Editors Note

It's been a tremendous week in Zephyr's short life - many thanks to the shout out from Panbo's Electronics Blog - as well as the kind review in the April 27 issue of Scuttlebutt, a mention on Patrick's Sailing Blog ...and new Zephyr link postings from sources like the EVK4 Bloglet, Navagear and the New Orleans Yacht Club. If you've been entertained please subscribe to the site feed and pass the word along to your mates. Enjoy the weekend and see you on Monday (and if you get bored click through the archives for past postings).

Fighting for the mark at the Collegiate Women's Pacific Coast Championships (Photo Credit: Glennon Stratton - www.gtsphotos.com) 

"Never in my life before have I experienced such beauty, and fear at the same time. Ten icebergs so far today ..." - Ellen MacArthur

When I was in high school (a long time ago) I departed an all male situation for a more “enlightened” education at a co-ed institution. The details of my personal history are irrelevant but the feeling that shift gave me isn’t – despite the fact that women tend to vex me I enjoy their company more often than not. So it is that I can say with conviction that the ever growing presence of woman in sailing today is a welcome trend generally. For a female perspective on that check out this interview with Betsy Alison on Anarchy. In answer to a question concerning “male backlash” she says rather adroitly, “Women are certainly starting to be recognized for the job they can do, and the skills they have. And socially…..I really can't picture an après sailing party with a bunch of guys dancing by/with themselves.” Amen Betsy, it's not a pretty sight. But in all seriousness, I’ve been offshore, around the cans and out for booze cruises with woman aboard and, true to form, they’re sociable, level-headed (mostly), tactical-minded, team-spirited…and to boot smell better than any deck ape. And many of them are damn good sailors (think Tracy Edwards, Dawn Riley, Lisa Charles and the indomitable Ellen MacArthur). It’s hard to imagine that our nautical forefathers spit sideways and muttered darkly about voodoo curses when women were aboard. Of course they doled out rations of rum to supposedly calm unruly crew as well so there's really no telling... Gentlemen, do yourselves a favor and click through the shots on Scuttlebutt from the Collegiate Women's Pacific Coast Championships. It’s a truly inspiring group of photos.

Sail change aboard S/V Samsung during 2004-2005 Global Challenge (Photo Credit: www.world-wide-images.com) 

First, a word of warning...

Are you stuck on the hamster wheel of life, unfulfilling day job, a car loan, the monthly rent/mortgage, insurance bills, cell phone fees stacking up…a perfect storm of land-based hassles keeping you from being true to the voyaging life? Do you spend your eight plus in a cubicle surfing sailing sites, reading about far off lands, reliving memories from that one week bareboat charter vacation in the BVI you took with your college roommates six years ago – or if you’re in school do you, instead of studying, spend endless hours virtually beating your hairy sailing chest on the Anarchy forums? Hey, there’s nothing wrong with any of this…but if you are this person then you probably know deep down you’re pissing away your dwindling time on Planet Earth. C’mon, live a little, follow your heart, take a risk and read this article from, of all things, Mother Earth News. The author just returned from a seven-month voyage ... a journey that touched down on four major continents over more than 8,000 miles - he covers how to make that bluewater crew berth of a lifetime a reality. It’s a terrific piece, chock-a-block with useful and well found advice. The typical cautionary notes are all there: feel comfortable with the crew, be certain you can handle not taking a shower, be cheerful and easy going, make eye contact. I’ll add another one based on my humble experience. Think twice before crewing offshore for a newly divorced, recently retired investment banker with a schizoid 35 year old bisexual Italian girlfriend. Let's just say the duct tape came in handy about 350 miles out. Ahhh sailing

Jordan’s Sailing Club

Strip away the regatta jock egos, post race posturing and the poor manners of the champ who anchored upwind of you in Cane Garden Bay during a blow without enough rode…and then promptly departed in his dinghy for the bar – well then you have most of the rest of us (hopefully) and guys like Steven Belton from San Pedro, CA. Steve started “Jordan’s Sailing Club” out of Jordan High School on 2265 East 103rd Street in Los Angeles – a perfectly fine institution of learning as far as I know…just not a lot in common with, say, the bar scene in English Harbor this week. To be more precise, Jordan High School is in a Los Angeles neighborhood called Watts. The club specializes in getting inner-city children out on sailboats. They have their own boat, a donated 23-foot sloop named 5 Deer that can fit up to nine kids on board. Says Belton of the effort, “It gives them a glimpse of something else. You're planting seeds as a teacher. You don't know what will grow." I enjoy the spectacle of fast, expensive yachts battling as much as the next fellow but stories like this reinforce my belief that the act of sailing is, at the core, an opportunity for us to get beneath the noise to a more pure place – the sense of wonder at successfully harnessing the wind, the feeling when the sails are well trimmed and the helm balances, that instant when you are in perfect harmony with wind and water…I believe it touches something deep inside of us. Steve Belton seems to agree and he took the next step by working to bring that feeling to kids who could certainly use it. Three cheers.

Downwind at Antigua Race Week 2004 (Photo credit: Rick Tomlinson - www.rick-tomlinson.com) 

Antigua Sailing Week 2005

The 38^th annual Antigua Race (Sailing) Week kicked off yesterday. Here’s a synopsis of the first day from Sailhead.com. Be sure to check in through the week here and here for updates. It looks like there’s a terrific competitive line up in the big boat class – including Tom Hill's Titan XII, the topic of this post – here is the official 2005 scratch sheet. I wrote about Antigua Sailing Week back in March…it’s an epic event and well worth attending if you have the chance…the analogy I use is that it’s like a Mardi Gras for sailors, big and brassy, crowded and sometimes a little out of control. The Antigua Classics Regatta on the other hand is more like Jazz Fest, mellower, classier and maybe a bit more even keeled. I guess another way to put it is…are you a reader of Sailing Anarchy or Latitude 38 ;-)

Hyde Pier at the San Francisco Maritime Museum - 1886 square-rigger Balclutha in the foreground 

Nautical Wheelers (who call themselves sailors...)

Music is an integral part of any culture – sailing is no exception. Jimmy Buffet is the prototypical nautical minstrel and, though I’m no parrot head by any stretch, I’ll cop to a fondness for some of his tunes…particularly the ones on the “Boats” disc from his box set, Boats, Beaches, Bars & Ballads. As well “A Pirate Looks at Forty” will have meaning for me before too long. Many different types of music above and beyond the more popular variety contribute to sailing culture – check out this link to Hull’s International Sea Shanty Festival and this one to the Sea Music Festival sponsored by the San Francisco Maritime Museum. Historically, sea chanteys began as work songs aboard the tall ships and schooners that plied the oceans when trade was conducted under sail.

Sea chanteys, traditional shipboard work songs, were created and sung by sailors to lift spirits and maintain rhythm while working as a team. Other sea songs, like forebitters, ballads and drinking songs, were sung at leisure, or ashore. Today, these songs are a musical porthole into the past.

A few of my favorite sailing songs include “Lee Shore” by CSN – taken from their days aboard the schooner Mayan (acquired by David Crosby in 1967), Lyle Lovett “If I Had a Boat”, “When I Feel the Sea Beneath my Soul” by Taj Mahal "Sailing to Philadelphia" by Mark Knopfler and “Into the Mystic” by Van Morrison. I’ll be glad to compile a “Top Ten Sailing Songs of All Time” so please cast your vote by commenting on this post.

We were born before the wind
Also younger than the sun
Ere the bonnie boat was won as we sailed into the mystic
Hark, now hear the sailors cry
Smell the sea and feel the sky
Let your soul and spirit fly into the mystic

The Yachtsea disaster scoop from SAIL Magazine

In early April Zephyr commented - like every other sailing site - on the travails of the good ship Yachtsea, a Santana 22 that was crushed beneath the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco when she tried to run the current off of Fort Point. Pictures of the disaster were captured by photog Wayne Lambright with a Nikon D2h (with a 70-300mm lens) that shoots 8 frames per second. If you haven't seen the shots check them out here. Apparently the captain of the vessel, Joe Schmidt, a human resources executive from San Carlos, California - is now ready to give his account of the disaster. Great reporting by SAIL Magazine. According to the story in the two weeks following the April 2 posting, Wayne Lambright's web site had 17,000,000 page views. That's traffic we all can envy! The SAIL story is a good inside account but my favorite part was the apparent "harbinger" that occured when a crew member fell off the boat at the dock before the race began. Sailors are a notoriously superstitious lot, a part of sailing culture I plan to explore in more depth...and I applaud Schmidt for incorporating this illogical but congruous happening into the lore of his tale. Both the captain and crew were rescued by surfers - a detail proving to me once again that (pirates aside) we are all brethren on the water.

The wave went vertical, and things happened fast: "Is this the way I'm going, I wondered? I didn't know what the hell happened. It was like a freight train had hit us."

Ashton Sampson

Ashton Sampson, a member of the South African America's Cup Challenge 2007 sailing Team Shosholoza

Has sailing found its Arthur Ashe?

Here's a good follow-up topic to a March Zephyr post on color in sailing. Twenty-five-year-old Ashton Sampson is a (the first) black South African crewmember racing for America's Cup Challenge 2007 sailing Team Shosholoza. No need to restate – it’s been well covered. On Zephyr Andy Burton commented in regard to the lack of color in sailing, “I like to think that sailing is the last resistance to the rampant political correctness so pervasive in our land society. If black people want to get into sailing, they will.” I agree with him about self determination, but as any realist can tell you, a black person simply wanting to be part of something is not always enough to make it so. In the case of sports that resist integration (these days we can count sailing and lawn bowling), often there's a person who pushes the boundary with lasting impact. Think Arthur Ashe, Jackie Robinson, possibly even Tiger Woods. Is Ashton Sampson sailing’s Arthur Ashe? Maybe so...in South Africa. But look at the facts - only three blacks have sailed in the America's Cup, all in 1992. Two with eventual winner America3, and one with Team Dennis Conner. Put aside those lamentable stats and agree that America fielding black crew members is one thing, but South Africa is a completely different beast. Andy Burton commented on Zephyr, “I can't point to any of my friends and say they wouldn't do their best to welcome anyone who was passionate about our sport, black or white.” Again, I don’t disagree. But racism is easy to dismiss as an individual...oh no it's not us...it must be a few lone white hood wearing crackers, or, in the case of sailing, some moronic bigot at the local yacht club, on the board of the sailing association, etc. But actually this is our collective problem... which is exactly why Ashton is getting press. It’s easy to frame it in the context of South Africa and post-apartheid firsts but this discussion exposes sailing in general – a lightening rod for the last resistance to the rampant integration so pervasive in our world.

North by northwest for New Zealand Voyager

New Zealander Graeme Kendall aims to sail solo around the world – not a unique ambition, but well worth noting because he’s attempting a first in sailing by traveling via the Arctic Northwest Passage. He leaves next week and according to this article, faces a trip of 150 to 180 days while covering over 28,000 nautical miles. His 40 foot, Kevlar-reinforced yacht is billed as “unsinkable.” For his sake we hope so. In the article he rates his chances of success 60 – 40 and notes that polar bears are worry - they are drawn by the smell of food cooking. The Northwest Passage is defined as the route from the Atlantic to the Pacific through the Arctic Archipelago of northern Canada and along the northern coast of Alaska. As Graeme says, the trip has three distinct phases – reaching the entrance to the passage (16,000 miles from Auckland), getting through it and getting back. One interesting note is that advances in satellite technology are what makes this extreme sailing voyage even remotely possible.

Buoyancy is in the eye of the beholder

S/V Javelin day two, St. Maarten Heineken Regatta 1996

Part Three: Eluding Davey Jones

This is the third installment in the four part saga “Eluding Davey Jones.” If you haven’t read the first chapter here and the second chapter here then please review before continuing…

Tom raised the Coast Guard out of San Juan and gave them our position and a summary of the situation. They asked if we could tell how quickly the water was coming aboard, would we be able to stay afloat, etc. He replied that, with the pump burned out, it was only a question of hours before we filled and sank. They instructed us to stand by and so we stood and stared at each other, shins covered in sloshing water. We were in the main saloon of a 77’ ocean racing maxi constructed of aluminum, a material not known for buoyancy. Suddenly they came back, the crackling of the dispatcher’s voice startling us from our meditations on the deep, dark fissure (the Puerto Rican trench) that extended nearly a mile beneath us. Tom acknowledged the Coast Guard.

“We’ve got a bird outbound to your position,” the voice snapped. “They’ll lower a diesel pump to you in a bright orange barrel. Bring it on board and deploy it to keep your vessel afloat. ETA twenty minutes.”

“Roger,” Tom responded. “Standing by.” He called for one of the delivery crew to come below and monitor the VHF and then we both went topside to look for the helicopter. The night was still black, no moon so we heard the craft before we spotted it, a low thump thump that built to a crescendo until it was hovering off our port bow. The wash from the rotors stirred the water and plucked at our clothes. We were drifting slowly, no sails up, so we made an easy target. Our mate from below on the radio shouted up that they were going to lower the barrel. It came down slowly, swaying in the wind and as it swung over our port rail Tom and I grabbed it, guided it to the deck. He unclipped it and gave them thumbs up - we caught the glimpse of someone waving from the open bay door and then they were gone. Inside was a long rubber hose about nine inches in diameter and the pump. We unpacked it and set it up, jumped the motor and watched in relief as water began to pour over the side. - Stay tuned to Zephyr for the final chapter.

SIYC, Rockville, SC 

The Rockville Regatta

A final post on low country sailing. The wedding on Saturday was in Rockville, SC, about an hour south of Charleston on the Bohicket creek. This trip has been a good reminder that sailing culture is an intimate part of coastal geography down south - as well as an opportunity to learn a little about how the south sails. The reception was held at the Sea Island Yacht Club, less grand than the previous nights cocktail party at the Carolina Yacht Club in Charleston but a place of equal historical significance in these parts. And to the point from the last post of these clubs bringing the past into the present, Sea Island YC is the home of the (locally) famed Rockville Regatta. Here's a very good article on the topic from Sailnet, which describes the event as a "NASCAR meets Wimbledon."

The Rockville Regatta holds a special significance and appeal for everyone who attends. Much of this stems from the fact that it's always been somewhat of a family affair, with its ranks populated by the descendants of plantation owners who annually sought refuge from the August heat in their summer homes here.

Sailing on the Cooper River, Charleston, SC (Artist: Jan Pawlowski) 

Sailing in the low country

We flew to the Southern Carolina low country today for a wedding...followed by a week of R&R on Kiawah Island. I missed Charleston Race Week (April 7-10) so this wouldn’t be worth mentioning save for tonights wedding cocktail party at the Carolina Yacht Club in the downtown Charleston historic district. Tonight at the party I stepped outside to the waters edge and watched the sun set on a breezy Charleston Harbor – spray from the white caps reflecting the glow, sailboats tossing and thrashing at their moorings. The party was in an annex off the clubhouse so I made an excuse to walk into the main building, smoothed my way past the desk into the sitting room, dining room, etc. A central part of sailing culture, for better or for worse, is certain established yacht clubs founded in the late 19^th century – they inject history into a new world that, while very different, still craves that link. Yes, the Carolina Yacht Club is antediluvian, anachronistic and unrepentant. But it is very beautiful. It has presence. There is a sense that you are in a living museum – a place given to equal parts relevance and precedent. Where can you get that today but a really well attended church? Like a church these types of clubs challenge the secular minded…but they are a part of the fabric of sailing.