I Am A Sailor – Dawson Baker

Dawson Baker

In the ‘I Am A Sailor’ series which seeks to recognize all sailors across Canada who share a passion for the sport, Dawson Baker shares this report for Sail Canada:

I began sailing when I was young and as I grew up, I got hooked. I’m now 18 and love it as much as ever. Growing up, I went through the CANSail Program at St Margaret’s Bay Sailing Club (Glen Haven, NS) where I then became one of their Race Officers.

After that, I started racing at Chester Yacht Club (Chester, NS) and got offered a job as a Race Officer at Chester Yacht Club.

I sail because I love being out on the water, meeting new people and getting to sail on a bunch of different types of boats. My fondest sailing memories involve Just being out on the water with new friends made through sailing and continuing to make memories of good times out on boats.

My favorite story of working as a Race Officer would have to be two years ago while working the offshore fleet with Dan Conrod during Chester Race Week. It was the second to last day and the weather was really bad. The sea swells were huge and I was working as the start and finish pin boat for the fleet. I only had a medium-sized Zodiac as my mark boat while our Race Committee boat was a big catamaran.

After we finished the day, I had to go out and retrieve the finish pin in the nasty swell and I asked Dan to come with me to help pick up the marks. It took us multiple tries to get from the committee boat to the mark boat because of the sea state and finally, on about the sixth try, we yelled 3,2,1 and both jumped to the mark boat and headed over to the finish pin.

Heading over, we were essentially jumping the waves and the boat was basically coming out of the water; the swell was so big. Once the pin was retrieved, the next problem was getting back onto the RC boat.

When we came up next to it with the huge swells, the committee boat would be on top of the swell and we would be below. We finally latched on and hoped for the best. Again, we counted down “3,2,1” and took a leap of faith, thankfully landing on the committee boat safely and headed to land!

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