I learned a little about sailboat racing Friday at an annual and occasionally bruising ocean regatta called the Heart Cup. Here are some of the things I picked up while crewing, more or less, on one of the race boats:
-- It's a good thing the race is affiliated with a hospital, which in this case is Shore Memorial in Somers Point. After one day on a race boat I'm wondering if I can get a break on some medical treatment.
-- Nobody wears those cool, nautical-looking captain's hats.
-- Move quickly on the deck of a race boat or you might get run over.
-- Sailboat racers are like any other kind of racers. They're serious about getting across the finish line first, maybe so they can be the first to crack a cold one.
-- The crew on our boat, Sweetie, was basically certifiable, exactly what it takes to want to enter and win a competitive race like the Heart Cup, which draws good sailors from several surrounding states.
The main man is Sweetie's owner, Mike Perry, a world-class sailor who co-owns Harbor Cove Marine Services, based at Harbor Cove Marina in Somers Point. Perry admits right up front that he is a former newspaper guy. He once wrote a column for the Evening News in London. Imagine Robert Duvall with an Australian accent. He's also Sweetie's helmsman. His job is to drive the hell out of her. "Every life has to be ruined by something," Perry said. "For me it's sailing."
Sweetie's first mate is the real Sweetie: Kathy Deren, for whom Perry's 34-foot sailboat is named. Also on board Friday, the first day of racing for the Heart Cup, were:
-- Len Dagit, president of NuWorx Construction, the company rebuilding St. Joseph's School in Somers Point. Here's a guy who looks like he could handle the job of a crane, which is to say he looks strong. This is a good thing considering what they wanted him to do. He was the bowman. His job was to manhandle the front sails, the jib and the spinnaker, which to me looked like riding a bull and flying a helicopter at the same time.
-- Bobby Graham, an unofficial mayor of Somers Point and a guy with a background truly sailorlike. He was a Navy Seal back when they were just called frogmen. Then he spent time delivering boats here and there and being a charter captain. Matter of fact he doesn't recall ever holding what he calls a "real job," although he is operations manager at Harbor Cove. Maybe that's too much fun to be a real job. He's the kind of guy you want on your side in a sailboat race, or anywhere else.
-- Randy Scarborough, who developed Harbor Cove Marina. Scarborough is a seasoned-enough sailor to be able to stay in the cockpit and be a tactician. Tacticians figure out where the boat should be on the race course, which seems like a pretty easy job. I figure the boat should be in front. What's so tough about that?
-- Gary Landsiedel of Ocean City, a power boat mechanic who's crewing with Perry to learn sailing. Meanwhile he serves as mast man _ helping with sail changes around the mast area _ and as "rail meat." This means he sits on the windward side of the boat, using his weight to keep it from leaning too much, which reduces efficiency. When Landsiedel moves, the boat listens. He's a big guy.
-- Bill Hancock, an Egg Harbor Township electrical contractor, volunteer fireman and former local bouncer who probably threw me out of Maloney's a time or two back in the day. Hancock seems to know his way around a boat, but they made him one of those cockpit tacticians anyway. Actually he was the jib trimmer and a grinder, which I guess had something to do with making coffee, which I never got any of.
-- Dave Cavanaugh, a high school student working at the boat yard for the summer who hopes to get into the Naval Academy. His job was to put a shoe on me and kick when I was moving too slow.
-- Steve Warren, a guy who has raced sailboats successfully most of his life and who is a really fine person. Warren also happens to be one of my bosses at The Press. His job on the boat was, near as I could see, to handle the mainsheet, the line that controls the boat's mainsail. He also was in charge of saying nautical things, which helped with the whole sailboat motif, things like, "The boat to weather is falling down on you a little." I have no idea what that means but when Perry heard it he grunted.
-- Me. I wasn't even qualified to be rail meat. I did point out that I have sailing experience, having been rescued by the Coast Guard during a misguided Hobie adventure that was a little like a Gilligan's Island episode without Ginger or Maryanne, but they weren't impressed.
Once thing about this group, they know a lot about everything, and they'll be the first to admit it, although the thought does make them laugh. The stock market, the weather, women, drinking _ even electrocutions. The subject came up because one of the boats at the Ocean City Yacht Club, which was running the regatta, apparently hit a power line with its mast, which blew off the power. Nobody was injured but this got everybody reminiscing about electrocutions they had seen or heard about. There wasn't much else to do while the boat was motoring out through the inlet at the north end of Ocean City on its way to the race course, which by my calculation was exactly way out there between Ocean City and Atlantic City.
"Blew the soles of his feet right off," somebody said, recalling one incident.
"Burst into flames," somebody else said about another.
This wasn't particularly shocking to Perry, since he had done time in the newspaper business on the alien abduction beat for a tabloid. Back then, he said, he'd ring up some deputy sheriff in Alabama to ask if the guy really had been kidnapped by outer space creatures, as the local correspondent was reporting. The conversation, he said, would go something like this:
Deputy Sheriff: "Ahm tellin' you-all they looked jest like ET."
Perry: "Now, sir, that's a little out of the ordinary. You hadn't been drinking, had you?"
Deputy Sheriff: "No moren' usual."
This all has nothing to do with sailboat racing, but it does prove that sailors are interesting people, and that you should definitely buy any sailor at the bar a beer and be prepared for some great stories, true or not. After we got to the race course and raised the sails, things got quiet. Then the race started and everybody was yelling. It's amazing how small the deck of a 34-foot boat can be when you load it up with busy people. I didn't understand much about what happened during the next few hours but I can tell you it's difficult to believe things could go so quick on a boat moving more slowly than a man can run. But they did.
In the two races that day we got off to great starts, thanks to Perry. But Sweetie isn't a racer by nature, she's a cruiser, heavy and slow, and so it wasn't going to be easy. To make up for her slowness she would be given a time advantage. Thus she could have finished third, for example, and still win. But she was far from a favorite.
It seemed like a bunch of boats almost t-boned each other at one mark, but nobody on Sweetie seemed concerned. Everybody just did their job. Dagit, up on the bow, worked and sweated himself into dehydration, changing sails and manhandling the spinnaker pole and trying to do all seven things at once that were being shouted at him by the "tacticians" enjoying their wine and cheese in the cockpit (I'm kidding. It was sandwiches and soda).
My job was to stay out of the way, which I flunked, and to try to crawl through the vines _ I mean the lines _ to the other side of the boat when it tacked. Once while I was "helping," the spinnaker sail dropped into the water. The net effect was basically like we dropped anchor, along with a lot of yelling. Boat after boat drove past, each filled with gawking creatures wondering, "What were they thinking of, letting three newspaper-type people on the same boat?"
Other than that I kept busy ramming my elbows into solid objects and finding sharp things to sit on. I concentrated real hard on thinking heavy, too, while sitting at the rail. Captain Mike said that's what I should do because it works. Every once in awhile a tactician would yell out something encouraging, like "Get off the ******* sheet."
Warren was magnificent. I can't say much more than that because he'd think I was sucking up, except to add that for a tactician, he was brilliant. The way he pulled that mainsheet every half hour or so, it was inspiring. He made it look easy.
As for me, I survived, mostly because nobody acted on their impulse to throw me over. So much for sailing being a way to relax.
"It's not relaxing at all," said Landsiedel, the amazingly quick mountain man who several times kept me from getting cut in half by about-to-become-taut ropes. "You get butterflies in your stomach. I'm telling you, I never thought six knots could be so fast."
Six knots? No way. We had to be doing at least 60.
( After Friday's racing Sweetie was tied for first. After Saturday's it was leading its class. Not bad for one of the "oldest, slowest, cheapest boats in the race," said Perry. Racing continues today.)