The Wisdom and Experience of Tony English
When Tony English started sailing in 1960, he was 10 years old. His parents kept a boat in Horseshoe Cove, under the North Tower of the Golden Gate Bridge. Tony and a pal sailed a wooden El Toro. “Our instructions were, ‘Don’t leave the harbor.’ One day we decided we’re gonna sneak out and see what happens. We sailed out of the harbor and got hit by a blaster and knocked over. We’re drifting on the ebb, heading for Hawaii.” The kids’ dads took out a boat and rescued them and the El Toro. The other boy’s father said, “This boat stays on the dock for the next month.”
In 1978, Tony and his wife Linda bought a derelict Piver 25 trimaran in San Leandro and spent three months restoring it. They found space for the boat in Pittsburg. “We already had one child. In ’79, our second was conceived. We said, ‘Let’s spend a couple of weeks in the Delta before our next daughter is born.’ We took it up to the Meadows. It didn’t perform very well. I got hold of Norm Cross, the designer of Cross trimarans. We designed a fin keel that worked out great.” They used a Moore 24 rudder as a template for the keel.
Tony raced in the J/24 fleet for about eight years, at a time when 30 boats were on the line. He taught in Richmond Yacht Club’s junior program, starting with beginners in El Toros, helping kids get comfortable sailing around buoys. “The next three years were intermediates with Mike Schaumberg. Mike’s job was to make things fun. My job was to be the disciplinarian. I was probably the softest disciplinarian ever. I would cruise up next to the kid that Mike was having trouble with. We would sit and talk for a couple of minutes, and then I’d let them get back into it.”
Later, Simon Bell recruited him to help teach the Laser kids. “Simon said, ‘The Turkey Day Regatta is coming up in Southern California. How are we going to deal with the kids here?’ I said, ‘Why don’t we take them with us?’ The club had a trailer we could get eight Lasers on. Simon’s trailer would carry his and another boat, so we had room for nine kids. We would convince one of the parents to tow the Laser trailer down, and I would tow a coach boat. We would rent a house. The kids had to cook dinner, clean up, take care of each other’s boats. We made sure they stayed segregated — boys and girls — because these are teenagers with raging hormones. When we left the harbor to go to the starting area, they would hook up on a tow line, and there’s me as the mother duck and all these little ducklings behind me. I really enjoyed that. We would have a debrief between each race. It was a great learning experience for them. And me.”
Tony left the junior program to devote time to racing with Dennis Surtees on the Antrim 27 Abracadabra, an intense program. “Never mind the national championships that we won, it was a great crew. Everything clicked. Even when we didn’t want to win, we won. In one series, we didn’t have to sail the last race, but we went out anyway. Dennis said, ‘Let’s stay out of everybody’s way and let somebody else win.’ We rounded the weather mark first. I don’t think we set a kite. We went to the bottom mark and back to the weather mark, still in first. Never figured out how that happened.”
One year, Tony crewed in the Newport to Cabo Race on another Antrim 27, ET, with Todd Hedin, Jim Antrim and John Liebenberg. One night when Tony was driving, he asked Jim, the navigator, “Do you know where in the world we’re at?” Jim said, “We’re in the middle of the frickin’ ocean.” Five minutes later, Jim popped up and said, “Look at the horizon.”
“This is the blackest night I’ve ever seen,” says Tony. “You could pick out a few stars. Jim said, ‘See in front of us where there’s no stars? We need to jibe.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because that’s an island.’ We were headed straight at Guadalupe Island. If we hadn’t jibed, we would have run right into it. Guadalupe is 200 miles offshore. Everybody else was, like, 50 miles offshore.”
Tony began sailing in Pacific Cups in 2008 because Hedin’s wife, Liz Baylis, couldn’t make the race. “Todd called and said, ‘Would you like to sail Pac Cup?’ I said, ‘Of course I would.'” Buzz Blackett joined them. “I haven’t been on a Pac Cup yet where the first three days weren’t miserable. Once the wind backed, we were able to set a kite. After that it was sheer fun.” Tony sailed his second Pac Cup four years later on ET, which he had bought. In 2014, he raced doublehanded on Dan Natake’s Moore 24 Absinthe. “The third day out, I plugged in the laptop, but nothing happened. The charger had an internal short. We couldn’t get GRIB files. I called my daughter. ‘Can you look up this chart on NOAA? Don’t tell me what to do. Just tell me what you see.’ I’d draw a weather chart by hand. We looked like we were going to be able to scoot through two high-pressure zones. One morning, she said, ‘Dad, you’re screwed.’ The two highs had joined. The only way through was straight through.”
Tony’s retired, but not completely retired. He has volunteer commitments, and a couple of years ago, he saw an ad in Latitude for a delivery driver. He applied, but someone else had already taken the job. “About five months ago, I got this phone call. ‘Are you still interested?’ I said, ‘Yeah, why not?’ It’s another day that gets me out of the house. I have Richmond, Berkeley, Oakland, Emeryville.” Now you know a bit more about that guy handing over bundles of Latitudes in the East Bay.
Tony English was a recent Good Jibes guest. Learn more about his sailing life here.
Plus, read more great sailing stories in Latitude 38’s August issue.