Growing up, I was a lucky lad. I rode my bike.
I hit, chased, and caught a ball on grassy playing fields. Then one day in 1961, when I was eight years old, my dad – an aeronautical engineer, a former U.S. Air Force navigator of a B-17 Flying Fortress, and a WWII prisoner of war in Germany – brought home a 14-foot fibreglass sloop. I didn’t know what to make of it. A boat?
Soon we were out on our first sail, my dad, mom, and older brother and I seated on the windward side in an 18-knot sea breeze. I had the jibsheet in my hand, my dad had a grip on the mainsheet. “Now we are going to tack,” he announced. We, the crew, exchanged glances and shrugs. “OK, Dad.” He pushed the tiller across with authority and the boat capsized on top of us. We didn’t know that when you switched the sails you had to switch the bodies, too.
The Linskey family spent the next 30 minutes dogpaddling around our
