to re-form Robbie Haines’s 1980 team, along with bowman Rod Davis, Moose eventually signed on six months later. But they’d already lost valuable time. ‘I wish I had just said, yeah, Moose, Brad and me, let’s go. It was right there.’ He shakes his shaggy mane once again. ‘You get sick.’ He hadn’t prepared for the crushing
disappointment of losing: ‘Your image is always you’re going to be successful.’ Instead, ‘our world ended.’ So for a while Dave Perry went ‘sailing
cold turkey’ – except for an annual trip to the Congressional Cup. ‘It was competing at the highest level that I’ve always loved doing,’ Dave explains. ‘And if you just go out and do it now and then you won’t compete at that level.’ Instead, he stepped away from the
water and dived into a fresh challenge: athletic director at a private high school. ‘I figured my whole life had been four years of high school, four years of college, four years of Olympic effort; I’ll do four years at Green Farms Academy… I was there 21 years! Best job I could’ve had.’ As his family grew (he and Betsy have a
son and daughter) he did stay involved in sailing as a volunteer. He organised the Youth Champs and joined US Sailing’s Appeals Committee (he’s now the longest- serving member, ever). And whenever he talked to kids disappointed by their own performance he told the tale of his own US trials defeat in 1984. ‘How we tried really hard, didn’t win, and here’s all the good stuff that happened afterwards. I’m the sailor I am now because of that.’ Along the way Dave developed his own
sports philosophy: ‘focus on performance, not outcome. Don’t talk about winning and losing, talk about how you’re going to do something better.’ He asks if I’ve read The Inner Game of Tennis, and I say yes. ‘That book changed the way I lived.’ He says it taught him that ‘what you do doesn’t define who you are.’ Which reminds me that we skipped
right over his own publications, so I ask how those came to be. He explains that Winning in One Designs is basically a compilation of 40 magazine columns written during two Olympic campaigns, plus countless clinics. ‘I’d take something from my seminars and make it an article. People would say, “Dave, your articles are almost like you’re sitting there talking to me…” That’s because I was.’ Four of the columns were about specific
rules, so during that disappointingly quiet summer of 1984 (‘turned out I had some time on my hands!’) Dave broke those out into Understanding the Racing Rules of Sailing. Ten years later he published Dave Perry’s 100 Best Racing Rules Quizzes – also a compilation. ‘So I’ve got three books out there, but I’ve really only written one!’ I’d brought along my own copy of Win-
ning in One Designs for Dave to sign, and as I extract it from my bag he shares one of his proudest moments. ‘In 2011 I was walking through the [Weymouth Sailing
Academy] parking lot at the pre-Olympic event and there were Iain [Percy] and Bart [Simpson] working on their Star boat. Iain goes, “Hey, you’re Dave Perry! Aren’t you the guy who wrote the book about bang- ing the corners – I loved the bird on the sign, “Welcome to Cornersville… pop 1.”’ Dave beams. ‘Then Ben [Ainslie] came
over and they’re telling me how they were given the book by youth coach Jim Salton- stall when they were “ferrets” and they loved it. “Your book was so influential for us,” adds Ben. I loved hearing that!’ He eventually figured out that both Jim Saltonstall and Harold Bennett in New Zealand had given Winning in One Designs to all their sailors, extending Dave’s legacy around the world. (Dave would later go on to work with Percy at Artemis Racing in 2013 and 2017.) In 2006 Dave left his job at Green Farms
Academy and returned to sailing and coach- ing. Since then he’s worked with America’s Cup (‘a think-tank for the brightest people in the world’) and Olympic teams as rules adviser and coach. He’s also done a lot of team racing and match racing. Now 65, Dave claims he’s ‘just trying to
stay relevant’. He’s hoping to go to Tokyo 2020, with Team USA; otherwise, he doesn’t plan ahead much. ‘I’ve always sort of lived in the moment… right now, here’s what I want to do. As long as you’re doing something good and productive… it’s worked out. ‘I just love helping people,’ he adds.
‘That makes me happiest.’ So it’s no surprise to hear that rules talks remain on his to-do list, along with ‘match racing, and more time with Bets…’ His family is clearly what he’s the most proud of, so that seems like a fitting place to wrap up our conversation. As we stand to leave before ‘Yik-Yik’
gets too busy with afternoon practice I notice the perpetual trophy right behind my seat is named the ‘Dave Perry Sports- manship Award’. ‘Huh!’ he says, clearly pleased – and surprised. Turns out associ- ating Dave Perry with sportsmanship isn’t just a Yale thing. In 1992, when Dave retired as chairman of the Youth Champs, US Sailing named that regatta’s sports- manship award after him. In 2006 Green Farms Academy put his name on their own sportsmanship trophy. ‘And then I got the Van Alan Clark sportsmanship award [from US Sailing],’ he adds. ‘I’m very proud of trying to help people be success- ful in a competitive sport, but in a way that’s respectful. To feel like I’ve had an impact on a generation of young people.’ ‘Or five or six,’ I kid. He laughs. ‘I coached JJ [Fetter] when
she was 12 years old, and now I’m coach- ing her kid! It is a sport for life…’ Later, at my desk, I open Winning in
One Designs and read: ‘To Carol… Hike Hard, Sail Fast, Be Smart… and when all else fails… Bang a Corner!’ So now, when trying to explain how to win sailboat races, I have a whole new quote to borrow. q
Filling in the blanks Dave Perry grew up sailing at the Pequot
Yacht Club in Southport, Connecticut, winning the Clinton M Bell Trophy for the best junior record on Long Island Sound in 1971. While at Yale (1973-1977) he was captain of the National Championship Team in 1975, and was voted All-American in 1975 and 1977. Other racing accomplishments include:
1st, 1978 Tasar North Americans; 5th, 1979 Laser Worlds; 1st, 1979 Soling Olympic Pre-Trials (crew); 3rd, 1982 Soling Worlds; 1st, 1982, 2006, 2008, 2011 and 2015 US Match Racing Championship; 1st, 1983 Star South American Championship (crew); 1st, 1983 and 1984 Congressional Cup; 2nd, 1984 Soling Olympic Trials; 1st, 1988 and 1992 Knickerbocker Match Race Cup; 1st, 1994, 1999 and 2003 Ideal 18 North American Championship; 1st, 2007 South American Match Racing Championship and 1st, 2010 Detroit Match Racing Cup. Dave has led hundreds of US Sailing
instructional seminars in over 50 one design classes; directed US Olympic Talent Development Clinics; coached the 1981 Youth world champion team; and given seminars in Japan, Australia, Sweden, Argentina, Brazil and Canada. He has been the Youth Representative on the US Sailing Board of Directors and Chairman of the US Youth Championship Committee, and has served on countless other US Sailing committees. He is currently a member of the US Sailing Appeals Committee and a US Sailing National Judge. In 1992 he was voted into the Sailing
World Hall of Fame; in 1994 he received an honorary Doctorate of Education from Piedmont College; in 1995 he became the first recipient of US Sailing’s Captain Joe Prosser Award for exceptional contribution to sailing education. He served as the rules adviser to the Swedish 2007 America’s Cup challenge and Artemis Racing in 2013 and 2017 and to the US Olympic Sailing Team in 2008 and 2012. He is the author of three successful
books on sailing: Understanding the Racing Rules of Sailing, Dave Perry’s 100 Best Racing Rules Quizzes, and Winning in One Designs
SEAHORSE 53
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