BoatBanter.com - Sad news if you knew Graham Hall

Matt Colie wrote:
To all you East Coast Sailors:

If you knew Graham Hall as I did;

http://graham.memory-of.com/Timeline.aspx

That is sad news. He was a nice guy and a great sailor. I
can't say I knew Graham Hall but met him several times,
sailed against him a few.

He was my coach for the time I was at school and is the person the got
me a place on the trial horse crew.

I have been following him for a while but lost the track a couple of
years ago and just picked it up again too late.

That's always the way... life rushes by far too quickly to
grasp.

When I met Graham Hall he was just getting started racing a
Flying Scot, and I was sailing with a college team as an
older student. Some years later he came to a local club
race, part of the state Flying Scot series, and rather
easily dominated the fleet. I happened to be Race Committee
that weekend, and when a few people grumbled about his
performance I said, "What did you expect? But there's
nothing keeping you from studying & practicing to get as
good as he is, in fact he'll be glad to help if you ask him."

I had the pleasure of sailing the Johnson 18 at a regatta
with my wife when he was sailing his Flying Scot. He was
playing folk music tapes from his van's stereo and I went
over to talk to him about music. On the water he & I traded
some comments about the races & the conditions (it was
windy). Later he came over to ask me about our boat (we had
rather dramatically lapped the Flying Scot fleet)
unfortunately did not get a chance to let him sail it too.

DSK