The fifth annual event for disabled sailors hosted at Sail Newport, Rhode Island's Public Sailing Center often draws the very best disabled athletes from around the globe.  Racing in three classes chosen for the 2008 Paralympic Games – the single-person 2.4 Metre, two-person SKUD 18, and three-person Sonar – held over three days is an annual showdown with a number of sailors gearing up for a run at China in 2008.

Just as import as the regatta, however, is a two-day clinic that precedes the event and opens doors for disabled sailors that are looking to compete and to race.  One year ago, Jim Donahue, from Danvers, Massachusetts was lucky enough to nail down a win at the event sailing with Rick Doerr, from Clifton, New Jersey along with his crewmate Tim Angle, out of Somerville, Massachusetts.

Although he downplays his own injury, the 61-year-old Donahue is a compelling story that came to late to disabled sailing but is a convert that sings its praises.  Donahue is a Vietnam vet that badly injured his right leg while serving in the United States Air Force, when he was shot down in a helicopter back in 1968.  

“I was in a helicopter crash flying to Ben Hoa from Tan Su Nhut,” Donahue recalled.  “I was stationed with 7th Air Force in Tan Su Nhut and the helicopter stopped flying rather quickly and I’m sure it had something to do with enemy action and it stopped fly really abruptly.  I messed up my right leg and my face, I use top be pretty and now I’m not.  That was forty years ago, two-thirds of my life ago and sailing is who I am today.  That was just a long time ago.”

Everyone who sails in the Clagett regatta has a story to tell.  Vietnam vets will occasionally open up to other vets about their shared experience and when pressed Donahue explained more about his injury. 

“I really don’t like to dwell on it but I was injured pretty severely in Vietnam in my right leg.  I begged the docs to leave it on and they did, so for 38 years I had pain and discomfort and then when I got older it got worse,” Donahue explained.  “Finally three years ago after multiple operations and infections we decided the best course of action was to lop it off.  February, Friday the 13th 2004 they took my leg on a Friday and sent me home the next week.”

Donahue is no rookie when it comes to sailing and he has an extensive record on the water even if he downplays his talent on a boat.

“I was born in Salem and grew up in Beverly, Mass. And this is my fifty-first year of sailing.  I learned to sail when I was ten and again I was nobody special but I did a lot of club racing, PHRF racing,” Donahue said.  “I have owned boats in the past a Lightening and a J-24 and a Town Class which is a boat indigenous up here.  When I got married we bought a Pearson 30 and my racing stopped and my cruising started.  Before I got married in 1983 I was fortunate enough to do a couple of Trans-Atlantics, helping to deliver boats and I did a few Marblehead to Halifax Races and to some Bermuda races.  However, as a crew I’m no dynamite sailor but I suppose that I’m pretty experienced.”

After doctors finally amputated his right leg because of the injuries that he had suffered in the helicopter crash half a lifetime ago in Vietnam, Donahue struggled emotionally.  Fortunately, however, sailing holds some very special healing for almost all souls.  

“Last year in 2006 after about a year and a half of feeling sorry for myself a buddy called me up and said we’re going sailing,” Donahue explained.  “I wasn’t really sure I could do it because I am a right leg below the knee amputee.  He called me up and I flew down to Florida and he chartered a boat and we went sailing for a week and when I came back I realized that I could do it.  I got on the Internet and just started looking up “disabled sailing.”  There was a website that Betsy Allison was involved with and it was US Disabled Sailing and there was a position there on a bulletin board just looking for a crew.  I had sailed sonars before and I just happened to call it and as it turned out it was J.R. Duggan, who won a Bronze medal in Athens in 2004 and he was looking for crew.  I flew down to Florida and sailed in the regatta, which was a challenge but when I got there I very quickly realized that I was the least disabled person in the whole regatta.  I made friends with people that I loved to death now that are in wheelchairs.  Some of them can’t feed themselves, quadriplegics, paraplegics and double amputees.  Sailing is their life and when I saw that these people could do it I realized that anybody could do it.  What I want disabled sailors to get out of this is that nothing is impossible with adaptive aids.  I have been fortunate to sail with and against a few heavyweight sailors in my life but none of them compare to what these folks go through on a daily basis and then get into a sailboat.  Once they are in the sailboat with adaptive aids they are as good as anyone I have ever sailed with.”

There’s no pretence in Donahue, no bluster.  He feels uncomfortable talking about his service and would rather focus on the other sailors with injuries he feels are far more severe that anything he has ever encountered.  However, the win a year ago was pretty sweet but it only served as motivation to try and get other people involved in disabled sailing. 

“I was lucky enough to crew with Rick Doerr and Tim Angle from Marblehead and Rick is from New Jersey, just because I’m kind of known in the disabled sailing circuit.  I’m nobody special, believe me.  I was lucky to be with those guys and Rick needed a crew and we won the regatta last year.  While I was there I met some absolutely wonderful people and this past year I became involved with a group in Boston called Piers Park.  They are a sailing center that hired a good friend of mine Maureen McKinnon-Tucker, as the Disabled Sailing Coordinator.  We had a “Give It A Try Day,” we traveled around to some of the hospitals and the clinics and we just tried to get disabled people involved in sailing.  So we ended up getting about twenty new members of people who had either never heard of it, or always wanted to try it.  We have ten sonars there and we have purchased all types of adaptive aids and we have given all types of training to the sailing instructors there and now in Boston we probably have the biggest disabled sailing program of all the sailing centers.  Through the sailing center I met a gentleman Larry Brennan (a quadriplegic from Boston) and he is just new into racing.  In fact he had never been in a sailboat race but he had been sailing with adaptive aids for several years but never really got into it because the aids weren’t available to help him sail.”

For the New Englander from Salem, Mass the annual Thomas Clagett regatta has become one of the most important races of the year and if you spend anytime with the athletes, well, also the one with the greatest amount of laughter.  
 
“The Clagett to me is the single most important regatta that we have around here and there are a number of them. We have Nood in Marblehead and the Worlds is going to be held in Rochester but the Clagett is the one that draws the very cream of adaptive sailing,” Donahue confided.  “I got involved just by sailing with Rick Doerr last year and was fortunate enough to be on the winning boat.  As a sidelight I met the Irish Team, oh my God, are they fun to be around  [laughter].  The Irish and the Israelis and this year the Chinese team is there and this sets up everybody for the Worlds and the Olympics Trials in October.”

While he isn’t racing this year Donahue is still part of the event and he has instrumental in making sure that one of the athletes from Piers Park was at the pre regatta clinic.

“I brought one of the disabled sailors Larry Brennan from my sailing center down to the clinic and introduced him around,” Donahue explained.  “We chartered a boat and sailed in the two-day clinic with Betsy [Allison] and Larry sat in on the Dave Parry seminar of Rules of Racing.  I try to get him exposed and he had more fun and he had a huge grin on his face at the end of the clinic.”

The helicopter crash that eventually cost Jim Donahue his strong right leg is a distant memory.  He is a veteran that is focused on the future and helping others and when you get right down to it, well, you can’t ask for more than that.

“I retired but my passion now is to get disabled people sailing and the Clagett is a wonderful venue to get people started,” Donahue confided.  “There are always the clinics down there and US Sailing and the Clagett and Piers Park are my thing now.”

If you would like to learn more about the Adaptive Sailing Program in Boston be sure to check out www.piersparksailing.org.

Photos courtesy of Dan Nerney/The Clagett Regatta

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