More good insight from Ray and Mr. Ed!

This year’s Fair Winds Regatta was action-packed, insightful, and touching.

If you’ve ever sailed on Deep Creek, then perhaps you’ve heard of our 30+ year veteran sailing instructor, Ed Peters — a.k.a. Mr. Ed, a.k.a. Eperphesant Ed. Regardless of what you call him, he taught us all how to sail.

That’s only a slight exaggeration when you consider the many “Mr. Eds” around the country who have spent their lives teaching sailing and growing our sport. Our Mr. Ed taught Carrie to sail, along with countless others, and only recently retired from teaching sailing — in his 90s!

So how fitting was it that Ray Gauthier got Ed back out on the water this year for a race in the Fair Winds Regatta?

And the story got even better.

Our very own William Andrews finished the regatta for him, sailing his first races at the helm and steering around the buoys with Ray and Tyler crewing. Ed, of course, undoubtedly deserves at least some of the credit for getting yet another junior behind the tiller of a racing sailboat.

But along the way, something else happened.

Ray and Tyler stumbled onto some pretty insightful tricks of the trade for teaching sailing.

William sailed incredibly well for his first races. At times, it was almost like he could have done it blindfolded. In fact, Ray pointed out that William had gotten himself completely turned around during one tack — literally facing backward as he struggled with switching the tiller from one side to the other.

The funny part?

His telltales were spot-on, and we were cranking upwind.

William wasn’t even looking forward!

We also noticed that our boom was seriously low because the main halyard wasn’t all the way up. Perhaps that’s a teaching trick Ray uses on purpose, because Ray is also a lifelong racing instructor — just without the formal title of “Mr. Ed.”

I digress.

But this is actually huge.

It occurred to Tyler that when teaching sailing in moderate winds, maybe we should worry less about having the boat perfectly tuned for maximum speed and instead intentionally make it easier for a new skipper to sail.

Put some Cunningham on. Maybe don’t pull the main halyard quite all the way up. Depower the main and let the boat track a little more easily.

Instead of giving a novice skipper a fully powered-up boat and then teaching them how to control it, why not make the boat easier to control while they learn?

William certainly gave us a pretty convincing demonstration. Even while facing backward and wrestling with the tiller through a tack, the boat was still moving upwind with the telltales streaming.

There’s probably a lesson in there.

So, if you teach sailing like Mr. Ed — or you’re a novice skipper yourself — keep that one in mind.

And here’s to Mr. Ed, Ray, William, and all of the sailors who keep passing what they know on to the next person who takes the helm.

Fair winds!