Transpac Blog II-7
Man Overboard II: Sharks.

You've fallen overboard, the Psyche is gone from view. You are on the verge of panic. You begin to recall all you know about sharks.

Sharks. These things give EVERYBODY nightmares. How unlikely it is, in our industrial world, to be seriously considered as lunch. Yet there is a decent possibility that any snorkeller in any out-of-the-way tropical marine setting will get this experience. I've never been seriously threatened by a shark. My worst experience was a snorkel around a semi-sunken volcano crater in the Galapagos Islands, called the devil's crown. A friend and I had been invited to join my parents on their boat Compadre. We were snorkeling around the outside of the crater in 50 feet of very clear water. Big fish, lots of species, volcanic beauty. Then, at the very bottom there came into view a line of a dozen hammerhead sharks, 6-10 feet each. Very impressive; they were swimming single file. It reminded me of the dance in West-side story. "When you're a Jet you’re a Jet all the way from the…" These guys were totally in charge. My friend and I closed ranks. We both had pretty puny broom poles with spearheads on their ends. Suddenly the biggest shark veered away from the line and came RIGHT AT US! I pointed my legs and puny spear-head right at him, but on he came. Then about 15 feet from us, he suddenly veered back down and rejoined his line at the bottom. The rest of the dive was pretty jumpy. I spent a lot of time doing quick 360 degree surveys of the surroundings.

http://www.maneatingsharks.com/Hammerhead_Sharks.htm
I once got to be friends with a South African, Bobby Fridjon. He was a competitive free-diver, and in South Africa, that's a pretty macho thing to be. South Africa has lots of sharks, and competitive free-divers swim with them every day. Each shark seems to have its own personality, and now and then, one of them wants to eat you and the fish you just speared. The shark comes right at you. Bobby told us how you're supposed to carry a little explosive-loaded "shark-banger" with you as you descend to spear a fish. When a rogue shark comes at you, you discharge the banger on its nose. He said the shark banger really works, but the whole operation scares the shit out of you. Usually, he says, the sharks don't really bother you, but sometimes they do.

Shark Sticks

Man Overboard

MAN OVERBOARD!!
Go there in your imagination, and it sweeps you away. You imagine it happening while you're on the foredeck in heavy weather helping to take down the jib. Your harness isn't fastened right, a steep wave comes aboard green, knocks you down, and the next thing you know, you are in the water. By the time you come up, the boat is out of reach. If you aren't coughing you yell as if it is your last. The crew activates emergency measures to get the boat turned around to pick you back up, but you know all the things that can go wrong. Your personal flotation harness inflates as it should when it hits the water. You knock off your shoes or boots so you can swim. You swim for the man-overboard drogue that a crewmember has deployed. Its high flag and strobe calm you. You know you are much more visible than you were without it. Now you find Psyche with your eyes. By this time, she is surprisingly far away. The spinnaker halyard appears to have been fouled, and the crew is struggling to get the flogging spinnaker down. You only see these friends for the short moments you and Psyche are on top of waves. Most of the time, the waves hide all but the mast.

Although I have never fallen overboard from a moving vessel, I have jumped overboard to fetch a dropped bucket. This is a different story for another time; but suffice to say I know what it feels like to have that eye contact with your life support broken. It feels very lonely. Very scary.

Not as scary, I imagine as if you lose contact with the entire boat. That would be oh-so-awful. It is difficult to even think of that feeling, but it is like a car wreck on the freeway, you just have to look. Feel the adrenaline. The spinnaker doesn't come down, the engine won't start, or the propeller fouls on a line and stops spinning, killing the engine. The crew tries to tack back to the GPS position that was dutifully "marked" by a conscientious crew member, but the stuck flogging spinnaker is too much for the main; Psyche can't scratch back upwind against the 20 foot breaking seas. Your friends can't see you, and they don't know how far you've drifted from that position. It might take an hour or more to get back to that GPS, if the snafu is really bad. You aren't there, of course, so they slowly go down wind from that position, hoping to find you.

You have only seen the first part of this foiled rescue attempt. You try to keep your eyes on the sail, but soon, you only see it now and then. If you are in the coastal waters, you start trying to conserve heat. If you are in tropical waters, you start worrying about sharks. If it is night, you just worry. If it is day, you worry AND look. I figure the only thing worse than being eaten by a shark is being eaten by one you don't see. I've always fantasized about punching an attacking shark in the nose; I guarantee that I don't want to be eaten without at least trying it.

Sitting in bed staring at the ceiling, thinking about how scary the ocean can be. It's a little like a haunted house on Halloween. Kind of scary, but also somehow invigorating. More about sharks next time.

(p.s., my daughter and best blog-coach suggests I shorten my blogs and publish them more often.). I am taking her advice.

TranspacBlogII-4
Command structure B. The net.

This is what it sounds like sailing Psyche.

"What do you think about loosening the outhaul some? The main seems too tight," asks Bill.
A beat while the crew considers the question. "I was just thinking the same thing," replies Steve.
"What's the windspeed now? " asks Jim. "We aren't pointing with our competition right now."
"5 knots, down a couple from 5 minutes ago," replies Andrew.
"Ok, let's do it," says any one of us.
Whoever is nearest the outhaul loosens it.
We all watch what happens.

"I'm thinking we should stay on port tack awhile; this time of year the wind usually shifts to the right in the afternoon; that would give us a huge advantage."
"No, our competition is all over on starboard tack, I think we need to stay with them."
"Ok, alright. We don't want to sail too far from them, but let's stay to the right of the fleet so that the shift will still favor us."
"Ok, let's wait 2 min and then tack."

On Psyche, information flows from the ocean, and wind, and sails, and the behavior of our competitors, to the sensory inputs of each of us. It gets interpreted, and then converted to words, allowing the other four sensory inputors (is that a word?) a chance to verify the same information, confirming or weakening the impression. Conversely, impending decisions flow like nerve impulses from any one of us, through the evaluation process of each of the rest of us. The proposed decision is weighed carefully by each crew, interrogated verbally; often creating a backwash of alternatives that must similarly spread to each of the crew to be evaluated; and finally, either embraced, or rejected. Decisions are made by consensus. If one of us doesn't quite buy the decision, we say "I agree we should make the move, but here's what I'm afraid will happen if we do this." That reservation becomes part of the ongoing information exchange, as the decision is executed.

You see, on Psyche, the entire crew is a parallel processor, an interactive net. We are like the world-wide web, kind of loosey goosey, but ultimately a surprisingly powerful way to make decisions. We really got into this groove in the 2005 Transpac, but it wasn't until after talking to other crew members that we began to understand that such a network command structure is very, very rare.

Now, how, you might ask could such a loosey goosey command structure come to be? Surely, Psyche, like most other ocean racers, is owned and operated by successful capitalists in the market economy that is the USA today. Yet here I am describing a system that sounds remarkably like communism! The answer to this puzzle seems to reside in the personalities of Steve Calhoun, Jim Barber, and me.

Steve is the owner of this beautiful Cal 40. She is his child. He pours attention and time and money into her. Psyche originally belonged to another Los Angeles Yacht Club (LAYC) sailor, Don Salisbury, who, besides racing and cruising locally, won the Transpac overall in 1965 with a crack crew. That race has become something of a legend (you may read my account of it in the 2005 Transpac Blog #4; http://www.layc.org/docs/BillyBlog.pdf). Don treated Psyche well, but nothing like the princess treatment she is getting now. It seems that there is a bit of a friendly competition going on at LAYC for who can have the finest Cal 40. Fin Beven's Radiant, and Jim Eddy's Callisto, and Psyche; all contenders in the 2005 Transpac; are in the front row of slips, and they are just beautiful creatures. Conquest and Melee round out the fleet (though they didn't do Transpac). Glistening topsides, flawlessly varnished wood trim, shiny rigging and winches, perfectly organized halyards, etc. I am always somewhat awe-struck by this kind of care, partly because I have a hard time doing it myself on my own boat (more on Siwash in future blogs). This beautiful maintenance is, of course, a direct reflection of these vessels' owners. On Psyche, Steve Calhoun's care of the cosmetic/aesthetic features reflects his unceasing attention to every single detail of Psyche. He has an almost obsessive desire to make this boat be better and better with every passing year of his ownership. The water maker has to be tested and retested. The electrical system and generator must be perfect, or we risk losing power. Not having power in a modern ocean racer is like not having a fuel injector in a NASCAR racer. The boat will still go, but you will be left behind. Just ask the crew of Radiant in the 2005 Transpac. They lost their power and fell steadily from second to way back. Attention to this detail is critical, but it is just one of an oppressive list of details that need attention in a successful Transpac vessel.

Now, although Steve's did not grow up racing small sailboats, like Jim and I did, his racing experience in large boats is substantial. Yet he really wants to win. Most importantly, he wants to have fun winning. That means he wants to have an integral role.

How does he do that? To his enormous credit, Steve has assembled a crew of equals. The first element of his crew is a smart, competitive, yet somehow miraculously self-effacing ocean racer. My admiration for Jim Barber knows no bounds. He is probably the coolest guy to have on an ocean race in the world. He has a great sense of humor, is very much aware of everyone else in the crew, and also wants to have fun. But he never, ever, stops making the boat go faster. He tunes and tweaks and worries all the lines all the sails, everything, constantly improving the performance of whatever boat he is on. One more significant detail; when he is tweeking, he is talking. Chattering up a storm about what he sees, and thinks. The final VERY significant detail: he listens.

Listens. What a concept. Don't think of your crew-members as a way to extend your ego. Think of them as collaborators in a competitive sport. A team sport. The more each crew member participates, the smarter we sail. The only way to insure that participation is to make each participant comfortable to contribute in any and all ways. How does Jim do that? He listens. He considers every hypothesis, no matter how crazy, or against his own view.

Why would such an accomplished sailor ever want to approach racing this way? Why waste time with some crazy idea from some upstart greenhorn with decades less experience than he has. This is a general question, asked by every veteran sailor in any ocean racing fleet. As I have intimated, most sailors don't answer that question in the same way as Jim does.

Instead, Jim's answer is, why NOT listen to that sailor's crazy idea? How is that wasting time? All we've got is time on an ocean race. Time to explore every new idea to its core. Time to give every participant a sense that his idea just might be the one that wins the race. Time to make everyone else grow accustomed to thinking hard about every idea that comes up. Jim really does see the entire crew as a resource, but not in the way that Mean Andy Green did (previous blog). Mean Andy Green wanted his resources to be ultra-tuned to Mean Andy Green, thereby improving their responses to his orders. Andy saw, Andy decided, Andy ordered, the crew obeyed. On Psyche, everyone looks, everyone sees, everyone talks about what they see, everyone discusses the decisions. Ideas are aired, some silly, some crazy, some brilliant. I submit that this kind of a net, if properly practiced will almost always beat the hub. That is because the net, if it is well tuned, will find the best solution to virtually any problem.

So how did I (Billy) contribute to this command structure, that is perhaps just crazy enough that it just might work? I can't tell for sure; I like many in my generation, have a deflated sense of my impact on the world; but I will grant that I was probably critically permissive. This is science-speak for "it wouldn't have happened without me being there encouraging it, but by no means did I cause it to happen."

Finally the bottom line on this diatribe (apologies to those that want more salt water and less salt): This net command structure is just plain fun. Experiencing it is like those rare occasions at a party when some boor isn't dominating the conversation; rather a cluster of friends suddenly starts building on a crazy riff that comes out of nowhere. Perhaps a joke cascades into a kind of temporary social memory that gets born by laughter into its own intensive life. Such an ephemeral riff can live and breathe; it dances over the crowd, a wonder to behold, spontaneous, forever surprising, and profoundly human. It is hilarious and light. It is thought provoking and deep.

This is what sailing on Psyche is like. I can't wait till we do it again.

TranspacBlogII-3
Command structure A. The hub.

In the Transpac Yacht race of two years ago, (see posted Blog Transpac 2005 on sidebar, if you will) when everybody had arrived in Honolulu, we all (the crew from a wide variety of competitors) sat around drinking and gossiping. What was it like on YOUR boat? What kind of skipper is so and so? He did WHAT? Are you joking? These conversations reminded me that very few boats have the command structure we have on the Psyche.

Command structure in ocean racers is not talked about much; yet it directly determines the nature of the ocean racing experience for all aboard. I raced once, back in 1973, with a Texan named Mean Andy Green. His boat's command structure was the polar opposite of Psyche's.

I was that summer's head sailing instructor at the Fort Worth Boat Club, and Andy was the father of two of my students, Lee and Leslie (or was it Nancy?). Both kids were natural athletes, and focused sailors. They learned fast, and sailed with a natural grace. I verily remember Lee sailing a high-performance 14 foot sloop (a 420 class). Normally, these are two-man boats (helmsman and crew). They have a "trapeze", a wire that goes to the top of the mast to give the crew the leverage to really "hike out". The crew places his/her feet on the side of the boat, and suspends his/her body out over the water on a harness attached to the trapeze. Here's a picture.



Now just imagine this sail boat, not with two adult sailors, hanging on for dear life, but instead, one snotty-nosed 11-year old, not more than 70 pounds, sailing with both sails up, going like a bat out of hell. Now just one more detail. Unlike the helmsman in the above photo, who is sitting on the weather rail, Lee was hooked up to the trapeze with his feet on the gunnel, just like the guy up there in the front. He had one hand on the tiller extension, and the other hand on both the sails (the jib forward and the main aft). The boat was so light that it just screamed along; Lee had know idea that what he was doing was incredible, he was just messing about in boats.

So you can see by this vignette, that young Lee Green was fearless. I watched him catch turtles and snakes in Eagle Mountain Lake without a second thought. But when the topic came around to his dad ('can't crew with you in the twilight race tonight, Dad wants me home'; 'can't come to sailing school tomorrow, Dad grounded me.'), he was sore afraid.

Mean Andy Green's reputation for being mean extended well beyond his nuclear family. Every Texan that knew Andy Green knew that he was mean. And in Texas, mean means mean. Wives shoot their cheating husbands in Texas. With guns. Dead. All the time. To a Texan, that's not mean, it's normal. My take on Texas is that it has some of the biggest hearted, wonderful, souls on this planet; AND the biggest assholes. Suffice to say when a Texan says somebody is mean, you'd best pay attention. Well, I didn't know Mean Andy Green, except by his reputation. But one day he up and asked me, through his two kids, to crew on his ocean racer in a race from Galveston to Corpus Christy, the two main ports on the Texas Gulf coast. I gulped and said "sure."

Andy was a Southern boy; I don't know if he is still alive. He sailed with Ted Turner as a youth. He was pretty outrageous. Prone to Texas pranks and slander, and just, well crazy. He was THE CAPTAIN. He demanded full obedience from his crew, and really, really hounded them to do things right. Well, I had not raced many overnight races at that time (1971), and hadn't really done much ocean racing at all. But I knew how to make a sailboat go fast (dinghies and small keel boats), and knew a lot about round-the-buoys strategy, and a ton about how to teach snotty-nosed kids how to sail fast. So aboard I went. How bad could it be?

I soon found out. This guy was intense. Really intense. He hazed and hounded and yelled and berated and carried on like a maniac. I had butterflies in my belly the whole time. But he also told stories and joked and laughed and made everyone else laugh when they weren't cringing. In short, he was the CENTER of attention. All information originated with him. Everyone else was so nervous about screwing up their job that they turned off all other channels, save the one going to THE CAPTAIN.

Well, there was a pretty sizeable fleet, maybe 15-20 boats in each of three different classes. We got a good start, and were sailing fast, maybe third in our class. The race course itself is a boring reach for the most part, but round about midnight, the wind had backed a bit (now coming from just a little behind the beam, meaning the ballooning spinnaker (first picture below) is better than the more wing-like jib (second figure below) and we were set to raise the spinnaker. Andy told me to take the sail up to the bow and hook up the halyard and sheets. These are ropes (called lines); the halyard pulls the sail up (you pull down on the halyard which runs through a block at the top of the mast and back down to where you have tried to attach it to the head of the spinnaker; pulling down on the halyard pulls the sail up), the sheets pull the sail back. Assigning me to attach these lines was a mistake on Andy's part. I knew it when he told me to do it, but of course, I didn't say anything. Until you've sailed on a particular boat or type of boat a good many times, you are really missing important ingredients, like the details of the fasteners used on working lines; essential details for properly fastening a halyard to a spinnaker.






"Ok, now hoist the spinnaker!" Someone hauled hard on the halyard. Up the halyard went like a rocket.
But without the spinnaker attached.
Shit, that's my fault. I'm sorry, Andy.

Oh, but that is not what Mean Andy Green needed. He needed that halyard to be not up the mast, but right here on the deck, attached to the spinnaker head.
"Don't you have another spinnaker halyard," asked I?
"NO!"
I can still recall how sick I felt, how utterly dismayed I was.


In those days, I was pretty strong and agile. Lots of pole vaulting, wrestling, surfing, all meant that I could climb. So I decided I would fucking shinny up the mast, and get the goddamn halyard.



Now this was not a good decision, but Mean Andy Green did not say no, so up I shinnied. The mast was REALLY smooth; there were absolutely no hand-holds. Getting to the first spreader was really difficult (see photo above), but shinnying up the second section of mast was even more slippery, and the boat's action over the seas was magnified, and I had to actually catch the loose halyard as it swung back and forth half-way up the mast. Understand that this was "free climbing" at its very worse. I could easily have lost hold and fallen a good many feet to the deck. Ooof, or likely worse.

But I actually did it. I caught that damn halyard and brought it back to the deck. We attached it to the spinnaker, hoisted it, and I dunno, I guess we got second or something. But I was very, very rattled by the whole experience.

This long diatribe is meant to illustrate to you the polar opposite of the command structure on the Psyche, the boat we are racing to Honolulu in 20 something days. The Psyche has no Mean Andy Green on board. Many among you might shudder at the thought of such a "leadership vacuum". Many of us have an ingrained assumption that a clear hierarchical command structure is the most efficient way to run a ship. Of course the situation 35 years ago in Texas didn't really represent a hierarchical structure. Information simply flowed from the hub, Mean Andy Green, to all of us on the rim of the experience, and at the rim of our own sanity. We on the rim were not trying to make the boat go fast. Andy in the hub was. Our job was not to pay attention to how to make the boat go faster; rather it was to minimize our losses in our dealings with Andy. This command structure is the one that most ocean racers adhere to, perhaps in less extreme form.

It is not the command structure of Psyche. On Psyche, information exchange is chaotic, completely unstructured, spontaneous. More on this in the next blog.

Billy'sTranspacBlogII-2: Catalina Island Race Installment 2

TranspacBlogII-2: Around Catalina Island Part 2

So, we’ve beaten the CF 37 around the west end, hoisted our spinnaker before they did, and scooted down the back-side of Catalina Island. They mount a charge, but we fight it off. The wind lightens, the light fades, we change to the light-weight spinnaker. Things get quiet. We look at the imposing profile of the back side of Catalina on our left.

The back side of Catalina Island is kind of a foreboding place, perhaps because I have early childhood fears. These emanate from scary stories heard at night on the north side of the island, in a calm and friendly cove called Howlands. Picture a fire, and a father who doesn’t talk much suddenly caught up in a story about the “monster from Iron Bon bay”. The bay is really called Iron Bound Bay, but I’ve always remembered it as Iron Bon Bay. I guess I thought it was adjacent to bon-bon bay or something. Don’t ask me about the monster. I’ve completely repressed the story and don’t want to hear it ever again.

My wife and I actually found the bay on a detailed chart of Catalina Island a couple of summers ago. We were taking a pleasure cruise around the island on the oldest boat in southern California, the yacht Siwash (more on this boat in later blogs), we had decided to poke our nose in there and have a look. The south swell was huge, and the backwash and spray and slop were almost intolerable. The boat rocked and pitched all at the same time. The noise of the seas rolling under concavities right at the sea-land interface is fully unnerving. Extremely low pitched sounds, like the best theater sound system you’ve ever experienced. They definitely sound like monsters. They are monsters. Let’s get the hell out of here before they get us!

So, back to the race. A beautiful spinnaker run, that induced me to catch some sleep before the “parking lot” at the east end. The crew woke me for the jibe, in which we turn 40 degrees to port to bring the wind over our port stern instead of our starboard stern, where the wind had been all the way down the island. We executed the jibe perfectly. Those of you that followed my first Transpac Blog know that this is not a trivial feat. Each corner of the spinnaker has two lines attached. The spinnaker pole that has been holding out the sail to windward on the starboard side, has to swing down past the head-stay where the “bow man” attaches it to one of the lines on the port side of the spinnaker, at which point the pole is hauled back to the port side (you might recall I had been the guy hauling the pole up on the new side on the way to Hawaii two years ago, and hauled with so much vim and vigor that I pulled it right through the sail). The helmsman is supposed to time his swing past the wind to coincide with this hook-up. Well tonight, it actually went smoothly, in spite of the night being PITCH dark. No moon, lots of overcast.

We have a new bow man, Andrew (jeez, did I ever hear his last name?), and he is VERY good. He is focused and quiet, and deliberate, and loves to sail. He hasn’t yet made a mistake and has already bailed us out of mistakes made by other crew members. Yay for Andrew. On this, his first jibe with us, he performed flawlessly.

So now we are approaching the east end “parking lot.” The Psyche crew is full of people who have sailed right through the parking lot, without slowing down. I never have. I later found out that they were sailing in the rare years when there was a southeast gale. Not like the wind today, which was a straight ole westerly, the prevailing wind. They call it a “parking lot”, because the wind usually just shuts off. Nothing. Nada. Ninguno. It causes the greatest anxiety and depression for the boats in the lead, and is the greatest source of hope and renewal for the boats that are trailing. I think because I’ve usually been trailing, I love the parking lot.

One year on board a converted Lapworth 50 called Sumatra, we came into the parking lot dead last. As you approach it from a dead-last position, you KNOW it is calm because you begin to see running lights. Lots of them. We counted them up that one year, and realized that the entire fleet was drifting around in there, and had been for hours. In we came with a westerly, maybe west northwest. We decided we would “hug the beach” and sailed really close to the land, perhaps 25-50 yards off. After losing the westerly, like everyone else, we managed to pick up a sweet little offshore whisper coming off the cliffs and dying before it got to the other boats. We sailed by the entire fleet. I think we ended up finishing 4th out of some 20 or 30 boats. Totally amazingly cool.

The next year we did the same thing, and watched the outside boats pick up wind first and leave us in the mist.

So what would happen this year, wonder we. Well the boys are all thinking the wind will turn south and follow us home, but then we start to see lots of lights. Not the whole fleet, but much more than half of it. Parked at the east end. We blithely come in thinking maybe we can sail right past. We don’t. The wind totally stops. Nothing. Our knot meter finally hits the 0.00 mark, and stays there, and stays there. Actually, 0.00 usually means you are still going forward a little bit. You can look at the water and see it creep past you. But sometimes, the wind goes SO slack that you completely lose the ability to steer the boat. Then it starts these slow turns. “Turning 360’s” its called. Really depressing, but also hilarious, and if it is day-time, you can always go for a swim.

Well, we don’t turn any 360s, but we are slow enough for big schools of small fish to be attracted to our white stern light. We notice them, when we realize that schools of dolphin were racing all around the stern eating the bait.

Ok. So what do you do when you hit the parking lot? You look back at the competition you so skillfully led to this point. Here comes the CF 37, who trailed us all the way down the backside. He sees that we are stopped and takes a hard right out to sea, to try and keep the wind. Damned if he doesn’t keep the wind. He sails right by us, maybe 200 yards outside. He doesn’t have much wind, but he does have some.

So now what the hell do we do? We barely have steerage way. It will take hours to get to his track. This is where everyone else but Steve Calhoun and I hit the sack. Now, I must say that I know why Steve is there, besides sailing the boat as fast as he can. He is the “beam me up” guy. This is an amazing concept that I learned 2 years ago on Psyche in this race. You get into the parking lot, you drift and you drift. The time goes from 2000 hours to 2100 hours to 2200 hours, and you are still drifting. Racing, but going nowhere. Then Steve says, “let’s get out of here.” Oh, wait, no, I think we are catching those guys, I think the wind is coming up. Brroooom.

I can’t tell you what a RELIEF it is when Steve turned on that engine two years ago. We were looking at a noontime finish. Turn on the engine, and we get home before first light! Everyone but the helmsman sleeps all the way home. You roll into bed not all that exhausted. I had never done this till two years ago, but I could verily see the moment coming tonight.

But this night was different. I had the helm, and steered Psyche on a radical course, more or less heading for Newport Beach, about 90 degrees from our course home. I thought, let’s do to the CF what she just did to us. 45 min on that course, and the wind came up a bit, this time out of the east. We were under jib now, just ghosting along, but no more goose eggs. Our speed crept up, and up. Kept her headed out. We crossed way behind the stern of the CF and kept going out, and out. The wind increased a little bit more and a little bit more. Now we were going 4 knots. Turned toward the barn (the course home) and the lights of all the boats inshore were moving rapidly past our forward quarter, our beam and we were leaving many of them behind.

You can see this whole story on the map here.




So, I managed to keep Steve’s hand off the ignition switch. The wind gradually increased for everyone. Here was our east-southeasterly, and it came with misting rain. But we sailed hard into the breakwater. The CF finished in the end just a few boat lengths ahead of us, but because our rating was better we beat her on corrected time, for a 2nd in class, and 7th place in the fleet of 30 something boats. We finished around 4 AM, perhaps 16 hours after we started, all of us feeling pretty good about it all.

I have to tell you one more story about the Catalina Island race. Remember the Siwash I was writing about in Iron Bon Bay? Well, way back in I think 1913, she was 3 years old, and my Grandad was a freshman at Stanford. He brought a bunch of his new college buddies, all cocky and headstrong, as a crew on this same race. A big rain storm had just come through, and they started the race in confused seas and a strong North-northwesterly wind. Really strong. Probably 30 knots or more. The great thing about such a wind, as opposed to the usual west wind is that there is no tacking to get around the island, just point the boat to the west end and sail there. Grandad did, but his crew didn’t. They were all below, puking their guts out, and completely helpless with nausea. But Grandad loved that stuff. Here was Siwash on a close reach going like hell. She was a gaff-headed sloop in those days with WAY too much sail area, but she went fast if you could control her. Grandad could, and did. Single handedly. He rounded the west end and headed down the course, the wind well above 30 knots. No spinnaker that afternoon. He had to drag one of his mates up to help him jibe the massive boom (the wood that holds the bottom of the mainsail). It extended 16 feet past the stern and went BOOM when the wind caught it on the other side of the stern. Then down went the mate for his date with the bilge, and Granddad sped past the parking lot, which was a freeway that year. He told me once that there was NO decrease in wind velocity. He rolled in to the dock around midnight.
Siwash broke the record around Catalina that year, and the record held for 27 years. That is a pretty amazing feat. Grandad was something. Every time I sail at night, I sense his ghost. Especially when I’m on Siwash. His ghost is all over that boat. It is a complete honor to be part of that legacy. Thanks, Grandad.

Catalina Island Race Part 1

Billy's Transpac Blog II-1.

Awake with a start (did I scream?). Whoa, where am I? Somebody pulling on my foot. Tense the stomach muscles, try to see. Pitch black. "We're jibing!" Oh. ok. yes. I am on board Psyche. Again. In my cave, where I was sleeping the sleep of the dead as the rest of the crew spinnakered down the backside of Catalina Island toward a head on collision with the "parking lot" at the East end. There is something so wonderful about getting a headfull of sleep while your smart friends sail the boat at breakneck speed, giving quarter to no one. I lie back down, relaxing for 5 sec till I remember where I put my glasses and my headlamp. Ok. Let's go. Still fully dressed, I inch myself backward out of my womb-tube, up to the 10PM rendezvous with China Point.

This is the middle of perhaps my favorite installment of my favorite race, the around Catalina Island Whitney race. We've already rounded the west end, second in class, barely ahead of a CF 37 who we had battled all the way and finally in an anticlimactic joke, squeaked ahead of.

Psyche again. Tuning up for the Transpac. We are the only Cal 40 in the fleet today, which is sad, because you never really know how you are doing (handicap times "adjust" your elapsed time each mile into a "corrected time" and which you can use to estimate how you are doing. You know how many minutes per mile you get from each boat, but that that knowledge makes it very difficult to translate answer the question "how are we doing?").

But we are just out for practice, right? Well, uh, not really. We don't want those bastards to beat us. So Don Burdge took the helm for the start. A well-set line and an upwind start, and despite a not very well thought out strategy, we hit the line on starboard tack (wind over our starboard bow) with good speed. There is a wonderful feeling right after a good start; you entertain the notion you can beat the entire fleet, and now and then you do. But today, we soon realized that the two other competitive boats in our class, a Catalina 42, and the CF 37 could point much closer to the wind than we. The Catalina to leeward was slowly converging with us, closer and closer. "Don, you've got to head up, they're going to hit us (and because they had the right of way, we'd have to do a double turn, which would put us in the tank). Don: "let's tack." We do. The other boat, the CF37 is right there sailing on starboard tack. We're sailing on a course that would run us up her rail, and through her cabin. "Slack the main, we'll duck them". We head down, and come as close to her stern as we can. So, wham-bam, both boats are now ahead of us. Sail fast, Don. We sail in to the break wall, tack out on starboard toward Angel's gate, the entrance to the big blue sea, and both boats cross well ahead of us on port tack. They tack on our wind, and now we are stuck here, with lousy wind and already behind. Pull in the main tighter, we've got to do something to point with these guys. But no matter what we do, they keep making more water to windward, and leaving us in the mist.

By the time we get to Angel's gate, our two competitors are a bit ahead of us, and well to windward, far enough away that our wind is clean. Small consolation. Don steering. The rest of us quiet, contemplating a long sail around Catalina with no boat near us. Beautiful, flat sea, though, with a 9 knot westerly. Ideal sailing conditions.
Now, we were outside Angel's gate heading on a course half way up the west end of Catalina. We had more space, more time. We started to relax. Ok, let's watch this bucket, and see what makes her go fast. Lighten up on the pinching to windward. Loosen up the reins a bit, and see if we can make Psyche just go faster. Watch the knot meter, and the "true wind speed." 10 knots of wind means we should be going 5.5, 11 kts of wind should take us over 6. 12 knots should put us in the high 6's. My turn to steer.

I LOVE to steer Psyche to windward. I may not be as good as my brothers, and I'm definitely not as good as my dad was in his day, but I LOVE it. It is such a wonderful dance. Such a full-blown meditation. It is like Yoga, but fun. It is a little operant conditioning puzzle. A "Skinner box" is a puzzle that an experimental cat has to solve by finding the latch with it's randomly exploring paw, and then having the presence of mind to realize what its paw did to get out of the box, so that next time it can get out faster. We are similarly trying to get Psyche out of the slow box, and if we do, try to realize how we did it. We all guess and talk and compromise and try stuff. The main trim, the jib trim, the halyard tension, the main mast bend. All kinds of things.

But I'm steering, and I make a little discovery. The new jib, like most jibs today, has a little window in the front of it, where two ribbons are attached, one on the windward side, and one on the leeward side of the sail. Both ribbons are supposed to stream straight backward. If you sail too close to the wind, you create a stall on the windward side, and that ribbon stops flowing straight back and flutters straight up. You are pinching the boat too close to the wind, and need to ease her back to port, away from the wind. By contrast, if the leeward ribbon is fluttering up instead of straight, you are heading too far away from the wind, stalling the sail, and wasting precious distance to leeward. Head up man, you're reaching! So everyone knows that the ideal is supposed to be both ribbons straight. But today, I began to realize that this wasn't the case with Psyche and this jib. I found that she would go much faster, if I headed just a tad to leeward of the straight-streaming optimum. In this little groove, I found that the leeward ribbon streams for the forward three fourths of its length, but right at the end it flutters up, like the tail of a cat that is about to attack. I began to chase this little groove (it's not easy, cause the boat tends to go a bit wherever it wants to like a horse that is mainly under your control, but not completely), and when I caught that little groove, the boat started going distinctly faster. 10 knots of breeze was getting us over 6.0 knots, most of the time, now.

Ok, good in theory, but how are we doing with our competition? Well, we are out in the ocean. We see them way to windward, but we can't really tell whether we are gaining or losing. Time to pull out the bearing compass.

Psyche has a REALLY cool bearing compass. I don't know how, but it is much steadier, and way more accurate than any I've seen. You look at a boat across this little compass, and you get a magnetic readout of the direction of that boat TO THE NEAREST DEGREE! This is really something. I've no idea how it works so well, but we "took a fix" on the Catalina 42 and the CF 37. Within 10 minutes we could clearly see that the CF37 was falling behind! The Catalina 42 was too, but much slower, maybe wishful thinking.

So we all cheered up, knowing that out here with room to breath we were "outfooting" our two competitors. This doesn't really tell you whether you are going to get to the west end before them, though, because we all knew they were pointing closer to the wind.

For some reason, I think of that sail across the Catalina channel as a little like life. Sometimes, we sail our lives, entirely too aware of how we compare to others. Sometimes, maybe even often, we get so caught up in comparing ourselves that we forget that each of us is a unique boat, that can only be sailed well by turning attention inward. Comparison with others is essential, but it is best done loosely, and at intervals.

Now there is another aspect of racing a boat fast to windward, and life too, that we call "local knowledge". If you know the territory, even though you might not be as bright or promising as your competitor, you just might come out ok. Look at this map of Catalina Island.


You are looking at the western part of the island. This is where I grew up. I learned to sail under Arrow Point. My favorite upwind race-course, bar none, starts at Howlands Cove and runs up to the west end. From a very early age, I learned that as you come in toward Arrow Point, the wind freshens and changes direction. The wind in the channel comes from the west (upper red arrow), but in under the point, it bends WAY around, almost all the way from the North. This means we can go faster and point MUCH closer to the west end than our competitors out in the channel.

So, our new-found groove, combined with our local knowledge had us quite cheerful as we sailed in under Arrow point. True to form, Arrow point gave us the wind shift we expected, and freshened. We tacked back into the westerly wind of the channel, and after 15 minutes we crossed six boat lengths in front of the CF 37. And tacked on him!

So, our local knowledge and enhanced focus on our own boat won the battle. It was a huge take-home message, that we already knew, of course, but the reminder was clear.

But now we were in close quarters with the CF again. We started a tacking duel. We were trying to spoil his wind, and he was trying to tack out from under our cover. Oh, what fun this is. Sooooo much more fun than lagging the fleet and just sailing the course. We all had our adrenaline pumping.

But we were losing ground on every tack. I was steering still, but I just couldn't find the secret to keeping the boat moving through the tack. You start your tack by heading the boat into the wind, the crew lets go of the jib just after it loses all its wind, then as you pass through the eye of the wind, and the sail flops over to the other side, the crew grinds the sheet (the line that holds the sail to the deck) in as fast as they can. Lots of ways to make it go better, but I'll tell you about them another time.

Finally the CF crossed in front of us, and then tacked on us to spoil our wind! There we were, just before the west end, trailing these guys after all. We followed them out on port tack, the penultimate before the west end. Irritated. Why are we so slow in close quarters? Hmmm…. Could it be that we didn't learn our lessons from the channel? Are we going to have to follow this guy all the way to the east end?

But then we began to realize something. The CF37 was going too far out on port tack! Let's tack now! We did, and then he did, and we laid the west end and beat him after all!

The final life lesson then, is watch out for good luck!

Next installment in a few days!

Hi Grandad