Building Blocks
It’s a Monday morning in late April, and students are pouring into Austin YC’s one-room schoolhouse, packed with banquet tables and folding chairs to seat about 100 sailors and coaches participating in the first longhorn edition of North U’s Performance Race Week, the immersive boot camp for keen amateur sailors. Bill Gladstone, the wizard of this whole operation, assembles his coaches for the first morning brief. I’m one of them, and we’ll each be paired with our charges in a few minutes, speed-dating style. For the 54 students, this week is all about getting better at sailboat racing. Attendees get Gladstone’s textbooks on boat-speed and tactics, as well as five days of 9-to-5 instruction, a season’s worth of starts, and a bunch of new and likeminded friends. They will be drilled,…