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Key West Train Wreck
I'm
struggling to understand why we all feed off of pain and disaster the way
that we do. The same morbid attraction people have to train wrecks seems
to draw sailors to events that have a reputation for hurting people, boats,
and wallets. Since it took me so long to get this article out (for reasons
that will become clear shortly) I can't give you any news scoops. The racing
community is already abuzz with stories of carnage, mayhem, and injuries
that have occurred on this bizarre little island at the end of US-1. All
I can really do is fill you in on the pain and disaster that our little
team from the Motor City has seen, day after day, since weeks before the
event. So why the hell am I having so much fun? What is it that brings
sailors back, year after year, knowing that of all U.S. regattas, Key West
Race Week sees more rigs, sails, boats and crews reduced to jagged pieces
of their former selves? Are we all crazy?
 For
the crew of Cujo, Greg's (anarchist Maddog570) Melges 24, the discomfort
began after Worlds when we decided on the crew for Key West. Our chosen
team was well over the class weight limit, so the entire crew needed to
lose a lot of weight. While succeeding on a Melges means more athleticism
than any other keelboat I know of, the situation starts to feel a little
silly when a bunch of amateur sailors from the suburbs are following guides
to rapid weight loss written for pro boxers and bodybuilders. My
girlfriend (#2 crew spot and her first real one-design regatta), Meredith
and I starved ourselves to exhaustion the last week while working 14 hour
days to deal with missing yet another week at the office. When we got to
the registration tent, got on the scale, and weighed in well below the
class maximum we were as charged up as if we had just won a race. Meredith
and I combined to lose about 30 pounds in 20 days.
No pain, no gain?
Sunday
was a practice day with the crew getting comfortable with one another in
moderate breezes, but we were all still so lightheaded from lack of food
and sleep that our performance was less than stellar. Meredith has
never sailed any One-Design race before, and Scott from Cocoa Beach (anarchist
Plano) is new to the boat, although he has loads of time in M-24s. It
was nice to see old friends, to get the boat in the groove, to play in
the topaz water while spilling a drop of Mount Gay for the poor bastards
stuck in cold misery back home. Sunday night we ate like savages,
trying to build up lost strength, and we all turned in early.
It was tough to get out early Monday morning for Day 1, but we managed
to get to the docks just as perennial asskickers Partner & Partners were
sliding out from their position rafted up inside us. Each day those
guys are among the first ones on the course, and as I write this on Day 4,
they are leading this stacked fleet. Just a little more evidence that
the top guys really do earn it. We sailed two fun races and had better results
than Cujo’s ever had before, with two mid-fleet finishes. We all enjoyed
the day, but were totally beat from hard hiking and boat work and turned
in early after a little hot tubbing under the stars.
Tuesday
was a blast except for the pain. The waves were very peculiar. I
didn't realize where I'd seen them before until I had a few drinks with
some of the other Detroit guys- The waves were nearly identical to the
vicious chop on Lake Erie in a nor'easter. The wind was low 20's
with much bigger gusts, and the reef was only breaking the meat off of
the ocean swells. The peaks were pushing
through the reef and rebuilding, mixing up with new wind chop at really fast
periods. Steep, tall and frequent are not my kind of waves. When
I was about 12 years old I remember having the brilliant idea of jumping
in a shopping cart, hauling ass down a hill, and launching it off a 5 foot
tall plywood launch ramp, with less than fun results. On the upwind legs,
the boat felt like that shopping cart every 6 seconds, and it was not particularly
comfortable. Every one of us was either bleeding or bruised on our
hips just from the force of deceleration of our bodies on the hiking lines. One
Melges crew off of a Detroit boat actually cracked his rib while hiking and
was out for the rest of the week.
We
watched the leaders round the top mark during race 1 and saw carnage even
among those guys. Dave Ullman’s crew, rounding first on Pegasus 505,
lost their tack line and barely got it in only to lose it again before
finally getting it under control. The third place boat went over
hard with one of those wipeouts when the keel is clear of the water for
awhile and there's no way to get the boat back on its feet without blowing
the kite halyard. Another boat lost her tack line and when the kite hit
the water, it pulled the mast down in a microsecond. We opted not to fly
the kite like a lot of boats but we didn't lose any places since our half
of the fleet had the same idea. Seeing 2 more boats without masts on the
downwind leg made us feel better about being such pussies. We had
a decent finish, with almost no time to the next race. No one felt
up to eating lunch between races, we were all just too beaten up, with
some crew barely holding onto their breakfast once the adrenalin surge
from race 1 was over. Race 2 was more of the same but with a little
moderation to the breeze (not the waves).
Another rig or two came down including a J/105, a nice hole appeared in the
Quantum boat Fusion M, and lots of work materialized for the local North
Sails loft. We saw 16 knots of boatspeed on the first downwind leg
with jib and main only. The second leg we had the usual big wind argument,
a variation of which I've had on nearly every boat I've ever sailed:
"There
are three boats over there that we'll kill if we hoist the flat chute."
"Not
if we wipe out we won't kill them, we might kill ourselves though."
"So
how about you don't wipe the boat out?"
"So
how about you just concentrate and find us a good lane?"
"Shut
up and drive!
Long
story short, we didn't beat them, but still had great results for the Cujo
team. We were excited about being one place out of the top half of
the fleet, and we were even more excited about being in a fight for overall
position with some of our good friends on the circuit, guys that Cujo
hadn’t beaten before. The entire Melges fleet pulled the boats out
of the water after the races as the forecast was for 40 knots of breeze
overnight, blowing straight into the floating dock where most of us were
tied up. Already ragged from the racing, we had to spend the additional
hour cranking up the keel, getting trailers rigged and in line to pull
the boats out, and basically stumbling over each other to just get it done
so we could get in bed.
Tuesday
night was the quietest I think I've ever heard a group of sailors during
any regatta. The fact that Key West is the top party regatta
in US racing made it all the more confusing. Mostly all I heard was hushed
conversation about the various wrecks; we had friends on Wairere when she
lost her rig, we had friends on Ocean Planet when the cold front crushed
their boat the night before. Another crewmember was airlifted out with
a crushed leg while one guy’s leg was cleanly snapped…the stories just
kept coming. The overall boat casualty was pretty high although I
have no official numbers. I think five Melges 24 rigs came down,
at least one J/105, the Thompson, and a handful of other handicap
boats. The tone around town was definitely subdued, but we always
stay optimistic. Plus there's that crazy love of pain and nasty
conditions. Things are always better on the edge, right? While
the wind was still forecast to be in the 20's for Wednesday, our course
would largely be in the lee of the land, so we'd have a less painful day
of it, in conditions that we excel in because they're a lot like Lake St.
Clair, our home waters. Have I told you yet that we're dumbasses?
Wednesday
morning we got out bright and early to a howling Northerly. We got
the boat launched quickly and headed out to warm up. The wind was
strong and steady at the starting line with 19 knots read at about
9 feet above the water. That would mean near 25 at the masthead,
which is pretty marginal conditions for a sportboat without the ability
to reef the big mainsail. But it was flat water, and most of the
fleet came to play, so we never hesitated. Maybe we should have,
especially on seeing the fat and heavy 130 foot schooner Western Union
heeled over 15 degrees with nothing but a foresail and forestaysail flying. Closer
to shore, the breeze was a bit lighter overall but more inconsistent, with
some really intense gusts. We never got a wind reading on the worse
of the gusts, but I'd guess the big ones were 35 knots or so. On
the way out to the course, we learned that somehow the radio didn't get
properly charged. We got as close to the committee boat as we could, but
still couldn't hear any sound signals over the wind, and then our view
of the committee boat was obstructed by the big fleet during flag dropping
time, so we missed the start. The proverbial black cloud began to
form over USA 570. We had a beautiful first leg, picking off boats
as we flew through the chop faster and higher than the unfortunates who
had nearly as bad a start as we did. We miscalled the layline badly,
hit the top mark, backed off of it, did our penalty turn, tried to figure
out how to get through the dozen J105s barreling toward the mark on the
layline, somehow got back to the mark, and turned around it. The
black cloud over our heads was growing...
The
leaders looked to be handling their kites pretty well, so we hoisted ours
and held on. I had sort of forgotten how truly fun it is to be so
close to the edge of control, and we were exactly on that edge. Then we
went over it. We buried the bow a little bit too hard just as Meredith
called out a monster gust, and the boat didn't come back up even with everything
well eased in what we thought was plenty of time. The boat just stayed
on its side, exactly like the other Melges we had seen the day
before, with our masthead almost brushing the bigger waves. I looked
back once when we laid her over and saw Meredith standing on
the topside, now a vertical surface. We blew the spin halyard off,
gathered in 500 pounds of wet kite, and tore off downwind again under main
and jib.
Cujo's personal black cloud was becoming a thunderhead. Once again we were
up to 16 knots with just the two sails, and it was still not too far from
the edge of control, this time with no chute at all!
The
rounding was fine, we had another fast and uncomfortable ride upwind, hiking
like our lives depended on it and alternating between withering pain and
salty spray as Greg drove up and over the steep, short waves. We
made it cleanly to the top mark this time, decided long before not to use
the chute, and started downwind. USA 202, one of our Detroit
brethren, was just to leeward and we were going after them hard, hoping
to keep some places in the standings despite our disastrous day. Just
as we got some overlap with 202, I heard a little bang and then immediately
a big bang. "ka-BANG" is the noise the mast made as it cracked
in half and went over the side in slow motion. The dark cloud over
our heads just turned into a tropical storm.
Cujo's
crew was all safe, so we assessed the situation and decided to try to save
the rig. I know lots of racers would rather pull the pins out and
let the whole mess go to the bottom, letting the insurance company sort
it out, but Greg didn't want to do that. Personally it
doesn't feel right to me to do that unless the mast is likely to damage
the boat or crew, so I was glad we had the chance to try and salvage
the rig. We all had some work to do, with Mer and Krista
sorting out halyards down below and finding cushions, Greg stabilizing
the upper section, Scott getting some securing lines and sorting out all
the tangled crap, while I hung over the rail using my long chimp arms to
keep the spreader from banging into the hull. Eventually we were
able to swing the rig in the boat. We did whatever we could
to keep those brand new Kevlar sails from getting too beaten up, but it
was a tall order. Sails swimming through water do not last long,
nor do sails that touch long jagged carbon fiber bits. Mer and I
ran around lashing the mast to whatever strong points were left while Greg
and Scott got the motor sorted out. As I contemplated the amazing
way that carbon fiber splinters can slide an inch deep into your hand with
hardly any pressure at all, Scott looked up and said, "Hey guys, the
finish line is only a half a mile away!" We all hesitated for
a second as this sank in, left the motor in a raised position, and held
up whatever piece of sail we could lay our hand on as Krista steered for
the finish. Do you remember the ship in Pirates of the Caribbean
with the torn sails, the splintered hull, and the skeletons? We must have
looked like its sportboat equivalent as we crossed the line. I hailed
as loud as I could to the RC boat, "Did we make it in time?" In
response, every person on both RC boats stood up to clap and
cheer! We got 42nd place, beating only the boats that
retired and one poor J/80 still on the course.
There are pictures of our finish that unfortunately will not make it in time
for this article, but I’ll make sure they pop up on the forums as soon as
I receive them.
 We
started the outboard and made our way to the dock, getting a wet and bumpy
tow from the RC about halfway in. At one point during our tow-in, Mer
looked off the transom and said “there’s something flopping around back
there.” The outboard had popped off its bracket and was getting towed
through the water from its safety tether, a 3 horsepower lure for catching
really stupid bull sharks. On inspecting the mast and after thinking hard
about it, we determined that the rig probably came down because there was
either a defect in the spreader or damage to the spreader that we hadn’t
noticed on set-up or that had happened earlier in the race. The spreader
went (the little bang I heard) and the rig toppled over like a sailor on
Duvall Street after a dozen Mount Gay & Cokes. Could anything else
go wrong?
 The
entire crew mobilized when we got Cujo out of the water, sorting out sail
repairs, insurance claims and the rest. I was running over to the North
loft with sails packed in the trunk of the POS that Enterprise calls a “luxury
upgrade,” and being in a rush, backed into a concrete pole that was in
my blind spot. The black cloud clearly was not finished with us yet.
Thursday
and Friday were much better. Thursday we all relaxed a bit and tended to
our broken bodies while Greg sorted out his insurance issues. After we
were sure that the insurers were paying, Eric Nerlinger and the awesome
guys from Inside Voice loaned us their spare mast, already loaded up with
upgraded halyards in pretty colors. Melges racers (and sometime Cujo crew)
Keith and Joel rented Harleys and drove down to Key West to help us rig
the boat and finish all the booze we bought. My own sister and her friend
 flew in from New York to see what this “sailing thing” is all about. We
had the rig in and tuned within a couple of hours and we retired to random
establishments of disrepute to celebrate and to see who would win the Cujo
girls’ little tattoo competition. Greg had passed out temporary tattoos
at the beginning of the week with the dog’s head logo on them, and Thursday
was the first night that we went all out. Of course Meredith and Krista
won the competition, getting Cujo tattoos on over three dozen fellow Melges
competitors and probably a hundred more IRC, Swan and PHRF racers, not
to mention the random tourists. The high point of the night was when the
girls cornered Peter Harken and tattooed him a couple of times outside
the Green Parrot.
Friday
we had very little pressure on us and we enjoyed every minute, finishing
28th of 60 for the first race. The new mast was dialed in quickly
and we had great boatspeed although we needed every tenth of a knot of
it to overcome some really bad starts and a few bad decisions. Cujo ended
with fortieth for the week, beating ten more boats than the team did at
KW ‘05. If we averaged our finishes for the day we couldn’t race and the
day we broke the stick, we would have ended our week in 30th. To
us, that’s the kind of improvement that makes all the pain worthwhile.
At
the Bayview party on Wednesday night, I was talking with some of the fleet
about the Race Office’s decision to hold races on Tuesday and Wednesday. The
new Melges 32 fleet decided not to race on Wednesday and a few of the Melges
24 teams were unhappy about the PRO holding races, especially after rumors
surfaced that both Dave Ullman and Andy Burdick advised him not to start
the 24’s in the winds we were seeing. Despite all the trouble we and some
other competitors had, I think the powers that be were right to start the
races, and here’s why: We DO love pain. The majority of us feed off the
adrenalin we get in the hardcore stuff, especially in the boats that might
not really belong out there. While only a few competitors remember how
hard, expensive, or painful it was, everyone remembers the rush, the chaos,
the numbers on the speedo that we’ve never seen before; all this gives
us a feeling that we don’t soon forget. It’s the same dynamic as when
you’re standing at the edge of a steep and rocky face on skis or a snowboard. You
may be a little scared and you may faceplant your way down, but once you
get to the bottom and look at what you just accomplished it’s hard not
to whoop and holler a little, knowing you’ll go hit that same cliff again. Teams
go to Key West precisely because it’s going to be hairy out there. If
it was just another moderate air venue, there wouldn’t be hundreds of competitors
from all over the world and there wouldn’t be the camaraderie or the hard-charging
mentality applied to the racing, the practicing, the partying and the drinking.
 As
for the black cloud that hung over the team during the week, it seemed
to have lifted on Friday and permanently stayed away. Friday afternoon
as we were getting the boat ready for the long road to Michigan, I asked
Greg if I could take a few minutes to spend with Meredith to watch the
sunset. We went over to Mallory Square, where there’s a daily sunset party
all along a quarter mile of quayside. It is populated by sword swallowers,
fire eaters, mimes and a mix of off-the-wall people and tourists; a real
miniature version of Venice Beach. We asked a tourist family to take a
picture of us with the sunset in the background, and just as Mer was giving
a big smile to the camera, I pulled out my great-great grandmother’s engagement
ring and slipped it on her finger. After seeing this wonderful creature
perform her ass off on an unfamiliar boat in soul searching conditions
and then seeing her put other self-proclaimed party animals to shame in
the clubs, I knew I could never let her go. We all celebrated that night,
and the weather and the company was perfect from that point on.
 To
all you anarchists out there, thanks for coming by to say hello. I never
expected people to come up to me and thank me for writing the article about
the Worlds last month, but they came by the dozen. SA has some really
deep penetration amongst racers and it felt great to know that people enjoyed
something that I enjoyed doing. I also want to thank the whole Cujo extended
family for an unreal trip- Meghan for building dryshirts with great logos
on them so we wouldn’t look like typical golf shirt idiots, the stellar
crew of Greg, Mer, Krista and Scott, Joel, Keith, Beth and Kathryn- you
guys rock. The team wants to thank everyone who helped us out or simply
shared drinks with us: Napoleon Dynamite, Saildry, Prebend, Marc and Fu
for the great advice, Carol, Hellion, Haji, the always awesome Inside Voice,
Simon and Team Gill, Lovers and the Badger boys (you should be thanking
ME), E Hood and the MBW guys for being so helpful with the rig and building
wild boats, and the rest of you. We’ll be seeing you all again soon. And
we’re coming on strong!
Oh yeah, In case
you’re wondering, we WILL return for KW ‘07. And I, for
one, hope it’ll be nukin’.
Wouldn’t
you?
Mr.Clean
January 21, 2006
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