On August 8, our old and dear friend John Rousmanier sailed over the bar and left this mortal coil. There have been very few in our sailing, cruising and offshore racing worlds who have contributed more to the sport and lifestyle we love than John.
He was 82. In those years, this deeply thoughtful man was something of a polymath, a man of many parts. To me, he was a gifted writer who contributed dozens of articles to the publications I edited and carried the water for causes I and my close associates encouraged, most specifically the US Sailing Safety at Sea Seminar program.
There is a wonderful remembrance written by Steve Tsuchiya and Sheila McCurdy who were close friends and associates linked below.
I’ll take a few lines here to offer a couple of thoughts and reminiscences of my own for a man who was of average stature and always stood taller than those around him but was also a funny, warm and humorous shipmate.
A historian, a technical, historical and instructional writer, a teacher at heart, with 40 books published or edited, he could be thought of as an earnest and serious soul. He had multiple degrees including one in divinity from the Episcopal Union Seminar. Heavy stuff.
But he was also a guy and a friend. One snowy night in January years ago, I was giving a slide lecture in Stamford, Connecticut about a half hour from John’s home. To my surprise, John showed up at the venue to say hi and to apologize that he and his wife Leah had other obligations and could not attend. An hour’s driving to say hi.
Not more than a year later, John organized an on-the-water sea trial in San Francisco Bay to evaluate man-overboard rescue techniques and man-in-the water alert systems. We spent two astonishing afternoons and evenings, with a gang of veteran professional sailors, testing every device and apparatus available for MOB retrievals and for MOB-location at night.
We also tested every known sailing maneuver to affect an MOB rescue in various cruising boat designs and really learned a lot. Once a person is in the water, things go sideways very quickly.
Out of these experiments and research, dozens of conclusions were ironed out, reviewed and disseminated and today’s Safety at Sea Seminars reflect all that was learned.
Yet through such rigorous efforts, John was always warm, self-effacing and humorous. He was always the best sort of shipmate.
Over the years, I have published literally thousands of articles covering just about everything and everybody in the cruising and sailing world. Only once in all that time have I ben sued for slander or defamation, for getting it wrong. As it happens, it stemmed from an article John had written. He was named in the suit as well, and I bet that was a oncer for him, too.
Nothing came of the suit but the take-away is that the bone of contention was John using a somewhat arcane British yacht hull-configuration ratio in his review of the yacht in question that made this boat out to be mathematically equal to a claw-footed bathtub.
Intellectually rigorous and honest, John stuck by his guns and the whole thing went away.
The world, and particularly the sailing world, is a smaller place without John Rousmanier in it but his legacy will live on for generations.
Read the obituary here.
https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/name/john-rousmaniere-obituary?id=62170519
