Posted by Bob Gregson on July 6, 2014:

Early in plebe year I badly wanted some way of getting away from the constant pressure and harassment of M-1 company life, and somehow heard about the sailing team/club, which sounded like a possibility of brief escapes out onto the water. Knowing absolutely nothing about sailing I joined and was lucky to be teamed with Curt...he knew his way around the terms and the rules and what you did with the tiller, lines, and sails on those little Tech Dinghies in which we competed. He was a good teacher and patient with his crew---me---whose only job was to shift from one side of the forward area to the other at the right time and in the right manner. We actually did fairly well in competition. The one sour note was when we capsized in the Hudson on a cold, windy race day in late winter, weighted down with oilskins, and could not right the boat in the freezing water. Other boats were also knocked over at the same time and the Engineer recovery boat took a long time, it seemed, to get to us. Curt and I stayed calm during that fairly dangerous situation, encouraging each other, and managed to save the tiller to the great delight of the team captain---a couple of plebes were probably expendable but those tillers were hard to replace if lost! Curt and I got some laughs out of that...later. He was a good man and I treasure that time on the team as his crew, leading to my acquiring a sailboat in later years.

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