The One-Design Invitational Muskegon Regatta

There are a number of hard-core racers who have complained that my stories are trite.  The say that my descriptions of regattas focus too much on partying, girls, hot tubs, and all of the other things that happen during a weekend.  I’ve been called a poser, a crappy sailor, a loudmouth, and even a narcissistic attention whore, and those who sling the insults have said that the articles I’ve written belong somewhere besides Sailing Anarchy. 

            So, to those of you who do not want to read about strip clubs, drunken debauchery and naked young women, please skip this story.  For the rest of you, realize this:  While most of us come to a regatta for the competition, we come back year after year for the people, the atmosphere, the parties, and the stories we get to keep forever.  The One-Design Invitational Regatta at Muskegon Yacht Club would provide plenty of stories, and we will certainly be back next year.

            For those who don’t know, Muskegon is one of many industrial remnants on Lake Michigan.  The city is located on Muskegon Lake, which is a 3 mile long harbor with a narrow channel leading out to the big lake.  During the late 1800’s, some 47 sawmills operated on the lake, cutting the timber that fueled the industrial expansion of the Midwest.  The sawmills eventually gave way to a few big, nasty paper mills and other industrial uses.  These are gone, but their legacy is not.  The coffee-colored water and contaminated soils that ring the lake will be there for a long time, although I understand the ongoing cleanup of the area has been fairly successful.  The town itself is still largely blue-collar and its heritage has kept it insulated from the extravagant vacation homes and silly prices that exist in other Lake Michigan harbor towns.

            The Muskegon Yacht Club itself was as unpretentious a place as you can imagine.  I caught a lot of crap from the locals for calling it “a bit seedy” in a race day report for another website, but it is exactly that.  Those who know me understand that this is a hell of a compliment, that a bit seedy is exactly the right amount.  There are plenty of racers who would rather pay six bucks for a glass of vodka while they’re dressed in their blazers and wearing their cute hats, but neither I nor any of the people I race with are those people.  I asked one proud and pissed off Muskegonite to tell me where he’d rather see naked women: At a sophisticated burlesque club, full of business people in suits, where the cover was fifty dollars and it cost a hundred and fifty to have a snack and get drunk, or at a smoky strip club with 2 dollar drinks, a few hot girls, loud brassy music and a pool table.  I think he got my point.   

            We woke up early on Saturday intending to get out on the water in time to get the boat dialed in.  We would be racing against 26 other Melgi, while a small handful of J/24s had a start after the Melges fleet.  Our crew was not quite up to speed- we had whisked a 20 year-old U of M student away from her parent’s house to come sail in her first race at the last minute.  Her passion for rock climbing kept us from worrying about her ability to stay on the boat and hike her ass off, and Jo’s 125 pounds put us right at optimum weight.  My beautiful Mer would be handling the number 1 spot, and she hasn’t done much bow on sportboats.  Wonder Woman is always efficient and reliable at the number 2 position, but like all of us she had some winter cobwebs still.   Despite our desires to get out with some practice time to spare, the crew couldn’t shake their hangovers quickly, and we rushed to get off the dock in time for our start- not a good way to begin USA570’s “break out” season.  While I don’t think I’d be happy to swim in the water, the lake is about as ideal a place for a small boat regatta as you could ask for.  It’s almost like a stadium- a near perfect oval about 3 miles long, separated from Lake Michigan by a narrow channel that kills every bit of the considerable swell that’s crashing on the shores of the big lake in any wind with some West in it.  There’s almost always wind on ML, and it blows hard more often than not.  Larger boat races are held out on Michigan, but for the Melgi the little lake was really perfect. 

            We got sails up and made it to the line, calling out hellos to our friends on the water after a winter with little contact.  I lit a smoke and gasped as I saw the fleet unfurl their jibs, a sign in the class that the start was less than a minute away.  We scrambled to find our positions and dial in the sails and got off the line just wonderfully. Dirty air, unfavored side, third row.  There’s just nothing like good preparation.  Our first two races were a showcase of lousy racing.  I won’t bore you with the details: just make a quick mental list of everything that you can do wrong in a race, and I promise you that we did it.  On the positive side, our crew had three good looking young women on board, so in a sense we’d already won despite our two 20th places in Races 1 and 2.  Once we found clear air we found that we actually had great boatspeed- Key West and the Worlds did wonders for our trimming and for Greg’s driving, and we knew that when we had our adjusted crew positions sorted out we’d be able to go just fine.  We had a quick strategy session between races 2 and 3 as the wind leveled off at around 15 knots and finally sorted out how to compensate for Mer’s lack of brute strength with some better technique.  We also decided to sail our own race, to concentrate on getting sets and douses right, and to work on our communication.  This was why we came to this laid-back regatta; to get Cujo Racing ready to defend our homeland at the Detroit NOOD in just a couple of weeks.  The cheap booze, great competition, and generous and fun people were just a bonus.

            Realizing that we had speed and point on many of the other teams, we relaxed noticeably.  We still had a pussy of a start, but we began to figure out the predictable geographic shift at the power plant and we ended up with a 15 in the third race.  The wind was up enough for some white-knuckle rides, but Key West had redefined our comfort limits this year and we reveled in it.  As we came off the line in the fourth race we finally had a decent lane and sailed a somewhat clean race.  Screaming toward the downwind mark I heard our little newby’s scream from her position hanging on the transom, “THIS IS FUCKING AWESOOOOOME!!!”  My never-ending mission to bring more young women to racing started 2006 with a bang.  No, not that kind of bang.

            Our 12th in the fourth race had us feeling okay as we made it to the bar and slumped into our seats, bruised, bloodied and parched.  I did a little cheerleading during our debrief, and we all understood where we needed to improve.  While winning is the best thing for morale, visibly improving during the course of a day is not bad either.  Mer and I stayed at the club for an hour, trading stories with all the characters there, then headed back to our rental house- me to write and she to nap. 

            We fully intended to have an early night.  When Hollywood (one of Hoodlum Racing’s original Detroit criminals) called my fiancée and me to invite us to the strip club at 11 pm, we almost declined.  He promised we’d just go for a drink or two, and to see how many teeth the average dancer had.  Why do I always fall for that one?  We searched for a half hour and finally were directed to the internationally acclaimed Murphy’s by an ancient guy in a rusted out Chevy pickup who knew just where it was. Unsurprisingly, Hollywood knew just who to ask.   Murphy’s was just as you’d expect it would be.  There were lots of Carhartt’s, wifebeaters and missing teeth, and the patrons were pretty shabby too.  The aesthetically challenged dancers spurred us to drink quickly, and within a few minutes ‘Wood and I were shooting pool, chatting up women who probably had three kids at home (at 22 years old), and having a good old time. 

            I was just thinking how much better the Melges fleet’s attendance had been at the strip clubs in Miami and KW when they started to roll in.  Building Speed, Vapour Trail, Underdog, the rest of Cujo - within a minute there were 5 boats represented at the fine Murphy’s, although it was truly pathetic that poor Hollywood was the sole standard bearer for the once mighty Hoodlum boys.  Our Detroit/Windsor crowd took over a corner of the club, but no one was buying dances.  None of had anything smaller than a dollar bill, and the dancers didn’t justify that much.  That is, until our little Jo and the very corruptive skipper of BS made their way onto the stage.  The entire group had been dehydrating in a hot tub for hours, and Jo’s tolerance had probably been surpassed hours before.  She was certainly not shy during her first ever visit to a gentlemen’s club, and she displayed her rock-climbing ability as applied to a shiny brass pole.  I was getting my own lap dance at the moment from the gorgeous stripper who wears my engagement ring, and I guess the combination was just too much for the otherwise proper venue- the bouncer threw us all out on the spot.

            Mer brought me home for a happy ending to the lap dance that was so rudely interrupted, and the indomitable Spinntrim, Jo, Wonder Woman and the crews of BS and VT made their way back to the Holiday Inn to check the pool water temperature yet again.  I don’t know exactly what happened, but the next morning I had evidence that they did, indeed, run through the streets of Muskegon without clothes.  And the newbie led the way.

            You might think that with a night like that, we’d once again be dragging our asses to the race course, but it didn’t happen that way.  When Mer and I rolled out of bed at 7 on Sunday morning the wind was way, way up, and our adrenaline started pumping the minute we saw the whitecaps covering Muskegon Lake.  We were the first boat on the water that day.  We checked the wind directions, we tuned the rig just so, we set, gybed a few times, doused, checked the line, checked the wind, checked the wind again, and got our game faces on.  What a difference it makes to feel ready rather than rushed!  The only regret I have was that I didn’t get to see Marc Hollerbach unroll his jib to find a 6-foot high poster of the New Kids on the Block taped to it, complete with captions on each of the boy toys extolling the manly virtues of USA500. 

            The wind had clocked around to the NNW and was steady at deck level at 17 knots on the handheld whirlygig.  Since the low level stuff was turbulent from its trip over the dunes I’d guess there was a lot more wind up high, and it would increase throughout the day.  This is when Greg shines upwind and my muscles were primed for some hardcore downwind pumping.  We had a clean but conservative start at the pin end, tacking away to the right early.  We stayed there just long enough to clear up our lanes and flopped back over, expecting another geographic lift that would bring us right to the mark.  Except for the blindingly fast ex-49er stud Bora Gulari and near-local Mike Dow on Flying Toaster we were right up there at the top mark.  The rest of the race was without drama but not without excitement.  The move for the downwind leg was to hug the western shore and get the geographic header to the mark.  Flyer, sailing with their flat kite and great tactics from owner Chuck Holzman, was able to stay almost on shore with more speed than we had sailing with our fat runner, but we mostly held our position with the fleet.  Hollerbach and Fu were super fast, staying with Flyer but unable to catch them.  The race was six legs and the wind was increasing the entire time; one cruising boat had a 34-knot gust during the race, and the gusts were the kind that slams into the rig, not the squeezing pressure that you get on open water.  Hoodlum managed to stay out near the leaders, finishing just where they needed to take the third overall as the Committee cancelled the last race with the wind getting a little sketchy.  It’s meant to be a fun regatta, and far too many of us had already had to buy new rigs after Key West.  Flyer’s third bullet of five races would get them the overall win for the weekend.  We crossed the line in sixth, ahead of Gov’n’r Dow on his “second” home turf- his seventh would get him second place at the MYC Invitational.    

            After watching the race-winning J/24’s mast miss the water by five feet as they finished the race, we got the motor on and the sails down quickly so we could haul out on the early side of our 27-boat fleet, but some final drama hit us when the little donker decided to die at the perfect time for us to be driven onto the steel sea wall at Torreson’s Marine.  We managed to snag a spring line off a GL50, saving us from an expensive carbon crunch as we were driven backward along the sea wall toward a moored barge.  We sorted it out and made our way back to the club, ready for a drink and a burger from the full-on barbecue at the club.

            The ensuing party and awards ceremony on the lawn at the club was like a picnic in the park- it only took a weekend to both rekindle dormant winter friendships and to make new ones.  Event organizer John Schumacher, another dirty bastard, gave out silly but appreciated prizes to every competitor. True to form, the big Hoodlum himself talked for what felt like an hour when he accepted his award, but we all know he can’t close his yap, and we love him for that and for his dogged determination in getting more than ten boats to Muskegon Lake from Detroit.  Now every one of them has to come to our own little NOOD or they will never live it down.  Especially Brian Torreson- if he doesn’t show he’ll not only let down his home town, but he’ll ruin the name of his family’s awesome raceboat yard forever.

            There were some great lessons for us this weekend.  We re-learned the obvious but often disobeyed importance of getting on the water early and found that it’s not that hard to get an early start despite your hangover.  We discovered the truly incredible hospitality and great atmosphere at Muskegon Yacht Club.  Most importantly, we learned that even a bunch of city boys and girls can easily get kicked out of a dirty, raunchy, seedy strip club in Musketucky.  Just don’t forget to bring your own 20 year-old.

Mr. Clean
May 24th, 2006

The four great photos are by very cool, new-to-sailing photographer Nick Tremmel. 
Look for more of his work at www.blinkphotographystudio.com

Thanks to anarchist Spinntrim for some of the other photos.  The really crappy ones are mine.