We were with some friends for dinner recently, and I noticed our hostess had put a small plastic box on a shelf near the table and plugged it in so it faced our meal. Asking what it was, I received a breezy, “Oh, it’s just a negative ion generator.”Schedule

The story of Tess Lloyd, a 20-year-old Australian sailor with Olympic dreams, is a true fairytale. In 2012, she was in a regatta when she had a terrible collision with a windsurfer, leaving her unconscious in the water. Her crew held her head above water until rescuers arrived and rushed her to a hospital where doctors found she had a fractured skull and severe brain swelling.

The U.S. Coast Guard has, with an eight-page document published earlier this year, thrown out more than 2,600 years of maritime history. A tradition that dated back to 600 B.C. is toast. Gone. Zip.

 It is 1966, and astronaut Buzz Aldrin is on the Gemini 12 mission into space when the electronics fail. He saves the mission and makes the rendezvous with another spacecraft by using an instrument that mariners have used for centuries.In 1970, Apollo 13 lost all power, calling “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” Commander Jim Lovell used that same instrument to navigate the stricken spacecraft back to Earth. What was it? 
A sextant.

 There is one thing I’ve always loved about sailing, and it’s not the wind or the freedom or the spray or the excitement of racing. It’s that sailing is one of the last truly democratic sports.

 I am the poster boy for retrofits. While thinking about this issue, I realized that I’ve only owned two new boats in my entire life. 

 I think I take disappointments fairly well. When I found there was no Santa Claus, I managed to pick up the shattered pieces of my life and move on. Same with the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. I was going to start this column by shouting, like the crazed newscaster Howard Beale played by Peter Finch in the movie “Network,” that “I’m mad as hell and not going to take this anymore.” But then I had an epiphany. I’m not mad at US Sailing, the U.S. Olympic Committee, the International Sailing Federation, or the International Olympic Committee. I’m just disillusioned. I thought they set a higher standard to protect sailors. I was wrong.

For shoreside spectators, it had all the makings of an epic race. The two dinghies were side by side, their masts flexing in unison as dark blue wind lines danced across the water from the tree-lined shore. Both skippers were focused intently on the luff of their sails, neither looking at the other and neither giving an inch. It was clearly a well-established rivalry reminiscent of great races fought during the Olympics or the America’s Cup.

I’ll tell you right now what this column is about: Don’t do as I did, do as I say. As She Who Must Be Obeyed would happily agree, I’ve been a complete idiot many times in my life and I now realize I’m very lucky to be alive.

 As a kid, I had a conversation with my mother almost every weekend after I departed in the morning, not to return until dinner time.  

Let’s just let Larry keep the America’s Cup. Really, if it means so much to him that he’s willing to buy a yacht club, rewrite the rules to gain a huge advantage and even create a team willing to cheat, well, just let him have it. 

Sailors competing in the 2016 Olympics in Brazil are going to have an excellent chance of not only bringing home lifetime treasures such as gold, silver and bronze medals, bu

Over the past few years, there has been a groundswell of fretting about the future of sailing. The number of participants is dwindling, some say, and produce statistics to prove their point.