Many of us have a fear of missing out – a fear that once we reach a certain age, we are “too old” to try anything new. Instead, we watch from the sidelines as the younger generation takes part in activities we think we are simply no longer able to do.
Deirdre Webster thinks differently. Born in 1939, this petit phenom and Great Grand Master (a sailing category for those aged 65+) has taken the Canadian laser sailing scene by storm. A cheerful, grad-school-educated woman originally from England (who enjoys listening to classical music while she gardens and who calls herself a “fantastic procrastinator”) talks about her career, her passion for her sport, and some of the stories and lessons she’s picked up along the way. Deirdre proves the adage: age ain’t nothing but a number.
“I came to Vancouver to ski,” says Deirdre on how she first discovered her craft at age 24. Laser sailing, which is standard sailing with a smaller boat and only crewed by one, maybe two people at most, was not part of Deirdre’s original plan when coming to Canada. “My friend wanted to go to New Zealand, I said ‘I can’t afford to go to New Zealand, I’m going to Canada.’ It was the idea of skiing that attracted me because I’d never done it,” she says, showing her desire from a young age to learn new skills.
She started with larger boats, even crewing with a friend on a Flying Dutchman, which “is a big boat, very fast” as she puts it, lamenting that she was “far too small” for the vessel, despite the experience being “fantastic.”
Though the adventure was memorable, Deirdre ending up having to return to England and did not sail again for 30 years, choosing instead to go to graduate school and start a career. It wasn’t until, once again in Vancouver, a member of her church took her out to the Jericho Sailing Club, causing Deirdre to ask herself, “Why haven’t I done this for 30 years?” She exuberantly recalls that she “rang UBC and I said, ‘Well, can I join?’ and they said, ‘Do you want to test or to take lessons?’ And I sort of muttered to myself, ‘I’ll take the test and if I fail, I’ll take lessons.’”
The lessons never happened. Given a key to the club, Deirdre passed, though she is humble about the experience. Whatever faults she may have had, at the time, Deirdre views them as a critical part of the experience.
“What attracted me to the laser was it’s one person and, therefore, in order to learn fast, you’re making all the mistakes.” Making mistakes wasn’t something that intimidated or upset Deirdre (she mentioned having to flip her capsized boat back over and climb in), and instead was looked upon positively as a learning experience. The more mistakes she made, the faster she learned to sail. As she put it, when she “crewed, I wasn’t actually in charge of the boat, and so that’s why I fell in love with the laser and that’s the only boat I’ve sailed more-or-less ever since.” At nearly 80, she now has been laser sailing for around 20 years, due to her absolute passion for the sport. “You just strive to improve,” she says, highlighting her focus on individual progress rather than comparison to others.
In fact, Deirdre’s progress started capturing the attention of other sailors. She’s not quite sure why the curiosity exists but does note that many fellow sailors will say to her, “We just hope we can sail when we reach your age.” Modestly, Deirdre says she will typically “bring up the age I started [sailing] because, you know, it might sound very good but I’m really not very good, I just love it, and I’m very fortunate that I’ve been healthy enough to do it.”
The number of races she’s placed in would imply she is, in fact, quite good, but she understands the fascination with her to be in relation to her age. Once, upon meeting an Australian couple, she recalls them saying to her, “Well we used to play tennis, but stopped when we were 40.” And so, they were amazed that Deirdre was sailing – a sport she didn’t pick up fully until age 60. Though she laments that most women feel the need to hide their ages, regarding her own, Deirdre says, “I’ve never been sensitive, certainly with grey hair.” When meeting a man in Spain once, she recalls him asking her, “I have two questions: how old are you and how much do you weigh?” The questions were posed because, she says, “I was such an anomaly” being a mature woman in a sport filled with teens, 20 and 30-somethings (and weight, of course, being important in sailing a boat).
Despite being older in the sport, however, Deirdre’s drive to succeed and improve was “always there.” During one of her first times out, she “attacked” the wind head on with her boat, only to have people comment to her, “Most people don’t do that on their first day out,” given the difficulty of the maneuver. In discussing her memorable moments on the water, she smiles. During a race in Spain a photographer snapped a photo of her as she almost “T-boned” another racer and only ended up missing him “by half an inch” (though she does report she and her competitor were both laughing).
Her determination came in handy during a competition near Hayling Island in England. She recalls the wind being so strong, a fellow sailor reported to her that he had been “vertical going down a wave”, as though on a rollercoaster ride. The “very big and chunky waves” were daunting – especially during the competition she was racing in – and eventually a rescue boat had reached her, informing her she was off course. Going off-course is grounds for disqualification, so Deirdre insisted that they “tell her where the mark was” to get her back on the course since she could no longer place. “But they wouldn’t, so I just set off ’til I found it!”
The following day, in another race, she was coming up towards the finish, and noticed no one else from her division was around (boats have “coloured tubes,” so each racer knows who is in their fleet). Deirdre’s category of Great Grand Masters was all yellow, and she noticed, “I’m surrounded by reds and greens – what are all these people doing in my way? I round the mark, and I go over the finish and there’s a horn, and then I think we had hired a coach who was giving us advice about the weather or something, and so [the coach] came up and he said, ‘You just won! That’s what the horn was!’ and I said, ‘Oh, no no no, I obviously missed a mark.’ And so, what had happened was I’d had the day before [sailing on rough water with the rescue boat] going, ‘Okay, oh, there’s the mark!’” she laughs. “I’d missed out an angle. I swear I’m taking binoculars this year.”
A 2010 event was one of her favourite moments from her career. Unlike the Hayling Island race, “where the waves were very different, and I was torn between terrified and exhilarated, this was sheer exhilaration, in the fact I was on the top of a wave, going faster than I’d ever gone before.” Despite being a woman among male sailors, that didn’t stop Deirdre’s competitive spirit: “I’m in a radial, and I’m sailing against a guy who’s in a full rig. Coming down towards the finish, we’re sort of neck and neck, and he’s crouched in his boat because it’s a little windy for him. I am height fully [leaning] out [of the boat], and so I’m flat as a pancake, and the boat is super flat, and I beat him.”
A photographer, enthralled by the fact that she was a woman and a senior, snapped a great photo. “The people wanted to know [if they] could use that photograph – I don’t have the copyright,” she quips. “It became the advert part of the laser sailor website for North American Master Sailing,” making Deirdre a poster child for the sport she loves so much, one that hopefully inspired other mature women to follow their own passions, regardless of age.
As for those who feel they are “too old” to pick up an activity or sport or have something holding them back from following a dream or passion, Deirdre’s advice is simple: “Just do it.”
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