25 years ago, my dad bought a 16’ sailboat for the family cottage and, with no previous experience, taught himself how to sail it. Almost certainly on the spectrum, he spent every sunny day tinkering with his rigging and studying sailing physics, just to eke out a bit more speed. He’d even go out on calm days to see if he could get it to move. So you can imagine how delighted he was when the cottagers on our lake decided to hold a regatta.
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Dad hoped he’d be able to pick up some pointers from the much more experienced sailors, but sadly, it was not to be. He beat the entire field by over an hour.
The regatta became an annual thing, and he won the next year too, by an even wider margin. So the rules committee made a change. Each year, the winner of the previous race would be classified in a higher boat category, to handicap them and give others a chance.
But Dad kept winning. After 8 straight years of not being able to catch him, the committee quietly asked him to retire. Dad asked if they would let him continue to compete if he chose a new boat. Knowing that he was already in the slowest kind of boat on the market, they said no. Not wanting to give up, Dad countered, “What if I get a windsurfer and learn how to sail that?” They said, fine, but they limited him to the smallest size they make.
At the age of 73, Dad won 4 more times on that tiny little windsurfer. When he died a few years ago, they cut up his windsurfer and gave a piece to each captain on the lake, just to be sure he wouldn’t be able to compete again.
They have since named the regatta after Dad, and to the best of my knowledge, nobody has ever come close to matching his slowest time.