start

One of my most vivid memories of times with Bronson came while racing sailboats. When I first started seeing Bronson’s older brother Jock I was recruited to crew on the International One Design that Jock was racing. I was assigned to manage the foredeck – to get the spinnaker up on the downwind legs. While I had done that job on S boats for many years I had not done it on an IOD. Bronson who had sailed with his brother for many years, took it upon himself to teach me about managing the IOD foredeck as he felt it should be run. Bronson was a man of many interests and when he developed an interest he immersed himself in it, studied up and generally became an authority on it. Once he considered himself an authority he happily held forth at length on the topic to any who asked questions. The day of the race in question Bronson insisted that I needed to practice spinnaker sets a few times before the start of the race. He critiqued each spinnaker set at length until on the third set we heard a gun. The race committee had begun the five minute starting sequence for the race, and we were above the line sailing under spinnaker toward all the boats getting ready to start. Bronson did not pause in his discourse as we crossed the line going the wrong way just in time to drop the spinnaker and start behind all the other boats. Despite the late start we did manage to make it to the first mark of the race first! I still have a very vivid memory of sailing under spinnaker towards a fleet of boats all coming at us while Bronson continued to lecture imperturbably.

Lisa Heyward