An Irresponsible Adult

Chapter Nine
Just a quick note about the blues. I ran the mile in high school — sometimes I did well. When I did not, I always had given up in the second of the four laps. It was easy to get discouraged with more than half the race to go. I’ve kept that lesson with me for the last 45 years, and I’m applying it now.
Now past the halfway point, I’ve gotten through some down moments. Part of it was due to the lack of sun out here. Another is the absolute loneliness of being unable to communicate with the other boats.
I wrote that blog entry earlier today. Now it is 11 oclock on Tuesday night, not yet the loneliest hour at sea, but close. I’m standing at the nav table by the companionway, writing in my log, bracing myself as Robin rolls. The sailing is not pleasant, nor is it fast. I’ve made only 24 nautical miles since my last log entry, even though the wind has been averaging 10 to 12 knots, enough to move Robin at hull speed under normal circumstances. There is a following sea, pushed along by a northwest wind. The faces of the waves are steep. They lift Robin’s stern and throw it to one side or the other, unpredictably, violently.
Until moments ago, I was sailing with the genoa set out to port on a whisker pole – a long aluminum tube attached at one end to the mast and at the other end to the genoa sheet. I also was using the mainsail with one reef tied in, set out to starboard. Reefing at night has become my standard practice, one recommended by a veteran solo sailor whose advice I had sought before entering the Bermuda One-Two.
The whisker pole is used to keep the Genoa stretched out to the side when the wind is coming from directly behind the boat. Without the pole, the sail tends to collapse on itself. A collapsed sail provides no power.
On a run like this, when the genoa is set to one side on a pole, the mainsail is normally set on the other side of the boat. This configuration is frequently referred to as sailing “wing-on-wing”, although a long time ago an ancient sailor quietly told me that the true term was “wing-on-wind”. The purpose is to balance the sails and to keep the mainsail from taking away wind before it gets to the genoa or jib.
But with the steep seas tossing Robin side to side, two things were happening. First, when the boat turned toward the side with the mainsail, the wind was getting on the back side of the mainsail, which was held in place by a “preventer” – a rope I had tied from the boom to a fitting forward on the boat. The wind’s force on the back of the mainsail caused Robin to veer even farther to starboard and to roll steeply on to her port side. Such a violent motion overcame the autopilot’s ability to steer, and it ripped at the boom which, in turn, wracked the mast to which it is attached.
If Robin was tossed in the opposite direction, a similar thing happened to the genoa. Backwinded against the whisker pole, the sail pumped the pole into the mast in the opposite direction.
In either case, the mast was taking a terrible beating, as were the stainless steel cables that support the mast – the three shrouds on either side and the two forestays and one backstay. Left alone long enough, the sails could weaken the mast, the rigging or the fittings that held it all together. I had to go forward and get the whisker pole down or furl the main. Then, one way or the other, I had to try to switch to a course that would lessen the violence to the rigging.
The whisker pole is about a dozen feet long and as big around as a one-liter soda bottle. When held in place by the mast, the genoa sheet and the wind, the pole is almost harmless. But to take it down, its far end has to be released from the jib sheet. Imagine a dismounted cowboy, having roped a Brahma bull, holding tight to his end of the lasso and trying to wrestle the beast into submission. With a strong wind blowing, the sailor bringing in the whisker pole is in about the same place. As the boat rocks, the sail lifts and falls and the end of the pole carves an arc in the air. Standing on the foredeck beside the lifelines, you have to reach up and attempt to move a pin in the pole end that will release the jib sheet. But the pole end, rising and falling, is yanking all the time against the very line you need to release. The tension in the line tends to bind the locking pin, making it difficult to move. Some times, if your grip on the pole or the sheet is strong enough, you will be lifted clear of the deck. So you not only have to muscle the pole free from the line; your timing is critical.
My other choice was to douse the mainsail. This seemed like the wise move. A light mounted half way up the mast was illuminating the area of the deck where I would have to work, so I went forward along the starboard rail, ready to take charge.
Just then, the wind took charge. With a bang, the whisker pole tore on the clew – the rear corner of the genoa. In the glow of the deck light, I saw the tack – the bottom forward corner of the genoa that is attached to the bowsprit – ripped up from its fastening. Then the tack began to climb up the forestay. If I left it alone, the genoa now might be ripped to shreds in the wind. I crossed the cabin top and unhooked the slashing whisker pole. Then I worked my way back across the tossing deck to the cockpit, where I hauled on the line that turned the roller furling, taking the genoa out of commission.
Now I am sailing on the reefed mainsail alone. After daylight, I will go out on the bowsprit and examine the damage to the genoa. My guess is that there is a rip on the fabric at the tack. I have two sewing awls on board and strong thread. If I must, I can repair the sail.
Back in Newport, three days before the race began, I had used one awl to make other repairs to the genoa. I had been able to use a slip assigned to Dan Stadtlander. He had taken Mirari to a marina farther up Narragansett Bay to have her hauled. Before he got to Newport, he experienced a hard grounding. He had plans to check the keel for damage and, if necessary, do some quick fiberglass work on the spot. So he offered me use of his slip.

**

It was while Robin was moored in the slip that I met Rusty Duym, one of the other competitors in our class. Rusty is a not easily categorized. He is an employee of a boatyard in Maine, a member of a steel band, an avid paraglider and a survivor of quadruple bypass surgery. His six-foot frame has substance, like an oak. Graying curls descend from his crown, and bushy muttonchops frame his bunched, red cheeks and jovial blue eyes. If you told me Rusty was a lumberjack, I’d believe you. I would never have selected him on a crowded street as a solo ocean racer. But that is one of the great discoveries you make when you enter the Bermuda One-Two. Here is a collection of individuals drawn from as many different corners as there are boats entered in the race. Each one is here for his or her own reason. Rusty’s goal is to complete the trip to Bermuda that he had to abort the last time he tried.
One of the first competitors I met was Dan. He recently turned 50. That was his motivation for competing – that and the desire to erase the bad memory of the one other time he sailed to Bermuda. He told me that story the day we met, a Saturday in March when we were in Newport, attending a seminar designed to teach us how to get enough sleep when sailing alone offshore.
March 24 was sunny but cold. I was in Newport, although my thoughts were still in Vermont. The downhill race that had been postponed three weeks before due to too much snow had been rescheduled for this very day. But weighing the relative importance of the competing events, I decided it was better to be here, where I hoped to improve my chances of sailing to Bermuda unhindered by sleep deprivation and with at least a rudimentary knowledge of weather forecasting. The weather seminar was on Sunday. Right now, as I took my seat next to the window, a bunch of old guys in outrageously skin-tight downhill suits that can reveal even the thinnest layer of lard around the abdomen were lining up to speed down Jay Peak, up near the Canadian border. I did not have a skin-tight racing suit. That was just as well. Had I been able to race, the race officials would, I suspect, have been unable to perform their duties once the laughing began.
But I wasn’t racing. I was at the Newport Yacht Club, an inauspicious place on Long Wharf, adjacent to downtown Newport. I took a metal folding chair with a view of the nearly empty winter harbor to the south. Dan Stadtlander took the chair beside me, and soon we were talking. I guess he broke the ice, asking about that odd-looking notebook opened on my thigh. It was a standard reporter’s notebook, the kind I’ve used for nearly four decades as a journalist. I probably explained that to him, and then we engaged in focused small talk.
Eventually, Dan got around to telling me about his first trip to Bermuda.
“It was in my 20s,” he said. “I had gotten bitten by the sailing bug back in my teens. I started working in a boatbuilding place right after school.” Soon he was the owner of an Alberg-designed fiberglass Kittywake. “I paid like four grand for a thing that was a wreck,” he said. “I spent a couple of years fixing it. I decided at the ripe old age of 27 – I had more guts than brain cells and I wanted to test myself out – to sail to Bermuda.
“The trip down, you could have done it on a Sunfish,” recalled Dan, who made the trip with another guy. “Perfect conditions all the way. It was like: There’s nothing to this ocean cruising. On the way back, I haven’t seen anything nearly that bad in [all] the years I’ve been sailing since.”
Dan and his friend were in the Gulf Stream when their little boat was rolled – twice. “We were down below. They were humongous waves. We rolled once and it took the mast off. The second wave, I was down below and my friend, Mike, was up above. We had a life raft that was a piece of crap. We both had our lines hooked on to the canister. I heard the wave coming. I hurled myself out the companionway and got the first board in. But the boat probably went over our heads. Some of the lines from the mast grabbed my ankles, dragging me down. I unclipped my harness and was able to get to the surface. Mike had got to the surface already.
“Your senses become very pronounced. It was pitch black,” Dan said. “I could see everything as clear as day. The canister didn’t’ have a rip cord. We had to open the box. The boat came up again, waves washing over the decks. There was no way to bail it. It was just going down. We got up on the deck, got the raft inflated, we both got into the raft and, in a couple of minutes, got flipped.”
Stadtlander had an EPIRB on board but the antenna was broken. He and Mike sat up during the night and finally figured out how to use the spring from the bottom of a flashlight to fashion an antenna.
“A TWA flight coming from Europe picked up the signal,” Dan told me. “A Russian satellite picked up the signal. The Coast Guard monitored their [the Russians’] satellite and they beamed it down. They sent a Falcon jet and they spotted us. They also spotted a container freighter, and they picked us up a couple of hours later.”
Dan’s friend Mike had since died. But when Dan turned 50, he felt he had some unfinished business. He needed to make a successful voyage to Bermuda, and the One-Two was his ticket.
That was Dan’s story. I had my own. I told him I was pursuing the life of an irresponsible adult. That was not a flippant remark. It was something that I had given a great deal of thought.
Two nights ago, my current pursuits seemed almost irrational. Then, I was battling fatigue and I was uncomfortable in a world that was entirely new. Tonight, I am tired and uncomfortable with the banging and jerking that Robin is enduring. But I have handled the current situation and brought the boat under control with apparently no damage to the rigging. My confidence is bolstered. Two nights ago, I would have given anything to be back on land. Tonight, I am content to be at sea. We’ll see what the morning brings.