Sailboats

Friday Night Lights Without Football.

- Dennis Caprio

No one heard the cork pop, but everyone on the floats witnessed the enthusiasm, rising like bubbles in a flute of freshly poured champagne. Sixty Rhode Island students from Rogers High School, Prout School, Middletown High School and Portsmouth High School gathered at Sail Newport for an evening of round-robin team and fleet racing, which they call Friday Night Lights.

Kate Wilson, the founder of this high school sailing program and the principal race officer, issues instructions from the deck of a RIB. “The substitution rule — the goal is to get as many kids racing, so coaches feel free to substitute as much as you like between races,” Wilson says. “The starting and finishing line is right here, right off the dock.”

FNL alternates between the Newport Yacht Club on Long Wharf, a short distance up the street from America’s Cup Avenue, and Sail Newport at Fort Adams. Weather often determines which venue is used, and on Day 1 of the 2017 series, the gods frown on Newport, issuing gray skies, a southerly wind and rain. Everyone is dressed in foul-weather gear fit for rounding Cape Horn.

“When a hard southerly comes in,” says Joe Cooper, sailing coach at Prout, “we have to use Sail Newport.”