THIS IS GOING TO HURT

Everyone makes mistakes on the racecourse-that's how we get smarter and faster. But sometimes, as the saying goes, you just can't fix stupid

- DAVE REED

NO matter how good the beer tasted on my lips or how glorious the fire-breathing spring sunset was through the windows of Newport Yacht Club's second-floor bar, I couldn't muster an iota of joy. If I could've reached my backside in this very moment, it would have been covered with shoe prints from kicking myself for doing what I can unequivocally say is the dumbest thing I've ever done in my 40 years of sailboat racing.

Allow me to set the scene. It's late March and my Turnabout Frostbite season is winding down. I'm knocking on the top of the overall season scoreboard, with third or even second place mere points out of my reach. To shuffle the deck and get me there, all I have to do is pull off a few keepers. There's no more room for a shocker, and on this fine Sunday, I'm fresh off the plane from a week of coaching at North U's Performance Race Week in St. Thomas, where I've been drilling fundamentals into my students and doing the same for me by osmosis. I'm feeling sharp. I have a confident sense of purpose.

In the first prestart of this season-saving race day, I stand up in my little white dinghy at the one-minute horn and look up the course to plot my first move. The light wind is blowing out of the north, shooting unpredictable zephyrs through the buildings. I'm not a fan of the northerly, but I've seen this movie before, and I've learned the hard way too many times this season: Left is best; right is death.

The seconds tick down as I hover alone near the pin on port tack. I eat up a few more boat-lengths toward the pileup near the race-committee boat, tack with 15 seconds to go, sheet in, cross the line, tack again, and point my bow at the orange tetrahedron as I cross the fleet. That'll work just fine.