The Academy Insider Podcast - Your Guide to The Naval Academy Experience
The mission of Academy Insider is to guide, serve, and support Midshipmen, future Midshipmen, and their families. Through the perspective of a community of former graduates and Naval Academy insiders, this podcast will help you learn about life at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis. Through our shared experiences, Academy Insider guides families through the anxiety and frustration caused by lack of understanding, misinformation, and confusion. This platform is designed to better relationships between midshipmen and their loved ones. This podcast is not affiliated with the United States Naval Academy, the United States Navy or Department of Defense. The thoughts and opinions are exclusively those of your host and his guests.
The Academy Insider Podcast - Your Guide to The Naval Academy Experience
#055: Navigating Leadership: Insights about the Naval Academy's Sailing Program with Andrew Shea
Have you ever wondered how sailing can shape future Navy leaders? This episode promises to show you the behind the scenes of how the United States Naval Academy's comprehensive sailing program trains midshipmen. Join us as we welcome Andrew Shea, a 2013 graduate and former skipper of the Navy varsity offshore sailing team, who shares his remarkable journey and the unique experiences that define the sailing program.
We'll explore everything from the initial sailing training every plebe undergoes during Plebe Summer to the exciting opportunities within the Offshore Sail Training Squadron (OSTS) and the varsity sailing team. Learn how seasoned Navy officers and dedicated coaches mentor midshipmen, helping them develop their skills and potentially pursue sailing at a competitive level. The intense camaraderie, spirited rivalries, and the vibrant sailing community of Annapolis all play a crucial role in making the Naval Academy a standout in collegiate sailing.
Discover the leadership and adventure that come with sailing up the coast, navigating through night watches, and participating in regattas, including the prestigious Kennedy Cup. Hear inspiring stories like one transition from a baseball recruit to a national championship-winning sailor. We'll also delve into the winter off-season curriculum and the incredible opportunities of sailing on high-performance boats. Tune in to understand how the skills and experiences gained through the Naval Academy sailing program contribute to professional achievements, including the impressive career paths of former team members.
The mission of Academy Insider is to guide, serve, and support Midshipmen, future Midshipmen, and their families.
Grant Vermeer your host is the person who started it all. He is the founder of Academy Insider and the host of The Academy Insider podcast and the USNA Property Network Podcast. He was a recruited athlete which brought him to Annapolis where he was a four year member of the varsity basketball team. He was a cyber operations major and commissioned into the Cryptologic Warfare Community. He was stationed at Fort Meade and supported the Subsurface Direct Support mission.
He separated from the Navy in 2023 and now owns The Vermeer Group, a boutique residential real estate company that specializes in serving the United States Naval Academy community PCSing to California & Texas.
We are here to be your guide through the USNA experience.
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Welcome to Season 2 of the Academy Insider Podcast. Academy Insider is a 501c3 nonprofit organization that serves midshipmen, future midshipmen and their families. At its core, this podcast is designed to bring together a community of Naval Academy graduates and those affiliated with the United States Naval Academy in order to tell stories and provide a little bit of insight into what life at the Naval Academy is really like. I hope you enjoy it. Thank you so much for listening and reach out if you ever have any questions. The Academy Insider Podcast is sponsored by the Vermeer Group, a residential real estate company that serves the United States Naval Academy community and other select clientele in both California and Texas. If I can ever answer a real estate related question for you or connect you with a trusted Academy affiliated agent in the market which you're in, please reach out to me directly at grantatthevermiergroupcom. You can also reach out to me on my LinkedIn page, grant Vermeer, and I'd be happy to respond to you there. Thank you so much, and now let's get back to the episode. Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Academy Insider Podcast. In this episode, we talk about all things Navy sailing. When we talk about unique niche aspects of the Naval Academy experience, this is one of these things. How many other colleges across the country have a sailing program, a legitimate varsity sailing program and just sailing programs during plebe summer that every plebe will get to experience, and summer training blocks for offshore sailing? So if you want to learn about the sailing program at the Naval Academy and what a plea will go through in learning about sailing and what summer training opportunities there are in terms of sailboat sailing, then check out this episode. I'm joined by my buddy, andrew Shea, class of 13 graduate and at one point was the skipper of a boat for the Navy varsity offshore sailing team, and he shares his insight and talks about what makes being on the sailing team at the Navy and part of the sailing program just a truly incredible opportunity. From the experiences to the network, to everything in between. It's a really great episode and it's a fun origin story of how he ended up going into sailing. It wasn't something that he had originally planned on doing and I think there are a lot of midshipmen out there that are looking for something to become a part of and really enjoy, and I think this could be a great fit for so many people. So if you have any questions about the episode. Feel free to reach out to me. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy it. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:All right, hey, everyone, and welcome back to the Academy Insider Podcast. Andrew, thanks so much for taking the time to join us. For anyone who doesn't know, andrew and I grew up together, actually, and he was like my number one mentor when I found out I was going to the Academy. Him and his parents took my mother and father and myself to the Boatyard Bar and Grill in Eastport, which started my absolute love and obsession with that place and unsolicited opinion but it is the best crab dip in all of Annapolis. Stand by that. So hear me out there. But you know, andrew, thank you so much for taking the time again to join us today. You might tell us a little bit about yourself and your experience at the Naval Academy?
Speaker 2:Yeah, grant, thanks. Thanks for having me on. It's you and I haven't seen each other in person, I think, since you were before your plea days, so it's pretty wild that our paths are crossing in this capacity, but I'd love to see what you're doing with the podcast and happy to be on to talk some Navy sailing today. So my background I'm a 2013 grad of the Naval Academy.
Speaker 2:I grew up in a Navy family. My dad was a career Naval officer. Flew was a P3NFO. I followed him into the family business, so I was in fourth company, member of the offshore sailing team, political science major. He even got voluntold to be on brigade staff my first year, which is the thing I don't like to tell a lot of people, but here we are.
Speaker 2:So I commissioned uh, went the aviation route, flew the mh-60 romeo. After two years in pensacola, uh spent a year in san diego at hsm-41 doing my my follow-on fleet replacement pilot training. Uh then ended up, drew the, drew the short straw and ended up at hsm-37 out in kaneohe bay, hawai. So I got to live on the beach with five good buddies in a great house on Lieutenant Pay out in Hawaii for three years. Spent 18 of those 36 months, though, away from Hawaii, with those workups on the West Coast, two deployments one to the fifth fleet off areas the Persian Gulf and then one to the seventh fleet South China Sea and then, after that, flew nearly a thousand hours and went a different path.
Speaker 2:So did not go to the flight instructor path and went to actually Washington DC, where I joined the Navy's Office of Legislative Affairs, where I got to represent the Navy, our sailors and Marines in the halls of Congress as a liaison officer in the House of Reps. So in that capacity, we educated members of Congress and their staffs on what it means to be in the Navy, what the Navy needs, what our budgetary priorities are. Got to travel the world along the way and then recently separated from active service in September of 2023. And I'm now at Notre Dame get my MBA as I transition to my next career in business, and I'm actually in the office in my MBA summer internship right now in Boston, love it.
Speaker 1:Well, impressive, impressive guy For anyone listening, super impressive guy and just genuinely a great human being. I'm gonna dive deep into the fact that you mentioned that you're part of the offshore sailing team, and so this episode, as you mentioned, is all about sailing, and I wanna start off for all the Plebe parents who may be listening as their kids are going through Plebe summer is address the role that sailing plays in Plebe summer and in the Plebe experience during that first summer, and so, as we'll discuss in the episode, there are different types of sailing, different teams, etc. But what is taught during Plebe summer in this basic foundation of sailing, what are we teaching the plebes about sailing and what boats are they using to do this kind of instructional period with sailing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so sailing is the foundation of the Navy and it's one of those things that they still teach at the Naval Academy, which I think for you know, for good reason. So it's BST, basic sail training, is what the plebes do. Oftentimes it's the favorite part of plebe summer because it's, as Grant mentioned on a previous call that we had, it was the first time somebody was nice to you during plebe summer.
Speaker 2:Because the people that teach it are our recent graduates, their ensigns and second lieutenants who are waiting to go to their fleet assignment, whether that's the basic school for Marines or flight school for future aviators. So it's usually those people who are teaching the plebes to sail, and oftentimes these instructors themselves just learn to sail during their time at the Naval Academy as well. So it's a pretty relaxed environment. Your plebe will go out, a crew of three to four with one instructor. They'll go on what's called a Colgate 26, what we've rebranded at the Naval Academy as a Navy 26. So 26-foot sloop, and they start on the dock learning the parts of the sailboat, what side's port, what side's starboard, learning the difference between the bow and the dock, learning the parts of the sailboat, what side's port, what side's starboard, learning the difference between the bow and the stern, really getting to those fundamental maritime concepts that, even though they'll someday be driving a warship or they'll be flying a helicopter, those basic relative motion skills that they learn on a sailboat, will translate to their experiences in the fleet. And while not everyone will become a lifelong sailor from your Naval Academy Plebe sailing experience, you're going to get to go out and learn how to, you know, go upwind, go downwind, tack the boat, jibe the boat all these different sailings things you see in movies or in, you know, in common vernacular. They're going to go out and learn and, you know, make decisions for themselves on the water.
Speaker 2:So it's it's a pretty cool experience, I would say. Not everyone is passionate about their time sailing Annapolis. Summers can be hot and windless at times, so a lot of times you're out there just baking, getting, getting the sunburn. But it is a pretty nice respite, especially if you get one of those lucky instructors who is just like hey guys, you want to hang out for an hour and I'll sail you around. It's honestly the perfect break from flea tourism, as I'm sure you remember, Grant 100%.
Speaker 1:And one of the notes on this, al, I had to ask you is like how much do you actually learn? And it's so funny that you said that, because it really is dependent, because sometimes, quite literally, that TAD ensign will just be like do you guys want to learn how to sail or do you just want to like sail? And so many times as a plebe, you're just like yeah, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna sit, I'm just gonna sit here, just like chill, uh, so it was great. And I mean that stuff is always crazy because, again, you would always get like the biggest smile as a plebe when they're like all right, like getting your, getting your, getting pt grab your sunscreen, grab your boat shoes and your ball cap, right, like this is your uniform.
Speaker 1:You have a plebe summer sailing uniform.
Speaker 1:You got to put on that silly little ball cap and your boat shoes and your PT gear and you start marching out there and uh, I just, it is like you're saying it's a great reprieve, um, from some of the stress of plebe summer to go out there.
Speaker 1:And I'm sure for many people though, it does kind of spark that interest in sailing, um, and so you know, I'll probably caveat this here first by saying, you know, at the end of plebe summer sailing, your kids probably not going to be able to, like, take you out sailing. We don't like, we don't learn that much, uh, during that plebe summer set. But what it does do is potentially kind of like we're saying, spark or inspire someone to want to learn more, continue sailing. And so I do want to shift that if, if, uh, if a parent receives a letter saying, wow, I really love sailing, or all these things, I just want to explore all the opportunities to continue sailing at the Naval Academy. And so can you tell us a little bit about Navy sailing? You know, is it? Are there teams? Are they varsity sports? Are they clubs. Is it men's, women's co-ed? You might've just given us a rundown and structure of the Navy sailing program.
Speaker 2:Yeah, grant. So Navy sailing as a whole is probably the gold standard for collegiate sailing amongst the service academies than the maritime academies. So the umbrella of Navy sailing is commanded by a Navy O5. It's a post command shore tour where it was usually an aviator would get a come. They get a great big office, the Naval Academy. That's honestly better than the Supes office in my opinion, and they preside over kind of four distinct programs under Navy sailing.
Speaker 2:I'll start with the more kind of general purpose sail training stuff and then work towards the varsity, higher performance and the spectrum. So they preside over basic sail training, like we talked about. But BST also continues into the academic year as well. It's just it encompasses plebe summer sailing too. So if your plebe is interested in recreational sailing, not joining a team but getting what's called their B qualification, they can go and continue to get education on how to sail and get certified so that they actually can take their parents out if they were to visit on a fall or a spring weekend and the weather was under a certain wind, know, wind limit. So that is, that is always an option. But for those, those plebs that are kind of more interested in the sport, there are some other avenues that they can do. So for summer training they can do what's called osts, the offshore sail training squadron, which I believe has been renamed csts now, but I'm an old guy so I'm going to say OSTS. It's the same thing though. So your summer training, usually your youngster year.
Speaker 2:So after you finish plebe year, for one of your training blocks you're, you'll get either YPs or sailing is kind of the breakup and you'll get assigned to a Navy 44, which is these beautiful Pearson built custom sailboats to the Naval Academy. They're bulletproof, they're midshipman proof is what we would say and like you can run them into things and those things are not going to sink Like they built those, they overengineered those things, like a lot of things in the Navy to be midshipman proof and training vessels so that people can make mistakes on them, because when you get to the fleet the threshold for mistakes isn't quite quite as uh as forgiving. But you can make mistakes while you're at the naval academy. So while I never did osts, because I spent most of my time in my summers with the offshore sailing team, I know there are a lot of people who would do their osts summer. They'd go do all their training sails out of annapolis and they'd sail up to newport for a week and then they'd sail home to annapolis and you to do that for a month. Over the course of your summer you learn navigation, you learn seamanship, you learn celestial navigation. So you're actually taking the stuff you learned in seamanship and navigation in the classroom during your first year and getting to apply it on the water in real time. And there's a passion will get ignited for a lot of mid shipment during that summer and we'd actually have some people try out for the offshore sailing team after that first summer because that that spark was, uh, was kind of ignited.
Speaker 2:So, moving on to more of the varsity program, so yeah, there's two collegiate, intercollegiate sailing teams at the naval academy. So there's the, the ic team, which is dinghy sailboat racing, which, when you think traditional college sailing, all the Ivy League teams, all the traditional East Coast teams like Georgetown, st Mary's College of Charleston they all have dinghy sailing teams which they call IC sailing at the Naval Academy. The head coach of that team has been there I think 16 years now. His name's Ian Berman. He's a georgetown sailor, local annapolis guy that that came up through the ranks of sailing instruction, took over the navy navy sailing team and I think navy sailing, the ic team, has 15 national championships. So you asked if navy sailing is a powerhouse in college sailing. Historically, both in the offshore and ic side, they're an absolute juggernaut. But it's. It's kind of kind of funny in the NCAA sports world of the Naval Academy they kind of exist in the background like cause. Everybody really knows what's going on at the sailing center, um, but it's, it's a very proud tradition of, of sailing excellence that's. That's represented by both teams. But the I know the dinghy team just won a national championship a few years ago. They won the co-ed national championship, which is the men's and women's mixed cruise national championship. That was in Annapolis and they won that on home turf. So certainly a big deal.
Speaker 2:But for that team, pretty much everybody that's on that team gets recruited beforehand. They were junior sailors. They were junior sailors growing up. They sailed in the orange bull regatta, they sailed in all these these big time youth sailing regattas and they were recruited, just like you were for basketball, or somebody is for the football team, sure, where there is an opportunity to get onto that team though, which is always, I think, a funny story. Grant, you probably remember that you were already a varsity athlete.
Speaker 2:But the sports day where you had to go visit all the teams in Nimitz Hall, the first couple weeks of pleb summer in Nimitz Hall, you know, first couple of weeks of plebe summer. Well, I showed up at that thinking I was going to walk on the varsity lacrosse team at Notre Dame. I was like this hot shot, honorable mention Rhode Island lacrosse player and I like walk in my lacrosse bag to that day. And I go up to the lacrosse coaches and they're like who are you? And I'm like I, I guess I'm not playing lacrosse.
Speaker 2:The naval academy had my lacrosse bag in my plea, my plea room, the rest of the academic year, which is a running joke. But the ic team coaches will walk around at that sports day. They'll find really small girls and really small guys under a certain weight and they'll walk up to him and say hey, do you know anything about sailing? And a good friend of mine, alex assuncion, and uh, I had a coach walk up to her. She had never sailed in her life and but she weighed like a hundred pounds and they're like do you want to be on a varsity sport? And she's like yeah, yeah and they're like okay, come out for the ic sailing team because they'll they want certain crew weights on their boats sure there there have been men and women who were just like a coxswain and crew.
Speaker 2:They were the right size and by the end of their senior year they were an all-american crew on the ic sailing team, that's so crazy it just shows that, like a good skipper and a good coaching staff can take somebody who's never known anything about sailing and turn them into an american all-american crew on IC team, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 1:So I've.
Speaker 2:I've given the IC team their due, but I'm an offshore guy, I'm a, I'm a big boat guy. So you know, some of my, some of my best friends, especially in flight school, were IC sailors and there's a great rivalry and camaraderie between the two teams. But they're they're definitely two separate and distinct worlds. In the sailing center, the offshore, the offshore team is, is unique in that we don't recruit, we have. We have no pull and admissions. Uh, there's no blue chips, there's. There's nothing like that. You can have a conversation with the coach before you come. But the offshore sailing staff gets what they get with the, with the incoming class, which is, you know, pretty impressive and it goes to show why we've been such a successful team. When I was my four years on the yard, we won the top GPA three out of our four years for academic teams. Was the basketball team ever sniffing at that award? No, because we would have. It was kind of interesting because everybody got in on their own academic accord. And then you got a lot of people that were technically minded, that enjoyed the boats and the machinery of it. Yeah, so I think we had like half of our team was aerospace engineers and naval architects. Yeah, so you just had all these. Like I think every year we had a trident scholar on the team, like it was ridiculous. Yeah, so like every year we won that award. So it's like a very high performing team. That was a point of pride for the offshore team.
Speaker 2:Sure, you get these, you get folks who you'd show up at tryouts. So let me, let me go back to the beginning. You'd show up in tryouts for the offshore team and it was. It was just like any other sport showing up in an intramural during plebe summer hey, it's sports period, where do you want to go? And you'd show up at at sailing tryouts and some people had just done a couple of days of basic sail training as a plea. I'm like this looks interesting, let's do it For me.
Speaker 2:My background was I grew up sailing with my family. My parents had a 22-foot sailboat that I knew the basics. I knew how to sail but I'd never raced. But there are also plenty of people on the team who had no clue how to sail but were just smart, hardworking, capable people who were willing to learn. And and those people made the team. It was Nancy. Nancy Haverland, who is is the coach to this day of the junior varsity team. She was looking for potential. So if you showed up and you had a good attitude, you showed that you were pretty smart and you, you know, were fun to be around there.
Speaker 2:It was a very good chance, more often than not, that you're going to make the offshore sailing team at the naval academy. It's the second largest team on the yard behind the football team. So there's there's. There's plenty of room for everyone, which is which is great. In your first year you'd spend it on the junior varsity and you'd sail those colgate 26s just like the plebe sail. But then you'd start getting into race skills. You get more proficient. Then eventually you'd work your way up to your first summer of sailing, where you you get put onto a crew and you'd go out and race Um, you know, go out and race these big races on the Eastern seaboard. But, grant, I could. I could keep talking all day. So if you have any questions and I'm happy to get into summer training and what competition looks like and everything like that- yeah, no, we'll definitely jump into that.
Speaker 1:I actually want to just jump back to summer training before we kind of follow along with the varsity athlete side, which is, like you're saying, going into your youngster year you probably gonna have the opportunity to choose between YPs and OSTS or CSTS If you have the opportunity. Again, I'm one of the unique cases. Again, for basketball specifically, we would take summer school. Instead we had a mandatory summer school because, again, as a varsity sports team, they're like no, you need to be here on land in Annapolis for a full summer block so we can practice. And so we did summer school and practice. Then we did our fleet cruise and then we had leave.
Speaker 1:So I then we like uh, had leave, so I never got to do either yps or osts. But yps this term yp stands for the yard patrol boat and it's like it's like take a ship but just like shrink it right, like it looks like a ship but it's it's tight quarters, there's not a lot going on, and it's just it's not the same thing as like getting to learn how to sail and like literally getting to sail your boat up to newport. Spend a week in newport, like be able to do that as part of summer training, if you have the opportunity to choose between yps and osts, like do osts right? Like I've only had people talk about, like what a cool experience that was and people come back from yp crews being like that was horrible exactly.
Speaker 2:I've never had to do yps except in class during the ac year, but it's. It's a great point because it's like, sure, sailing might be the thing your grandfather did, or it might not look the most exciting and it might be that guy from caddyshack that like wears his you know double button, you know coat and you know says funny words, but it is. It is truly, and this is how I would sell it in the interviews to people during this whole process of getting out. It was a leadership laboratory within the leadership laboratory of the Naval Academy, because on the offshore team I got to take people out by myself. But as a crew on OSTS you stand watch sections and you sail through the night. You don't pull over and anchor or pull into a dock for the night. You're doing watch sections.
Speaker 2:You have two coaches or two volunteers on board who are trained adults, experienced sailors, who manage the watch sections, who manage the wash sections, but you as a sophomore, a youngster at the Naval Academy, get to be sailing up the coast of New York pitch black stars out at night, that's the only thing. Three foot seas and it's you and four of your friends sailing the boat up the coast. It's a pretty cool adventure that you don't really get a lot today, at this age it seems like, and it's one of those things where it's a pretty unique opportunity. So, yeah, do OSTS. There are times where it's probably dull, but once you get offshore and you actually truly get off the coast and the training is over, that's where you go. Okay, this is a lot better than YPs are sitting on the yard, sure.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. And talking about the fact that the offshore side doesn't recruit and everything and you mentioned that it's a big team, there's a lot of space. If a plebe is interested in actually trying out for the sale team and they don't have any prior experience whatsoever, you still recommending and encouraging them to actually go out and ask or talk to a coach or try and do it. It sounds like there's a JV team too. I think you mentioned that. Like I would just, if you could just take one more minute just to you know, talk to directly to the plead who's like I have zero sailing background at all. I don't know what I'm doing, but it's interesting and I'd like to continue.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so I'll. I'll bring up a case study. So one of my best buddies, steve Jenke 2013, he's Marine F-35 pilot now. He was a baseball recruit at the Naval Academy but he threw out his arm as senior spring of high school no more baseball. So he showed up first day of sailing tryouts as a guy who'd never sailed before you know, maybe had sailed during summer camp, something like that but no sailing experience.
Speaker 2:He went from making the team after tryouts he sailed his first year on JVOS to the junior varsity offshore sailing team, you know, got pretty proficient at it pretty quickly and then by his senior year he won the offshore sailing national championship. So in four years he went from a washed up high school baseball player to a very decorated offshore sailor who I think won his class in the newport to bermuda race and then won a kennedy cup and had like an exceptionally decorated career. He's actually in the navy, like the naval academy sports hall of fame now, which I didn't know until a recent visit to annapolis and I was like holy cow steve jakey's in the hall of fame yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So to that plea, to that plea. Who's like? Sailing looks interesting, but I I've never sailed. If you have a great attitude and if you're, if you got into the Naval Academy, you're here. Let me know, let you know a little secret. You're pretty smart, you're going to be able to figure out sailing and you could be like Steve Jenke, who goes on and wins a national championship in four years, which is incredible, yeah no, so I mean super cool, right, and I appreciate that, that insight in perspective.
Speaker 1:And I just want to now shift again. We talked about winning national championships and the fact that this is a like this is a real team, right, and team in a varsity sport. Um, what's your guys' sports period like? Right, like when you're going to to sailing practice. Is it like there's the same thing every day during sports period? Like, right, like when you're going to to sailing practice. Is it like there's the same thing every day during sports period? And what do you guys do? Right, like, what's the full time? You take the boats out every day? Is it classroom instruction? Is it like, what do you? What do you do?
Speaker 2:yeah. So what do we do is a great question, because you would probably see all the offshore sailors walking in their blue, ever khaki wearing their life jackets in the hall, which always drove me crazy. As the team captain, I was like guys, stop wearing your life jackets inside, it's a bad look for the team. We already get enough of a hard time from all the other football players and basketball players. You remember, I see you laughing.
Speaker 2:But what does practice look like? So, for three hours every day, five days a week, I got to get off the yard and go sailing in the sailing capital of the East Coast, which is a pretty incredible opportunity. And people often ask me like, hey, did you enjoy the Naval Academy? I'm like, yeah, I enjoyed the Naval Academy because I got a break every day, like the people who'd played intramurals, like that would be. That would have been exhausting for me. Like, get it. Getting to go out and practice and get off the yard daily on a sailboat and we go mix it up with local boats. We get a race in local races during the week. That opportunity was made my Naval Academy experience.
Speaker 2:So, but at the foundational level, what's this practice look like?
Speaker 2:So early season in the fall, say you're now a youngster and you're going to get assigned to a fall boat and the fall is our championship season.
Speaker 2:So that's when we're sailing Navy 44s, which is the one design 44-foot long, big blue, beautiful sailboats that you see if you walk past the basin we build out those crews with a mix of firsties, second class and youngsters, and those crews then compete for the right to sail in all the collegiate regattas that the Naval Academy hosts and that we travel to over the course of the fall.
Speaker 2:So it depends on the year and Coach Dehansky, my coach at the time, would do it a bunch of different ways. He would say, okay, this week, you know, it's a sail off for who gets to compete in the McMillan cup. Or hey, we're stacking a boat and all of our best sailors are going on. But we're always looking for kind of the right, the right answer for the solution. It changed year by year but it created great competition within the team, like it was like having a three first teams and those first teams competed each week for the right to sail in the regatta that weekend and the Naval Academy would host three major championship regattas every year on the Navy 44s and those were kind of the things we prepared for throughout the fall. That was, that was the main focus.
Speaker 1:But honestly this Interesting. No, sorry, go ahead continue.
Speaker 2:The spring season was my favorite season because that's when you're preparing for your summer training. But the big buildup for the fall was the Kennedy Cup. So the Kennedy Cup's been hosted at the Naval Academy since, I think, 1965, when John F Kennedy, our former president, was a big sailor and following his death, somebody donated a trophy in his name to be the national championship for collegiate big boat sailing. So that's our Stanley Cup, that's our Vince Lombardi trophy, that's what you care about in college big boat sailing, and we worked up throughout the fall to compete for that regatta.
Speaker 1:Interesting. And how often are you competing? So you mentioned, like that's the big one. Are there any other like big, major regattas or events that you're looking forward to? And how often do regattas happen? Like, how often are you competing when you're doing this? And I guess the follow-on too is when it's an away regatta. How long are they? What's the travel like? Again, as varsity team, are you getting bussed up there naval academy buses and staying in hotel? Like what's the travel situation associated?
Speaker 2:with it. So so more often than not any of our regattas in the fall in annapolis were a local circuit. So we would have our three invitationals that we would host. There would be a, so we'd race collegiate races where we raced other schools, but then we'd also race out in town against the doctor who owns a 45 foot sailboat in Annapolis. So you got exposed to two different worlds. You got the collegiate sailing world but then you got the network of Annapolis and that whole different experience.
Speaker 2:So before a lot of my peers then their juniors and senior years experienced Annapolis, for all that it was worth, I was already experiencing this kind of cool, undiscovered side of Annapolis before anybody else because I was involved in the sailing community. So, for instance, every weekend in the fall in Annapolis there's a regatta that's put on by the three yacht clubs in Annapolis Annapolis Yacht Club, severance Sailing Association or Eastport Yacht Club and those groups they host regattas. Navy would enter us in those regattas. It would compete against everybody out in town, everybody from up and down the East Coast that would come to Annapolis to race. So oftentimes, like I didn't march in parades, I didn't go to football games because I was competing on Friday, saturday, sunday or usually Saturday Sunday, um. So I slept in the hall most weekends in the fall, but usually most of my Saturdays and Sundays especially my junior and senior year, when I was like full on varsity sailing, uh were spent on the water in Annapolis.
Speaker 2:And at times you're like, oh, it's a bummer, I'm missing out on X or I can't go to College Park with my friends tonight, but that was our championship season. So, just like when you were in season for basketball, it was the same mindset. And then let's see. So another race we always look forward to in the fall was the Oxford race, which is a down the bay race where, say, we had six crews of midshipmen, so everybody on the team, sophomore and up, was assigned a crew and we'd we'd race down the bay. On second thought, oxford was a springer out, but I'll talk about it anyway. We we'd sail down the bay and in our boats against people from Annapolis, from the Chesapeake Bay area, the finish line would be in Oxford.
Speaker 1:Maryland.
Speaker 2:You'd stay the night at Tread Avon Yacht Club. Usually there was like a bash after the fact, an award ceremony, a cookout. You got to interact with all these different people in life and then you'd sail back the next day and it was kind of like this big like sleep away camp for for sailors, uh, which is really fun Cause it's kind of a highlight of the semester. It felt like going on an overnight with the basketball team kind of thing, where hey, we're, we're a team and we're we're going away for the evening.
Speaker 2:And as a sophomore that was always a youngster that was always a ton of fun because you didn't get a lot of nights off the yard as a youngster, so it was a great excuse to be on movement order as a, as a varsity teammate, going out and going to a new place and I mentioned, you know, getting to interact with local yacht clubs and local, local sailors. Offshore sailors will often say that we peaked in our sailing careers in our twenties because we get to sell these, these high performance Navy Navy not high-performance Navy 44s these high-performance donated boats that people will donate to the Naval Academy at 2021.
Speaker 2:I skippered a half-a-million-dollar sailboat as a 21-year-old. That's pretty sweet, and now, as a 32-year-old, I'm barely sailing now and I'll never be able to afford a boat like that till I'm 60 kind of thing. So we peak. We peak early, but it's. It is an exceptional experience, and the fall championship season is like the foundation of what we do, and then we'll talk for hours about the spring season, because that's where the training and the leadership really starts to happen on the team sweet and um, you, obviously I know what it is for sure, but just in case there's someone who's listening, who doesn't, you might explain like how, like, when you keep using the term again, we use the term regatta and race.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what are we? What are we racing Like? Where are we racing to? Right, like, how long is the distance? What's the timeframe associated with something like this? Like what would be considered an event? And if, like, someone's in Annapolis visiting, like, can they just stand on the side and watch you racing? Like what's the, what's the spectator aspect of it and what's, like the actual race?
Speaker 2:So sailing has never really caught on as a TV product, cause it's not really a spectator friendly sport, like you're not sitting down on Saturdays and watching sailing like they used to back in the 1930s sport, like you're not sitting down on Saturdays and watching sailing like they used to back in the 1930s. Um, so how a sailboat race works. So this is what the dinghy team does and what the offshore team does. When it's a regatta in Annapolis you say what's called a windward lured race course. So there's an upwind mark and a downwind mark. So if the wind is coming from the top of the screen, you above for the radio folks from north. There are two marks, two buoys in the water and you sail two laps around those buoys. But a sailboat can't go directly upwind, that'd be a powerboat at that point. So a sailboat has to tack back and forth in a zigzag pattern, back and in the most fastest and efficient way possible, reading the wind shifts, reading the currents, and the person who sails that course best in the most efficient and strategic manner usually will get around that course first. So that's a traditional windward-lured sailboat race.
Speaker 2:Where the offshore sailing team differentiates themselves is we do offshore distance racing, so kind of point to point races. So that Oxford race I mentioned, you'd race out in the Bay, you'd round the Thomas Point lighthouse, you'd head down 80 miles down the Bay, you'd make a left-hand turn into the, into the river, and then you'd hit Tred Avon Yacht Club. For the Annapolis to Newport race that we do in the summertime. It's I might make a fool of myself publicly, but a 500 or something mile race where you race down the Chesapeake Bay, make a left-hand turn into the Atlantic ocean and then you sail all the way up the coast until you hit a lighthouse in Newport. That's the finish line. Yeah, so it's. It's truly a wide, it's like a cross country race where they're like hey, get from point a to point b however you want, uh, and honor these, honor these waypoints along the way that's that's offshore sailboat racing interesting.
Speaker 1:All right, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you for that genuinely and then one more like point that's worth mentioning is there's there's one design racing, which is what the ic team does. They all sail the same sailboat, so every boat's even, and it's truly the skill of the sailor that differentiates the offshore team. A lot of times, what will happen? We'll race handicaps. So just how golfers have handicaps where you might be a better golfer than me, so you owe me strokes. It's the same thing when different boats are racing against each other. Your boat owes me five seconds a mile and another boat owes me 15 seconds a mile because I'm the slow boat and they they correct it for time over the distance of the race.
Speaker 1:interesting all right, that's fascinating, I appreciate it. You can share that fun fact later at a happy hour I'm gonna, I'm gonna feel important now be like yeah, I know how regattas happen, the the races, yeah, yeah, the wind patterns. Up and down. Yeah, up and down.
Speaker 2:Windward and leeward. That's all you need to know.
Speaker 1:Greg. Windward and leeward. Thank you, that's what I was trying to come up with. Windward and leeward, there we go, all right, but as you mentioned all talking about a spring season, I want to briefly talk about the winter, because during the winter there is no sailing to. My understanding is like the boats actually get brought over to Naval Station, annapolis and get taken out of the water. How does that affect you? And then, what do you guys do during winter sports period? And like what is that range of time where the boats are out of the water?
Speaker 2:So another best kept secret about the sailing team is that you maintain your excusal, your varsity athlete excusal, fall through spring, which is, as people know, at the enable. That's a great deal Having that like we would go to team tables the whole nine. Yeah, the winter time, that is, you take a few weeks off, you come back after Christmas break and then you get right into what's called kind of our off-season curriculum, training curriculum. So we come back, we have our winter meeting, big welcome back. You do a few days of like, hey, this is what the season's going to look like, this is what the summer regatta schedule looks like, which is always exciting because you get to go do all these different races up and down the Eastern seaboard of the United States.
Speaker 2:And then the final meeting of the introductory meeting schedule, you get assigned your crews. So rising seniors, rising first class, will get named skippers and XOs of sailboats, where that's your first command in the Navy. Like, congratulations, like you are responsible for the maintenance, the upkeep, the, you know, the operational readiness and the training of all your crew members. It's a huge responsibility. It's the thing you work up towards your entire time on the offshore team uh so like becoming a skipper is like the, the mark of like, congrats.
Speaker 2:We think you're responsible and that you're you're a competent sailor and that you can go out and win races and represent the Naval Academy well this summer. And then the boats get populated with rising youngsters and rising juniors as well. So throughout the winter our coaching staff when I was there was made up of John Tahanski who, prior to his time at the Naval Academy, was a professional sailor. He ran J World Sailing School in Annapolis, from Florida, just an absolute maestro of sailing, like knew everything, just knew it all. A great, great guy who recently retired from the program and will be a massive hole that NAAA will need to fill. And then we also had a gentleman named Pete Carrico. Pete Carrico was, you probably remember, like that salty chief on a ship who just like knows everything about the ship. Pete Carrico knew every boat in the Naval Academy, inside and out, and he was like the technical systems guy. So Pete and JT would run this this winter curriculum where we would all upskill throughout the winter time.
Speaker 2:So you'd spend time in the sail loft learning how to repair sails. There's a whole sail loft across at the Naval station that a lot of people don't know where. The Naval Academy employs a team of three or four sail makers where we make sails for our own boats, which is which is pretty incredible. So we get to go over there we learn about sail making. We would learn about sail repair so that when we're offshore 300 miles going to Bermuda and a sail got a hole in it, we could fix our own sail offshore, which is which is pretty neat. We would do. We would do plumbing systems, we would do navigation systems.
Speaker 2:We'd learn, just like when you're an aviator or a watch qualified SWO, how you learn your ship and learn your systems. It's the same thing. The same mentality got put into the offshore sailing team so that when we got on the water in the spring we kind of already knew how our boats worked, we knew how the systems worked, and you'd get that repetitive training year after year and it kept reinforcing it, which by the time you're a senior, you're just just like I, have to learn how to fix a toilet on a Navy 44 again. But it was one of those things that you, being there as a first team, reinforced to the youngsters how important it was to know those things, because when you're offshore you can't call AAA and get your sailboat fixed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like you say, when you're the captain, when you're the skipper of the ship, like it's on you to fix it.
Speaker 2:It's probably a good thing you had it has on the roster forever. Then we'd also get these really fun donated boats that well-off friends of the Naval Academy would donate for a tax write-off. So there's a whole Naval Academy Sailing Foundation that manages these boats and what they do is they technically charter them to the Naval Academy at $0. And then after a fixed number of years they can then sell those boats back on the open market and make a profit for the sailing program. So it's kind of like this self-generating cycle where people donate boats, they get the benefit of a tax write-off and then in five years time we get to sell those boats, once those boats are a little outdated and the Naval Academy program continues to benefit from it. So it's a great system and we had the opportunity to sail on some absolutely incredible boats.
Speaker 2:My youngster summer I sail on what's called a Transpac 52, which is a 52 foot long, fully carbon fiber sailboat that resembles more of a sled than a sailboat. Um, that's the first time I went 20 knots on a on a wind powered object and it was terrifying and exciting all at the same time. And it's like at 19, I got the opportunity to sail on a boat like that and that was the hot boat at the time, everybody in Newport. And that was the hot boat at the time. Everybody in newport, you know europe was sailing the tp52 it was. It was the thing. So my, my youngster summer on the offshore sailing team. It probably went to our head and, like all my teammates who weren't on tp52 would tell you that, like all the tp52, tp52 guys had egos because we thought we were pro sailors. Every, every week during the summer we were racing against legitimate, paid, professional sailors as midshipmen at the naval academy and we competed, which, which goes to show like the quality of the training.
Speaker 1:So you competed. Not only did you compete, andrew, but you were getting paid by the navy to be a midshipman and your job was to sail those boats. So I maybe a couple associations there, but I think that makes you a professional sailor. To be honest with you, you're getting paid to do it.
Speaker 2:I mean, in the eyes of the law I'm a Corinthian amateur sailor. But, yes, no, nil deals for sailors, unfortunately no. So the great thing about the team you get to sail in all these different boats and then you get to go sail in all these historic regattas up and down the East coast. So the Newport Bermuda race, which just happened is is finishing up right now in Bermuda, the Annapolis to Bermuda race. So Newport Bermuda is 635 miles, annapolis Bermuda is like 750 miles. So on a slow boat that can take like six days, on a fast boat that can take three days, um, we had sailors go race from Marblehead, massachusetts, to Halifax, nova Scotia. I did, um the around Long Island race, which is a hundred and something miles around Long Island, and then, as you're doing these distance races, the distance races usually lead to regattas in those port towns.
Speaker 2:So Newport, rhode Island, is a big hub for sailing every summer. So the Newport or the New York Yacht Club annual regatta happens every year and it's the who's who of sailboat racing on the East Coast. And we would get entry into these regattas, you to compete in these regattas, and if you won these regattas you would win a Rolex Like it's truly like the creme de la creme yachty world of high-end professional sailing. And here we are, like a ragtag group in blue over khaki competing in these regattas. A good friend of mine thought he won his class at the, the annual regatta. So if you win your class you're in the running for the rolex and everybody's like congrats. You won the rolex. So exciting and I think like a coach made a call to the jags, the lawyers at the naval academy, and they're like can a midshipman accept?
Speaker 2:a twelve thousand dollar watch as a prize and they're like absolutely not so they gave the watch to like some other some other boat and like the midshipmen were like vehemently angry it was.
Speaker 2:It was hilarious, but you're going to compete in these, like once in a lifetime regattas that people save up their whole lives for, and you get these experiences, you meet these people. You asked about lodging where we stay like you stay with host families in most places in newport. You stay at nay hall and have to eat in king hall at naps, which is a it's a real reality check midway through the summer where you think you're a pro sailor and then you have to go eat the navy mess. All but for our crews that go to bermuda. We have a network of families in bermuda that host our midshipmen because it's so expensive to live and work in so like my roommate nicholas, he did the bermuda race all three summers on the sailing team.
Speaker 2:So he stayed with the same host family every year. He stayed. He made great friends with their kids. He had like a whole network of friends in Bermuda. He briefly dated a girl in Bermuda, but that's a story for another time. People have these like foundational experiences and this life, like your network already from a professional career standpoint, like my network, began as a, as a sophomore at the Naval Academy, with this, this world that I had no business being in, which is which is really quite exceptional.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Nick had no choice but to go back. He had to do it all three years. That was more than just a sailing decision.
Speaker 2:Luckily Nick is not on social media, so I don't think he'll see this.
Speaker 1:Oh man. Well, yeah, I think you've already done an incredible job giving a recruiting pitch of why people should consider sailing as an option during your time there. From again, all these cool life and leadership opportunities, kind of making your way up to potentially become the skipper of a boat and do these things to the network that you're talking about. I have one final question before we start to wrap up, which is you mentioned the collegiate side and then kind of the professional side where you're almost competing against doctors and other people in the Annapolis area. Yeah, who are your rivals Like? Who are your rivals in this Like? Who do we not like? Who do we have to beat every year? So it's not Army.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:We don't get stars for beating Army, or else I'd have four stars, because Army has a sailing club and we actually donated a really old, broken Navy 44 that they sail on the Hudson. But, like you know all respect to Army like they're not a sailing team, they're not a sailing school.
Speaker 2:Our collegiate rivals are definitely Coast Guard and Kings Point, the Merchant Marine Academy. Okay, because they would sail not only in the collegiate regattas that we would host, but we would see them at all these same regattas over the course of the summer. We'd see them in Newport, you know we we would host, but we would see them at all these same regattas over the course of the summer. We'd see them in Newport, we'd play pranks on them in Block Island, race Week and Block Islands. You'd see all these same guys and girls over the course of the summer in all these places. And I went to flight school with a guy from Kings Point that sailed. There was a true hatred between Navy and Kings Point, so that was probably the biggest rivalry. It was more friendly with Coast Guard because everybody in the Coast Guard is pretty nice, but those Merchant Mariners- no there was no love lost there, for sure that's good, that's good stuff, all right.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much for taking this time to share your time, your experience, your insight and everything with us to talk about a really unique aspect of the Naval Academy, because every midshipman is going to have to sail a little bit and some midshipmen can become part of a blue chip program, like a big time juggernaut program in collegiate sailing, and that's, I mean, what a cool opportunity. So, as we wrap up here, I do want to give you just one final opportunity to give your best recruiting pitch. If you're talking to, you know, a high school kid who may be interested in the academy or is coming to the academy. Why should they consider joining the Navy sailing team and why should, specifically, they choose the better side and go offshore?
Speaker 2:I'm agnostic about the side because every way that comes out of the sailing program is exceptionally well set up for the fleet and that's the ultimate focus coming out of the Naval Academy is how well prepared are you going to be to go be an aviator, a submarine or a ship driver? The offshore sailing team, the dinghy team I'm very biased on this front but I think there's some truth to it. The people who get that sort of responsibility getting to go offshore and be responsible for eight other midshipmen with one coach on board that's probably asleep down below You're getting advanced responsibility that your peers at the Naval Academy are not getting. Like everything else is kind of happening in a vacuum and in a bubble at the Naval Academy. Leadership, wise, offshore sailing like.
Speaker 2:I saw my old coach recently in Annapolis when I was there, and he's like I go offshore every summer and I risk my life because we sail into dangerous seas.
Speaker 2:We don't sail into dangerous seas, but like we happen upon dangerous seas, dangerous conditions and I'm taking, you know, eight inexperienced kids offshore as a skipper of a boat, as a rising firstie, you have an opportunity to show that you have the technical capability to assume that leadership position and then excel in that position and sailors on that team often do, and time and time again some of the best aviators I came across in my time in the helicopter were sailors because they figured out relative motion very early on in their careers. They figured out small unit leadership off very early in their careers and oftentimes those people climb to exceptionally impressive heights in their careers. A NASA astronaut came from our program, ken Reitler, who taught in the aerospace department for a while. Regular volunteer with the team, was an astronaut, credits his time on the sailing team at the Naval Academy to the reason he became the pilot on two space shuttle missions. Because he's like I understood relative motion and I understood small unit leadership, and it was done in a cauldron. That was offshore sailing. So that's, that's the plug.
Speaker 2:It's one of those things where first year people are like man sailing looks like a really good time. I wish I'd done that. Plea beer, um, and anytime I speak about my Naval Academy experience, the highlight that I talk about first is is my time on that team the highlight that I talk about first is my time on that team.
Speaker 1:I love it. Well, Andrew, thank you so much for taking the time and sharing that with us today Because, like you're saying, like genuinely not a lot of people know about it. Everything that we just talked about in this hour, I had no idea about right, and so I mean to give people, hopefully, that insight to let them know it's an opportunity. It's a possibility if you want to pursue something, because there's some people, like you're saying, I'm sure there are a lot of people who go to the Academy with their lacrosse gear or with their basketball shoes and show up and they're like I'm going to walk on, Like I'm a good player.
Speaker 2:The hot shot from their small town, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's not to say you're not, but, like again, if you're not recruited, it's, it's a tough spot to be in and but there are other opportunities, there are other pathways and there are other ways to make your Naval Academy experience incredible, right, Truly incredible. So, um, I appreciate you sharing your time with us. Uh, thank you so much, and if anyone ever has any questions, please feel free to shoot me a message. Uh, andrew's again a good friend and someone who's been around for a long time, so we'll be able to get you pointed in the right direction with resources you would need. So, appreciate it, andrew. You're the man. Dude Really appreciate it, and thanks for your time today.
Speaker 1:Awesome Thanks, grant, beat Army, yeah, beat Army. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Academy Insider Podcast. I really hope you liked it, enjoyed it and learned something during this time. If you did, please feel free to like and subscribe or leave a comment about the episode. We really appreciate to hear your feedback about everything and continue to make Academy Insider an amazing service that guides, serves and supports midshipmen, future midshipmen and their families. Thank you.
