Word: boatful
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...fond of a prefabricated answer from Kenneth Grahame's classic book for children, The Wind in the Willows. Afloat one day, the Water Rat assured the Mole: "Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing-absolutely nothing-half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing . . ." Unfortunately, while the Water Rat is expounding this view, he absentmindedly runs his boat on to a mudbank...
...thatch of white hair over tanned, weather-beaten features. His clear brown eyes are edged with crowfeet wrinkles from squinting into the sun. Broad-shouldered and stocky (5 ft. 10 in., 180 lbs.), Shields stays in trim by doing a good part of the work on his own boat. A non-smoker (he gave up cigars 15 years ago) and a lifetime teetotaler, he has the wind to stay under water close to a minute at a time, as he lovingly swabs smooth the gleaming green hull of his International sloop Aileen before a race...
...block from his home, on the north shore of Long Island Sound. There he doffs his banker-style clothes for khaki pants and a polo shirt, gathers a three-man crew and hoists sail. On a good day, he can get in two or three hours of wheeling his boat around a selected course, outguessing his rivals (and sometimes being outguessed) on winds and sail settings, outmaneuvering them (and sometimes being outmaneuvered) on the turns. With practice spins, and sailing to starting marks. Corny often spends eight or nine hours a day in his boat...
...devout sailors, Corny Shields has brought his children up on the water. The Aileen is named for his daughter, who won the national women's sailing championship in 1948. Son Corny Jr., 19 (nickname: Glick), is one of the top Long Island skippers in the speedy 110 Class boats. Mrs. Shields, in the older tradition of yachtsmen's wives, prefers the yacht club porch, seldom races with her husband, "because Corny won't let me do anything in the boat...
...boat, Corny is the absolute skipper. "I want all the responsibility," he says. He also admits: "I hate to lose!" Rival skippers-one affectionately calls him "a genius"-would rather beat him than anyone else for just that reason; plus, of course, the satisfaction that comes from beating the North American sailing champion. This week, Corny celebrated the second day of Larchmont Race Week by leading 19 other Internationals home in a brisk, 18-knot northeasterly. Said Corny happily: "The harder it blows, the better I like...