A PORN STAR MORNING, part 2

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A little more than an hour later my alarm woke me and I sprang up like a cat…a really old, crippled cat.  I actually sort of slithered over the tailgate onto the ground and drank a few swigs of water to try and get rid of the glue in my mouth.  Despite my nearly total lack of sleep, I was excited as hell to go sailing, and to meet the people that make the VOR so interesting.  I played with the dog for a few minutes, throwing sticks for him in the vacant field behind the 50-odd containers where the teams make their homes for the two weeks that they’re in Baltimore.  I took Bob down to the docks where the support crews were busy readying the boats for today’s practices.  Many of the rigs were still being tuned, and crews were carrying down sails and other gear to the boats.  Old sails, new sails, and recut sails were swung aboard, and for most of the teams today’s practice would be their only real chance to evaluate the new and modified shapes that the sailmakers had been working so hard on.  A couple of POC guys with a few minutes to kill were sailing R/C boats next to the dock, tacking and gibing in between Ericcson and Pirates.  I hung out with the group, insulted them as sailors do, and found that it only took a few seconds to be accepted by these guys.  We might as well have been hanging out in front of the Cal 25 fleet at Bayview on a Saturday morning - that’s how unpretentious I found almost everyone involved with this race. 

Meredith and Kristin shuffled, sleepy eyed and sleepy gaited, to the long pontoon where I was taking pictures of the crews running around.  I walked down the dock, meeting them in front of the stunning Basilica, where Peter Greenhalgh was already dicking around with the monstrous carbon mainsail.  Most skiffies have heard of Peter and helmsman Alistair Richardson from Peter’s 18 foot skiff world championship and Alistair’s I-14 runs in Europe, or any one of dozens of other titles.  They’ve done their share of Olympic 49er stuff, but for me their nicest project was the best ‘intro to skiff sailing’ video I’ve seen, Higher and Faster, which has since become a series of videos.  Peter is cocky and smart and the kind of guy who I’d be nervous leaving a kid sister around.  He was muscling the main battens around while hanging on the mast.  The battens, each one about 20 foot  long, needed to be stuck into the cars and Peter needed to do most of the work twelve feet off the deck. 

Peter and skipper Jimmy Grant had been alerted by a mutual friend of ours that I’d be sniffing around this week.  That same friend had promised me a ride on this all-carbon porn star as a belated birthday present (old crewmates or something), and it was physically painful to have to say no when Jimmy showed up and asked if I wanted to go play.  We found out that they needed to bring the cat round to the inner harbor as soon as the last crew showed, then they’d be going out to practice- and we were meant to meet Bouwe and the boys and go sailing ourselves within an hour or two.  Our 10 hours in Baltimore left no room for this over-the-top beast.  So we did the next best thing: We sent our little Kristin to go and play with the boys, figuring a 20 year old ballet dancer/bartender would give them some pause.  Kristin is anxious to learn to sail this year, having been sucked into the lifestyle by hanging out with us and our sailing obsessed friends all winter, but this would be her first sail ever (unless you include the three hour, five wine bottle sunset cruise that we all took at the end of last year on the Detroit river-but I have no recollection of whether we ever even made sail).  With my typical lack of anything resembling logic or prudence, I thought “What better way to ease her into sailing than to get her out, alone with four young, world-champion caliber sailor guys, on one of the most overpowered craft on the water today?”  Kristin ended up having a great time, although she was confused that she wasn’t the center of attention considering the buckets of testosterone surrounding her.  Having never sailed before on any boat, she didn’t conceptually get that a) these guys were out practicing for some very important races that they really want to win for themselves and their sponsors, and b) there isn’t a woman cute enough to distract high-performance cat sailors with a hull 10 feet out of the later, especially when the boat costs five hundred grand and the sponsors and half the City of Baltimore are watching a hundred yards away.  She’ll learn that, but she’ll probably be disappointed at the speed of every boat she gets on in the future.  I got a chance to talk to the whole Basilica team later over shots and beer and I hope to share our interview with you once the Ed gets the podcasts up and running.

When Basilica’s missing crew hit the trampoline, we helped push the lightweight boat off the dock, tossed them their lines, and waved goodbye to Kristin.  Would we see her again, or would the randy Brits disappear with her forever?  Mer went to the end of the dock to lay in the sun while I went searching for a Dutch Boy. 

Movistar’s makeshift sail loft consists of a fabric floor laid on the gravel ground with a fabric roof stretched between all the containers around.  One of the containers that opens out onto the sail loft floor is the team HQ, and I found Javier Sobrino, Press Officer, there.  He said “Hey, Anarchy guy! Where are your friends?”  I told him I didn’t know what he was talking about, but that I had a girl and a dog with me, and could we bring the dog on board?  I swear I could see him mouthing “Que el es loco!” but he smiled and said “That is up to the Captain.”  He did tell me that there were two other guys who the Ed had promised a ride to, and I started to worry that Mer wouldn’t be allowed aboard.  I really wanted to share this once-in-a-lifetimer with her, especially since she’d driven almost half the trip to Baltimore.  I shouldn’t have worried. Just then, Bouwe Bekking stepped down and looked at me, and he knew just who I was.  With a shaved head and calm, confident swagger, he even looked like a movie star.

The first thing I asked Bouwe was how to say his name.  I might not have cared except that for four days before this trip I listened and watched dozens of TV shows, videos, and audio feeds and not once could I tell what he calls himself.  To compound my confusion, the Ed calls him Boo-ey, (think Bababooie from Howard Stern).  For all of you who ever wondered, it’s BOW-eh, which is certainly better than Transom-eh, and a good name for a sailor.  Captain Bekking told me there were ‘no worries’ if I wanted to take Mer and anyone else aboard, although the dog was pushing it a bit.  He did like the dog, which is good because I am always suspicious of people who don’t like dogs.  He also told me that he reads Sailing Anarchy every day, although he stays off the forums except when they’re talking about him.  Since Bouwe had some last minute chores to attend to, and I wanted to go talk to some of the ABN1 guys, I told him I’d see him in a few minutes and we went in opposite directions.

I jumped into the fray among the ABN guys, asking if anyone had found Bob (Robert Greenhalgh).  The same friend who set up my unfulfilled ride on Basilica had given me Robert’s email, and he had agreed to talk to me in Baltimore.  Like so many in this race, Robert is a legend in the go-fast sailing world as a former national, European, and world champ in 18 foot skiffs as well as a former world International 14 champion.  I really wanted to meet him and find out how it felt to be so dominant in this epic race, and what extra challenges that presented.  One of the shore crew told me he was in the back container getting a massage, and I asked him if he was fucking with me. He assured me that he wasn’t, so I walked where they pointed.  Inside the room, a fit and good looking forty year old was sitting below six screens looking at weather charts, but since I was looking for Bob G. I didn’t register anything about this character other than his presence at the flat-screens.  At the back of this little war room was a smaller room that I correctly guessed was the ABN spa.  A sexy and petite Asian girl was rubbing oil all over someone’s back.  “Is that Bob?” I asked, and got a muffled “yes, be done in a second.”  I sat down on an open chair in front of the screens and introduced myself to my neighbor.  Before he said anything, I realized I was looking at yet another legend, Stan Honey.  Crusty Christenson walked in and sat down across from us, but I admit I was a bit star-struck with Stan and started talking to him as though I had just met him at the bar in Ala Wai.  When I asked him how it felt to be the old man on the boat, he said that one of the best things about this race was the fact that he is now in better shape than when he was 18.  Up close Stan is the Marlboro Man of sailing; tan and fit as hell with a weathered face, but still looking like he was 40.  He’s not, and in 50 something years Stan has amassed more records than anyone I can think of on everything from his marital Cal 40 to the G-Class Playstation.  Stan told me about the difficulties of reading a computer screen and using a mouse while decelerating from 35 to 12 knots in 2 seconds, and explained the spreadsheets and models that the team used to pick their sail inventories and routing for the offshore legs.  Apparently he explained the mathematics as well as every teacher I’ve had, because it all went right over my head.  After learning just how experienced, professional, organized, well-funded and thorough this team is, I’d be surprised if they weren’t winning by the margin they are.  Stan exemplifies this level of competence, and even for someone as unaffected by celebrity as I usually am it was humbling to talk weather with him.

My interrogation of Crusty would have to wait as I really wanted to talk to the oily dude who had just risen from the massage table.  His masseuse stood, beckoning, and Rob said “she’s all yours- do you have time?”  For the second time in just 20 minutes I had to turn down two things I really, really wanted and would likely not get again.  All I could think of saying was “FUCK!” but the sailors were unmoved by my pain.

We went back out into the sun and Greenhalgh and I talked for a few minutes about mutual friends, the race, missing girlfriends at sea, and how fun it was to steer a boat through the black of night at 30+ knots.  Mostly we talked about a subject we both felt most strongly about: seamanship.  The more I learn about the sailors, the boats, and the race itself, the more I realize that the only difference between us weekend warriors and these VOR sailors is the scale of the game.  Fundamentally it’s all the same shit.  The boats have the same equipment (just bigger and more clever), the course has the same challenges (with bigger waves and breeze and greater distances) and the sailors are the same passionate people who love to be at sea (with balls and experience an order of magnitude greater).  Unlike some buoy-racing inshore rock star pricks, these guys have been taught by the sea to be humble- and they wear their humility as a badge.  And as Robert said, on any racing yacht sailing any tough distance race, the crew who takes the best care of their boat has a decided advantage over the team that pushes and pushes without regard for the consequences.  Compared to the rest of the teams, ABN1 has taken great care of their boat.  They haven’t had the design issues that some have and it is certainly easier to conserve when you’re at the front of the fleet, but Robert believes the condition of their boat and sails has a great deal to do with with the team’s character.  Honey’s weather analysis and Crusty’s tactical wizardry combined with Captain Moose Sanderson’s Solo Open 60 experience have allowed the team to use the optimal sail combos to stay just ahead of the pack.  They have been able to keep the crew’s fatigue level down while minimizing the number of at-sea repairs, and ABN1 has loads of unused sail buttons.  You heard me right; VO70s have sail buttons just like your J/105, and most of the teams hit port with their sail bags flying off the deck in search of recuts and repairs, hoping they won’t need to break out another new sail.  Some of the boats are through nearly all of their sail buttons, but Black Betty isn’t even close- that’s a huge factor that is rarely discussed amongst the sailing public.  You can bet it’s talked about by every team.  In the less steady conditions of the Atlantic, having nicer and newer sails should partly help ABN1 overcome her hull’s tendency to stick to the water in light winds.

Seeing Movistar getting ready to shove off, I thanked Bob and ran down the pontoon.  Meredith and I jumped aboard just as the crew were casting off lines.  That the next four hours would be memorable is obvious.  The surprising part would be this: The boat was awe inspiring in its power and speed; a masterpiece of polymer construction and engineering.  But it was just a boat, and the only real difference between it and any other boat is a set of little buttons on a control panel between the helm stations that does unseen but amazing things.  What made our trip truly memorable was the crew and skipper - a more honest, open, fun, and admirable group of sailors would be hard to find.  You can learn more about the race and about Bouwe’s perspective on it as well as what he thinks about sexual deprivation, sinking near Cape Horn, and a host of other subjects when the podcast interview pops up on in a few weeks. 

I can show you the boat better with pictures than with words.  So for the sake of all of you who’ve asked me for pictures of the boat I’ll do something that’s really difficult for me: I’ll shut up. But you'll have to wait till Monday for the Photo essay.

05/05/06