Team WinWard
Scott Whitman
Scott Whitman’s love of sailing and the water started early. One of his first words to come out of his mouth was “boat” when he was younger. Since then he began sailing at age 7 in the junior sailing program at the Metedeconk River Yacht Club. Every summer after that Scott continued thru the program, sailing and racing a variety of boats including the Sunfish, Blue Jay, Lightning, Laser, collegiate 420, Tec Dingy, Flying Scott, and various auxiliaries. Scott has excelled and won awards on the racing scene in both local and international regattas. Scott continued sailing for Northeastern University and was the team president. Scott has always been active in various organizations, and was also an avid skier and enjoyed mountain biking, and photography.
While at Northeastern University Scott took full advantage of their cooperative program and worked on high tech engineering design projects for companies such as Philips Analytical. However while on vacation during his junior year of college Scott was paralyzed due to a swimming accident. Despite his injury Scott continued his college education by transferring to Rutgers University. Scott has graduated from Rutgers University with a mechanical engineering degree. He has also been appointed as a commissioner on the New Jersey spinal cord commission and has served as vice chair on the commission.
During the winter of 2005 Betsey Allison head coach of the US Disabled Sailing Team and also a good friend of the family and member of our yacht club approached Scott about sailing a new double hand boat called the Skud 18. Scott jumped at the chance to start sailing again. In the spring of 2006 the first Skud 18s where delivered to Newport RI. The Skud proved to be the fast and technical boat Scott hoped it would be, challenging him to push its limits on the race course. Scott along with his crew Julia Dorsett have now set their goals on representing the USA at the Paralympics in Beijing 2008 in the Skud 18 class. Scott and Julia won the Rolex Miami OCR this passed winter and are currently ranked #1 on the US Paralympics Sailing Team.
- scott and i are off to newport, ri to sail with the wounded warriors. i will be in a j22 for the first time, teaching and then a practice race, should be great fun!
- We are second in the world! Now we just need to fix Scott's wheelchair. He ran over a loose piece of the dock and has no power... At least it happened after the regatta. :-( Overall it was a wonderful trip, we really enjoyed holland and the RC was fantastic. See you stateside.
- We got 2 and 2 today, was a bit shaky but we r still sailing fast, but need to make some better decisions at times...:-) but we are happy with our performance.
- Breeze is up and a squall is headed our way. Hope to get off one race before 50 knot winds and rain come in.
- Solid second today but we have been leading around the course so we are happy with our performance.
- Got an ocs first race. 2nd in the second race. We have great boat speed and just have to keep doing what we r are doing, but not be over early. :-) We are 2nd overall. One race tomorrow then a day of sightseeing.
- 1 and 2 today. Really light breeze. Max 7kts, but steady, so boat speed was key. Learning a lot out here with such good competition.
- Had our practice race today. Went really well. Boat speeds between the new and old boats are quite similar, which is good for us!
- off to do some tuning with the brits. great fun last nite watching football with all the sailors. practice race tomorrow, then game on friday.
- the sailing has been great. good breeze, quite shifty though. the fleet is well practiced and it should be a really good test of skill this week. had a few practice races yesterday and we were all very close. racing officially starts friday. the link is www.ifdsworlds2010.com