One fine day at Roads in the latter part of recruit term there was a sailboat race in boats crewed by us rooks. By dint of my prior experience in Sea Cadets, I found myself coxswain of one of the Lasalle Flight boats. I had never actually coxswained in a race before, but that minor detail did not deter my CFL from assigning me this opportunity to excel.

So on the day of the race, I found myself in the middle of Esquimalt Lagoon at the helm of a 420-class sailing dinghy, with Al Stewart as my stalwart crew, milling about the start line with a dozen other boats.

As much by good luck as good management, I managed to have our boat poised to cross the starting line just as the starting gun was fired. I altered course and pointed the bow at the marker at the far end of the first leg of the triangular race course. Stew and I hauled taut the mainsail and jib sheets, and within moments, in the fresh breeze that was blowing, our boat was planing. We were, as they say, off to the races. Seeing no other boats ahead of me, to Stew I allowed as how we might actually have a chance of winning the race. Stew was crouched on the opposite side of the cockpit, with a different view of the proceedings. Had the popular sitcom Home Improvement aired in the mid-seventies, he might have countered with Al Borland’s iconic line, “I don’t think so, Tim.” Instead, he pointed over my shoulder and asked, “where are they going?” Looking around, and observing all of the other boats heading away from us in a completely different direction, it dawned on me that I had set us off to sail the race course in the reverse direction. Hurriedly we put the boat about, and we actually managed to overtake several of the other boats, but the damage was done, and we finished squarely in the middle of the pack. My initial tactical error did not go unnoticed by the spectators ashore. By the time the race was over and we returned to the boat shed, some wag, with a nod to the pioneering, directionally-challenged American aviator Douglas Corrigan, had already christened me “Wrong Way Willmes”, or just “Wrong Way” for short. Oh, the ignominy!