TranspacBlogII-24:The Motley Crew

What kind of crazies would take a 40+ year old boat and race her to Hawaii?

A Motley Crew.

Steve Calhoun, the owner; Jim Barber and Bill Wright (the author of this blog) from Psyche's old transpac crew; Charlie Buckingham; and Andrew Campbell. We have a wide array of backgrounds. It is actually really interesting to consider what experience would lead a person to into a venture like this.

Take Charlie Buckingham, for example. Charlie has been sailing longer than he has been potty trained. He is a shining example of the kind of sailors a thriving junior program can produce. I am referring to the Newport Harbor Yacht Club. This club has arguably produced more world class sailors than any other. Why? Because of their junior program. Newport Beach is a wonderful beach town, full of sand, and sailboats, and great surf,and romance. Newport Harbor Yacht Club is right in the middle of it. Many of the people that belong to the club, and learned to sail in its junior program, have summer houses in the area, and parents happily drop off their kids there, where the kids have a ball. Typically a 7 or 8 year old begins by learning the rudiments of sailing (chalk talk)and then the instructors usually put them into a sabot (an 8 foot long dinghy that looks a lot like a wooden shoe) much more quickly than their parents would want to know. Then they sail and sail. But much more significantly, they race and race and race.

This was Charlie's early life. His family had a house in Newport Beach. I'm sure his mother was all too happy to get this little trouble-maker out of the house down to the club. Sailing and racing and racing. Every day, all summer long, he and his buddies would start 2,3,4, or more races. Maneuvering, strategy, tactics. How to beat you rivals to the start line. Then after the gun, how to make the boat go fast. You are the only person in the dinghy, so there are no excuses. If your friend beats you, she beat you. You have to just figure out what to do differently so you can beat her the next time. Eventually, the boat becomes an effortless extension of your mind. You don't even think about what you are doing, it just happens. Beating to windward, tacking, jibing, rounding marks, all of it becomes fluid and easy.

Often these clubs have really cool games, like tag, that further improve these little kids sense of their boats.

Charlie has sailed one bizillion hours in dinghies: sabots, Lehmans, Lasers, 505's, and on and on. I think of myself as a reasonably experience sailor (more on me and Jim Barber, whose early experience is quite similar, later). Charlie has sailed 10-100 times as many races as I have. He is 42 years old, with a wife and 3 kids and a steady job, but he still races a ton of races each year. They all live on Maui, where the sailing is pretty exciting because of the strong trade winds there. But it isn't enough for Charlie to sail. He has to race.

So he flies to the mainland to do some serious racing. Lasers, for the most part. He isn't really happy unless there are 20 or more boats starting the race. He LOVES competition. He has raced to win for 35 of his 42 years.

All of this means, Charlie is really, really good. In short, he is a ringer. I had never sailed with him 9 days ago when we started this race. He has already taught me a ton.

BreakBreak. Wow a full rainbow straddling the stern, and Jim in his skivies, tailing for his buddy Steve (tailing, means you are handling the sails while your watch mate steers; what did you think?). 16 knots of northeasterly, we're going 8-9 knots, chasing the elusive FarFar. They fooled us again last night. They stayed north, for chrissake! We woke up to them being 30 miles ahead, but they were way north. They left a passing lane on their left side! Hmmmm, thinks we. There must be something fishy going on here. We checked the weather update, and got our answer. We are now sailing down latitude 22, Farfar latitude 23. Today's weather, unlike yesterday's, now predicts that tomorrow our latitude will have almost 3 knots less wind than Farfar's latitude. How they got this update before we did I'll never know, but there they are.

Curses, foiled again.

Our only possible saving grace is not the speed of the wind, but the direction. The weather predicts it holding steady from the northeast for the next 4 days all the way down the course. This means Farfar will have to jibe at an awkward angle, and we figure this will let us close the gap to 20 miles. The rest is up to us. We have to sail fast, and not make mistakes. We just blew up our brand new 1/2 oz spinnaker an hour ago. We had sailed it in a few too many 20+ knot gusts. We need to nurture the old half ounce so it will last a few more days. Remember, there are other boats in this race, we could lose our second place standing, if we don't keep the pedal to the metal. So we definitely are looking to beat Farfar, even with their 30 mile lead, but we won't be taking any wild-ass flyers to pull it off.

So, to continue, having someone like Charlie on board means everyone learns something. For example, I've been steering Psyche during jibes, since the 2005 transpac. Although these jibes aren't always pretty, I had pretty much found a way of steering that just worked. Charlie, who has also raced in a good many large keelboats like Psyche, described how I should time the shout of "trip", which cues Andrew to release the spinnaker pole from the spinnaker, with the natural oscillation of Psyche's downwind course. "One fluid motion, man," says he. Ok. I'll try it. I tried it, and it fucking WORKED. Charlie has both of the sheets of the spinnaker when it sails for a few moments without a pole. He "flies the kite" by letting out a little on this sheet, and a little on that sheet, to keep the spinnaker full of wind throughout the jibe. It is just a little magical, as the spinnaker starts to get farther and farther away from the boat (out on this sheet, out on that sheet, this sheet, that sheet), till you think it will just lift the Psyche on out of the water.

Charlie was the first of our crew to hit 12 knots, five days before anyone else got there. Finally Andrew attained this feather, after being coached by Charlie. Because he has sailed so many hours in so many different boats, Charlie just naturally knows how to make them go fast.

But that's not all. This 42 year old likes "tow-in" surfing. This entails having a buddy pull you on your surfboard behind his jet-ski into monstrous waves. Charlie says it's easy. Somehow I'm betting this isn't entirely true.

Hmm..., reading this description, I fear it is entirely too glowing. Ok here's a bad trait. Charlie has really long, loud, and smelly farts. Well, that is one of the few things he has done longer than sail, so I guess he is pretty good at that too.