Blindness doesn’t stop this young sailor

It took me more than six years to stumble through what most people consider to be a four-year college education, but it wasn’t because I was wasting my time sailing. No, the intercollegiate sailing program was unquestionably the only reason I kept my grades at a reasonable level, because I simply couldn’t imagine not sailing with the college team.

In those days, my interests were girls and sailing, followed closely by sailing team parties with girls. I also devoted as much time to mastering the mixology of the “Skip and Go Naked,” the preferred drink of my team, as I did to roll-tacking our tippy dinghies.

So I do have an insider’s knowledge, albeit decades old, of what it takes not just to stay on a college sailing team, but to run it. Which brings us to young Alex Jones, who was just awarded the Robert H. Hobbs Trophy as the Intercollegiate Sailing Association’s Sportsman of the Year.

A graduating senior at the University of Washington, the 22-year-old Jones was one of the top skippers on the UW (which he calls “YewDub”) sailing team. He also was awarded the Northwest Intercollegiate Sailing Association Leadership Award for his work as the ICSA district secretary.

Jones, who hails from Poulsbo, Washington, was hooked on sailing early and was a member of his high school sailing team, so it was no surprise when he went to YewDub and promptly joined its team. By his sophomore year, he’d become the captain of the UW Sailing Team, as well as the ICSA district secretary. But that’s just the start.

At the University of Washington, sailing isn’t considered a varsity sport (like it is at many colleges and universities), so the team doesn’t receive any funding from the school. During the last three years, Alex raised (almost singlehandedly) close to $30,000 that went toward travel expenses and overhead to keep the team afloat … literally.

Some schools have fancy sailing bases filled with well-maintained boats, but not UW. So Alex also negotiated with a nearby community sailing center to use their facilities as well as their fleet of brand-new FJs, the preferred college dinghy.

His wasn’t just a behind-the-scenes role as an organizer, though, because he was also a winning team skipper at the helm of FJs and Lightnings.

Oh, damn, I forgot to mention something. I hate it when I start a story and then have to rewrite everything, so let me just mention it here.

Alex is blind.

He was born with Optic Nerve Hypoplasia, an incurable and non-correctable vision disorder that has rendered him legally and, for the most part functionally, blind. He cannot drive a car, nor does he have the vision required to see the things that other sailors take for granted: distant marks, puffs of wind on the water, how other boats are doing.

“My vision is 20-400,” he said, comparing it to normal 20-20 vision. “What most people see clearly at 400 feet, I only see at 20 feet.” So how does he do it?

He gives credit to his crew, Ellie Wilson, who is one year behind him in school. “She calls the laylines, of course, because I can’t see the marks. She also tells me about other things I can’t see, like puffs on the water. I think about things up close, and I can see the shape of nearby boats to pick up the lifts and headers.”

Alex has become very attuned to the feel of the boat, and has developed senses that the rest of us can’t imagine. To help keep track of laylines, he counts how long he’s been on each tack in steady conditions. In shifty weather, he uses the position of the sun and shadows to pick out the lifts and headers.

The UW team consists of about two dozen sailors: “Twenty are hardcore,” Alex said with a laugh. That team, however, is ranked among the top 20 schools nationwide, which is remarkable in a field populated by well-funded Ivy League schools, the maritime academies like King’s Point and NY Maritime, as well as sailing powerhouses like USC and Stanford.

To reach this level of success, the team practices three days a week at Sail Sand Point, a Seattle community sailing center on an old seaplane base. “We sail three hours in the afternoon, working on boat handling and team racing tactics,” he said. Nearly every weekend through the spring and fall, the team is racing somewhere. They’ve been as far as Michigan and the Nationals in Charleston, but more often they’re competing against other schools in the Pacific Northwest, where they are a dominating force.

Now that he’s graduated, Alex plans to get his master’s degree in education (at YewDub, of course) so he can teach elementary school. This summer, he’s going to teach junior sailing at Meydenbauer Yacht Club across Lake Washington in Bellevue, with a break to sail in the Tasar North Americans.

But rather than starting back to school this fall, however, he’s taking some time off. Alex and a friend have planned a trip to East Asia, where his friend is sailing in the Laser Worlds in Korea. After that, they plan a three-month wander through Asia.

What’s the toughest part of racing with a vision issue? Alex pauses, sorting among the many challenges: “I think it’s the starts. In college racing, it’s all about the starts, so those are difficult.” Next on the list are crowded mark roundings, which can be scary enough for those of us with good vision.

In nominating Alex for his award, his teammates wrote: “His ability to sail competitively is a testament to not only his skill, but also his courage. You will never hear Alex talk about his disability or let it be a factor in the outcome of any race. It is just something that he quietly deals with.”

Here’s to Alex Jones. A great young man and a great sailor. He makes the rest of us seem blind by comparison.