Second Wind: A Sunfish Sailor, an Island, and the Voyage That Brought a Family Together

by Nathaniel Philbrick

Overview

A charming memoir of midlife by the bestselling author of Mayflower and In the Hurricane's Eye, recounting his attempt to recapture a national sailing championship he'd won at twenty-two.

“There had been something elemental and all consuming about a Sunfish. Nothing could compare to the exhilaration of a close race in a real blow—the wind howling and spray flying as my Sunfish and I punched through the waves to the finish.”

In the spring of 1992, Nat Philbrick was in his late thirties, living with his family on Nantucket, feeling stranded and longing for that thrill of victory he once felt after winning a national sailing championship in his youth. Was it a midlife crisis? It was certainly a watershed for the journalist-turned-stay-at-home dad, who impulsively decided to throw his hat into the ring, or water, again.

With the bemused approval of his wife and children, Philbrick used the off-season on the island as his solitary training ground, sailing his tiny Sunfish to its remotest corners, experiencing the haunting beauty of its tidal creeks, inlets, and wave-battered sandbars. On ponds, bays, rivers, and finally at the championship on a lake in the heartland of America, he sailed through storms and memories, racing for the prize, but finding something unexpected about himself instead.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780143132097
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/06/2018
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	414,510
Product dimensions:	5.21(w) x 7.98(h) x 0.63(d)

About the Author

Nathaniel Philbrick is the author of In the Heart of the Sea, winner of the National Book Award; Mayflower, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Bunker Hill, winner of the New England Book Award; Sea of Glory; The Last Stand; Why Read Moby Dick?; Valiant Ambition; and Away Off Shore.

Hometown:

Nantucket, Massachusetts

Date of Birth:

June 11, 1956

Place of Birth:

Boston, Massachusetts

Education:

B.A., Brown University, 1978; M.A., Duke University

Website:

http://www.nathanielphilbrick.com

Read an Excerpt

The Race
(Continues…)

---

Excerpted from "Second Wind"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Nathaniel Philbrick.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

Author's Note xiii

Prologue 1

Part I A Pool in the Stream 7

The Race 9

Up a Creek 18

In a Bog 25

The Green Gush 31

Love's Handiwork 39

Time Travel 43

The Suit 52

Steering Without a Rudder 54

Death Roll: Coskata 59

In the Cocktail Glass 66

Strolling Through History 70

The Jibing Hamster 73

Coastal Retreat 79

Dancing with Seals 82

Part II This Is Only a Test 87

Details 89

A Different World 93

Into the Maelstrom 98

Roll Call 103

Over Early 106

What Ifs 111

Part III The Swift Monster 113

Oedipal Sailing 115

The Prop 123

Pre-Cut 126

Power in the Pond 131

The Cut 135

Part IV Down the River 139

Reassembling Childhood 141

Logistics 144

Rollin' 149

The Deluge 157

Sail to the Sea 162

Part V Showtime 169

In Limbo 171

Taking Measure 174

Doppelgänger 179

The Ultimate Captain's House 185

Day One 190

Day Two 196

Day Three 204

Epilogue 211

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Second Wind

“Describing his races tack-by-tack and gust-by-gust, Philbrick crosses the finish line with sure-to-be satisfied readers interested in sailing and the personal life of this highly popular author.”—Booklist

Praise for Valiant Ambition:

"May be one of the greatest what-if books of the age—a volume that turns one of America's best-known narratives on its head."—Boston Globe

"A suspenseful, richly detailed, and deeply researched book about the revolutionary struggle that bound George Washington and Benedict Arnold together and almost disastrous dysfunction of America's revolutionary government that helped drive them apart."—The New York Review of Books

"Clear and insightful, it consolidates his reputation as one of America's foremost practitioners of narrative nonfiction."—Wall Street Journal

"Philbrick is both a meticulous historian and a captivating storyteller. The book has unforgettable novelistic details [and] also contains much astute historical analysis and argument. Philbrick sees Arnold not as the man who almost lost the war so much as the catalyst that helped to win it."—Christian Science Monitor

Praise for Bunker Hill:

"A masterpiece of narrative and perspective."—Boston Globe

"A tour de force . . ."—Chicago Tribune

"Popular history at its best—a taut narrative with a novelist's touch, grounded in careful research."—Miami Herald

"A story that resonates with leadership lessons for all times."—Walter Isaacson, The Washington Post

From the Publisher

2017-12-07
In a new edition of a book first published in 1999, the National Book Award-winning author recalls a "watershed" year in the early 1990s when he seriously took up sailing, a sport he had abandoned when he was in his 20s.At the time, Philbrick (Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution, 2016, etc.) was a stay-at-home dad working on a book about Nantucket, where he and his wife and two kids lived, while his old, "dirt-encrusted" Sunfish, the "VW bug" of sailboats, leaned against the house. Deciding to spiff it up and get back on the water, the author set a goal of competing in the 1993 Sunfish North Americans, to be held the following July "on a man-made lake in Springfield, Illinois." To get back in shape, Philbrick hauled the boat to one after another of Nantucket's many ponds and, during the winter, rented a boat to compete in a regatta in Florida. The narrative is wryly honest. The author performed respectably in Florida and Illinois, but he didn't blow the competition away in any last-minute comebacks. Instead, he took pleasure—and pain—in the experiences of sailing on a regular basis. He describes with infectious joy the experience of catching a stray bit of wind or surging over the waves in a harbor, and he relays with astonishment the luck he feels at having survived some questionable sailing choices. Since much of his sailing was done under adverse conditions—in water so cold that he had to break the ice to sail or in air so still that races were postponed because boats couldn't move—readers will feel lucky to share the experiences vicariously. The author keeps his chapters short and punchy, and his obscure sailing terminology to a minimum, while revealing much about his connection to a supportive if sometimes-skeptical family.An amiably witty book about sailing that will appeal as strongly to the uninitiated as to the addicted.

Kirkus Reviews