On My Mind

Holding onto a sense of wonder

To meet people from other tribes is to see the world differently.

A uniform world is dull and different tribes offer themselves to us as an education, says the author. PHOTO: SAILGP
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The man before me in Singapore is a descendant of Poseidon, Captain Ahab and Robert Shaw's Quint. Sea salt runs in his veins. A blue whale once breached beside him. The water tells him stories. The wind for him is a living thing.

"I can look at the water," says Russell Coutts, 60, quietly, "and I can read the wind moving across the water like a road map."

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