Perry (b. 1954) is a collegiate All-American and two-time Congressional Cup champion, but most racing sailors know him as a teacher and author of books on tactics and rules. Yacht Racing and Cruising, predecessor to Sailing World, published a regular column by Perry. For several years, “Winning In One-Designs: was the most popular column published, covering a variety of topics ranging from “Tactics in Windshifts: and “Heavy-Air Madness,” to “Inner Sailing” and “There is No Lee Bow Effect.” Today, those collected columns exist in book form, now in its third edition and republished with updated rules references by Perry in collaboration with US SAILING. Even better known and more widely read is Perry’s accessible Understanding Yacht Racing Rules.
Perry’s humor and insight in his writing will be as appreciated by crews as by skippers: “¿it’s damned hard to be a crew. You have to be a contortionist, a psychic, and a glutton for verbal abuse, not to mention flawless.”
