The last time Tom Atkinson, Vance Harrison, John Rhodes, Bill Whidden and John Yingling were in a boat together, Richard Nixon was president.
The last time they were together on land, it was George H.W. Bush.
This week, the 5 former Westporters — friends since junior high — will compete at the Atlantic Class National Championshps.
Right here at Cedar Point.
Cedar Point Yacht Club (Photo copyright Stephen R. Cloutier)
The quintet’s friendship predates even the club’s move to Saugatuck Shores’ Bluff Point. When they took their first sailing lessons, CPYC — established elsewhere, in 1887 — was still building its current facility, on landfill at Saugatuck Island.
It was a great time to grow up. The boys — 4 classmates at Long Lots Junior High School, plus Whidden at Bedford Junior High — regularly sailed across Long Island Sound in 12-foot Blue Jays.
“They let 6 or 10 boats loose, and hoped we’d make it,” Atkinson says.
They built bonfires, slept on the beach, and had experiences like the 4 boys in “Stand by Me” (if Stephen King’s story and movie had been set inland).
Cedar point Yacht Club clubhouse.
Like “Stand by Me” too, they soon scattered. Atkinson was the only one to attend Staples High. The others headed to Deerfield, Kent and Tabor.
“Our parents thought Staples was filled with drugs,” one explains. “Actually, all the drugs were in boarding schools.”
Their lives took separate paths. Rhodes graduated from the University of North Carolina; became national and international news editor at the New York Daily News; took a buyout and spent 12 yaears at the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel; took another buyout, and taught English and critical thinking in a Florida high school. He retired in 2020.
After 5 1/2 years in the Navy, Atkinson graduated from Columbia Business School. He spent his career with Pratt & Whitney. Living in Essex, he is the only one of the 5 still in Connecticut.
Harrison graduated from Cornell University. He worked for a Chicago progressive rock radio station for 10 years. He moved to Oklahoma 37 years ago, where he first ran a radio group, and now heads up a radio trade association.
Whidden graduated from Colby College. He worked on a 38-foot sailing boat; joined forces with Hoyle Schweitzer, co-inventor of the Windsurfer; then i 1981 opened a sailmaking company in Maui. He pivoted to financial services in the Pacific Northwest’s Columbia Gorge.
Yingling went to Tufts, then earned a master’s in engineering at Rochester.
Four of them still sail; Yingling and Anderson also compete. Harrison — who calls himself “the best sailor of all of us” — has not been on a boat in 50 years. “I peaked at 14,” he jokes.
They kept “a little bit in touch, mainly through Christmas cards. But until last Friday, the last time they’d been together in one place was in 1991, when Whidden got married in Newport, Rhode Island.
From left: John Yingling, Bill Whidden, Vance Harrison, John Rhodes, Tom Atkinson, at Bill’s 1991 wedding.
The idea to enter the Atlantic Nationals came from Harrison. He’d wanted to get back in a boat for years, but — in land-locked Oklahoma — did not know how.
The other 4 quickly said: “Count me in!”
Planning began in mid-February. They found a boat in Madison, Connecticut. They gathered there last Friday, set it up to be towed to Westport, and followed it here.
They spent the first several hours talking, and catching up. They were relieved to find everyone in good physical — and mental — shape.
In addition to a great reunion and experience, this will be a return to their sailing roots. As teenagers, all 5 crewed on adult Cedar Point races.
So is this just a “Big Chill”-type get-together? After all this time apart, what do the 5 old friends/new teammates hope to accomplish?
Harrison’s original goal was just not to lose.
As he got caught up in the planning, it became “finish mid-fleet.”
Now, he says, he wants to make the top 10.
The others are not so sure.
“If we win,” Rhodes says, “we’ll definitely annoy everyone who invested a lot more time than us.”
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