Is it true that some of the best yachtsmen in the world don’t know how to swim?
Cooper comforts a crew member who is anxious about exploring space for the first time by saying that some of the best solo yachtsmen don’t know how to swim. Is Cooper operating on 90 percent honesty here, or is this 100 percent true?
Expert yachtsman Dennis Conner, four-time winner of the America’s Cup Race in the ’70s and ’80s, has said he never learned how to swim. His friend, the quadriplegic racer Paul Callahan, can’t swim, either, and he still earned the title of 2012 Yachtsman of the Year from the New York Yacht Club. For the record, though, learning how to swim is generally encouraged for aspiring yachtsmen: F.W. Pangborn, then vice-president of the New York Yacht Racing Association, wrote in 1890 that “one must learn to swim and to row before he graduates into the ranks of the yachtsmen.” And William Ricketson, a communications manager for U.S. Sailing, informed us that while sailing clubs across the country are “free to decide whether to include swimming as part of their courses on how to sail … the vast majority of professional ‘sailors’ and ‘yachtsmen’ are proficient swimmers,” at least in his experience.
