LANZAROTE, Canary Islands – At 6 feet 4 inches tall and 218 pounds, Eric Anderson '16 knew his size and sailing experience would make high level collegiate sailing difficult, but he had an insatiable appetite for sailboat racing and was determined to walk onto the national powerhouse team that operated out of the McNay Center in Branford on Long Island Sound.  Now he has a World Championship podium finish and is competing on the Olympic circuit.
 
The Wilmette, Ill., native learned to race in local events on Lake Michigan as a teenager but had never participated in the junior racing circuit that consumed so many of his Yale teammates. Instead, he sailed club racing on Wednesday nights, eventually getting the opportunity to compete in several Chicago Yacht Club Races to Mackinac and one Newport to Bermuda event.  During a gap year, he drove his van around the region competing in as many Laser events as he could.
 
Surrounded by more experienced - and smaller - sailors at Yale, Anderson still found ways to contribute to a program that captured eight different national championships during his four years. He has a lot of great memories from his days by the Sound, including summers at the Yale Corinthian Yacht Club (YCYC). Some of his favorites include "Awesome fall sunsets, windy days on the water, and days where you keep picking the right side over and over," he said.
 
"I did run the club's summer program one year, which was a huge highlight.  I'm still in touch with some of the Branford kids I coached there, and I think you get to see a different side of the club and how it fits into the community in the summer."
 
Anderson never missed a Yale practice and kept improving his skills.  During summers, he progressed into other classes more suited for his build, including the high-powered 5o5 dinghy and the Finn, the men's heavyweight Olympic class.  After graduating with a double major in Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering, he took a job as a software engineer at Google and continued training in all his spare time.
 
That combination of talents has worked well for him; he finished third in the 2019 5o5 World Championships with his teammate Parker Shinn and was picked as a training partner for Luke Muller, the USA's Finn Olympic representative at the Tokyo Games this summer.
 
Google's flexible work culture allows him to train on the water during parts of the day and work for them at night. He works in ads privacy infrastructure, writing code to make sure his company respects all the relevant laws, policies and user consents when it uses data to target and measure online ads.

The former Trumbull College resident makes his home in the San Francisco area but is rarely there. Since his Olympic training stint began with Muller, he's been constantly on the move, sailing in places like Greece, Spain, Australia, and, most recently, the Canary Islands.

"We move to a location and train for a month or two, then we move on. In 2020, we were in Houston, New York, and Miami.  This year we've mostly been in Miami and the Canary Islands."

Anderson's schedule depends a lot on his time zone because he tries to keep a large block of West Coast time open for meetings while still logging enough training time.  "The past couple years I've been sailing about 120 days, but there are also days geared towards sailing that are off the water (travel, boat work, fitness, etc.). It's busy. Here in Lanzarote it means a few hours of work in the morning, sailing all afternoon, and work until about 11 p.m."  

Fortunately, everyone seems happy with the arrangement, "I don't think I've had to compromise work too much here. Google is happy as long as I get the work done, which I do, and the company is pretty understanding with flexibility and remote work.  Balancing work and sailing has actually become easier in the pandemic, because remote work and flexible schedules became the norm."

Anderson's work with Muller earned him the designation of US Sailing Team Domestic Training Partner in the Finn class.  He is in a group of funded sailors working toward Olympic success.
 
But the former Bulldog has had his own success in that class. He won the 2019 Finn Pacific Coast Championships and garnered more attention by taking fourth in the medal race at the 2020 Hempel World Cup Series Miami.
 
Although Muller and Anderson are technically competitors, they viewed their work together as mutually beneficial. "Luke and I approached our sailing as a totally collaborative effort. We wanted to see how good we could get together. With two cooperative boats you can do all sorts of equipment and setup testing that you don't normally get to do," said Anderson.  "There's also a large motivational component. We spent the first months of the pandemic showing up to empty yacht clubs, rigging up in the parking lot, and sailing alone.  A lot of it was un-coached and would have been miserable if it had been just one of us by ourselves.  We keep each other happy and psyched up and ready to work."

The world's top sailors, motivated by the prize money and Olympic glory, focus full-time on their pursuit. If Anderson wants to reach the top level of Finn Sailing, he says it would require a gym session as well as three hours on the water every day, all the while finding time to review footage and get a solid nine hours of sleep each night.

"That isn't possible for anyone with a job, even if there are technically enough hours in the day. It's not realistic to recover physically from a hard gym session while working on the laptop or to recover mentally during a tough sailing or gym session. There needs to be some actual downtime in the day," said Anderson.

As the Olympics draw closer and Muller heads to Japan for his final training block, Anderson will head back to his East Palo Alto home and turn his attention towards preparing his 5o5 for another World Championship push, this time with fellow Bulldog Nic Baird '19.  Stepping away from the Finn circuit is bittersweet, but he's excited for the future.

"I've learned so much in the Finn class and can't wait to see how it informs my sailing going forward. Getting back in the 5o5 on the home waters is going to be really special, something that I didn't appreciate as much before I began traveling all the time for competition," he reflects.
 
He'll be back on the racecourse soon enough.