I was sitting on a sailboat on Lake Union on a warm Tuesday in May when the ship’s captain ran into a problem. We were minutes into the first Duck Dodge sailing race of the season, and the skipper was yelling at his crew to jibe—a difficult sailing maneuver where one sail goes slack and flips to the opposite side of the boat. No amount of rope tugging could put the sail in the correct position. Other ships raced past us. Our boat sat still. Disorder ensued.
“It’s stuck on the cooler!” someone yelled. A young woman in khaki shorts freed the rope, letting the sail slide into position and catch the wind. Our cooler snafu had cost us precious minutes. But our captain, BJ, a fiftysomething retired Microsoft employee, seemed more concerned with the temperature of the boat’s beer than our scuttled start.
