Blind But Still Can Sea

Sight might seem like a requirement for anyone who steps on a ship for a sailing race, but a group of tenacious Bostonians proved a little technicality like blindness need not get in their way.

On Tuesday, three teams of blind sailors competed in the first annual Carroll Cup Challenge, a mile-long race through Boston Harbor sponsored by the Carroll Center for the Blind. The event took place one day before Sail Boston 2009, an annual gathering of Old World-style Tall Ships and an official Port of the Tall Ships Atlantic Challenge 2009.

How do the sightless sailors make sure they are staying on course? Well, it’s a team effort. The blind sailors feel their way through the race, gauging the wind on their faces, listening to the splashes in the water and the rustle of the sails. Guide dogs accompanied the sailors on the ships, offering practical assistance and moral support. They also have a bit of sighted human help, as trained guides call out precise commands to keep everything shipshape. Yet the best guides help the sailors use their other senses to steer the ship — rather than simply telling them what to do.

"As Clint Eastwood said, 'Man’s gotta know his limitations,'" Ryck Lent, a lifetime sailor who lost his vision due to a degenerative condition called retinitis pigmentosa, told the Boston Globe. Yet while knowing his own limitations, Lent said, he will not just "sit back and be a passenger."

Legally blind sailors Matthew Chao and Bruce Howell guided their ship to victory Tuesday, with the assistance of sighted guides Bill Rapp and Lisa Dalton. Chao has been blind since birth and learned to sail as a student at the Perkins School for the Blind, which Helen Keller also attended. He returned to the sport years later when he heard the Carroll Center for the Blind sponsored a sailing program, and has since competed in seven world championships for blind sailors resulting in a silver medal in 1997 and a bronze in 2006.

His attitude about sailing — and pretty much everything else — is tough to beat. "Just because you’re blind doesn’t mean your life is over."

Perhaps these sailors, in their own way, can see more than most.

Photo courtesy of Sailor Coruscant via Flickr.