A peak experience with Team Zorro (part 1)

One of the best weekends ever

This weekend was the Rio Grande Sailing Club’s Anniversary Cup, a distance race. Pat was serving as race committee, and I had agreed to sail with Team Zorro.

Normally, the team would be sailing on Constellation, and there wouldn’t be room for me. Or Zorro and his team would be sailing on a J/24 in order to practice for the national Mallory Cup finals in San Francisco this fall. But one member of Zorro’s team, Twinkle Toes, has just finished two years of working on his large boat (or waiting for others to work on it or correcting improperly done work that others had done on it), and Zorro felt that he owed it to Twinkle Toes, as a long-term and very faithful crew member, to give him the support of sailing on his boat.

The weather forecast was for some pretty stiff conditions, and it looked good for the Hunter 34 Windependent, especially as we were able to put together a large crew. We ended up with Zorro, Twinkle Toes, and Space Invader from the Mallory Cup team, former Team Zorro member Seymour (who now primarily sails an M Scow, a boat for which the weather conditions were not appropriate), two other M Scow guys (we’ll call them Santa Claus and Deli Man), and me.

Windependent has in the past been something of a disaster. It has been slow in the first place, having been designed for cruising and not for racing. In addition, Twinkle Toes has had to deal with many equipment failures, which have often happened during races. So we weren’t expecting to do particularly well; we just hoped that the major refit of the boat would improve its performance to the point we wouldn’t be dead last.

Things did not start well. As we set out from the marina under motor, Twinkle Toes began having trouble with the throttle. A 20-knot wind was blowing us toward the shore, and the boat was unable to make headway against it. Quickly, we got the mainsail up, while Seymour and Santa Claus went below to work on the engine. Eventually, Santa Claus was able to make a temporary throttle linkage using some twine, and we got out of the harbor. It looked like this would be another typical Windependent race, besieged with problems.

Conditions continued rough, with winds gusting into the 30s and possibly even higher. Pat was having trouble setting a starting line, as, even with extra weight on the anchor, the committee boat kept dragging it. Finally, he had to use the motor to keep in place.

On Windependent, we put two reefs in the mainsail and unfurled the headsail, leaving it partly furled to keep the boat from being overpowered by the conditions. As we sailed around the starting area, the crew began coming together, with the newcomers finding their places among those of us who already had sailed together. Zorro reported that the helm was feeling much better than it had on his previous times on the boat, and with the reefed sails, we were still getting knocked around, but not as much as some of the other boats preparing to start the race – the J/24s Kachina and Oso, the J/22 Sirocco’s Song, the S2 3.4 Cultural Infidel, and the Hunter 28 Erebus. We got some especially good looks at the bottoms of Sirocco’s Song and Erebus; the J/24s coped with the conditions by sailing under jib alone.

Just before the start of the race, I went below to bring up life jackets. While I was down there, I discovered that Windependent’s interior was not designed for aggressive sailing, including severe heeling and a whole lot of bouncing around. Cushions and other junk were strewn around the cabin, and some of the galley drawers had flown out of the cabinets. I found myself dodging flying knives and an airborne potato peeler. The thought occurred to me … it would certainly be one of the more bizarre sailing accidents to get impaled by a potato peeler.

At the start of the race, some crew mis-coordination and an inopportune wind gust caused Windependent to start dead last, 500 yards behind the rest of the fleet. It definitely looked like this was going to be another typical race for this boat. We were looking at eight miles of continuing disaster. Well, maybe at least we could stay close enough to the rest of the fleet that we could beat a couple of them on corrected time; the Hunter 34, being a cruising boat, has a pretty large handicap.

Then something miraculous happened …

To be continued …

Not dead yet

Although sometimes it feels like it


Yeah, I know I haven’t put up a post in a long time. Things have been, well, busy lately. This past weekend Pat and I were up at Five O’Clock Somewhere, to get the place ready for winter and take the last Sunfish out of the lake before it freezes over. I ended up spending most of my time either nursing a cold I seem to have come down with or grading papers. I have an especially talented bunch of students this term, which means their essays have more depth, which means it takes me longer to get through them all.

The weekend before that was the first fall-series regatta at Elephant Butte, and we also had a dinner party with some of our closest sailing friends to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary.

For lodging, Cornhusker and Bassmaster made their fifth-wheel trailer available to us. It’s 15 years old, and it was in sad shape last year when Bassmaster picked it up for almost nothing. He has since spent untold hours and dollars fixing it up – as well as buying a truck capable of towing it. But now it’s gorgeous. It has a nice kitchen, wood-laminate floors, a luxuriously appointed master bedroom, a compact but fully functional bathroom, a solar panel charging a 12-volt electric system, and a propane-powered refrigerator.

Even more gorgeous was the spot where it was parked. The New Mexico State Parks sell an annual camping pass that, for New Mexico residents, is a great bargain. I believe there is an additional discount for seniors, veterans, and the disabled. There are a few restrictions – it doesn’t cover utility hookups, and the trailer can’t stay in the same place for more than three weeks. That means that every three weeks, Cornhusker and Bassmaster pick up the trailer, take it to a pumpout to drain the holding tank and refill the freshwater tank, and then park it someplace else. That weekend, it was on the peninsula south of the race course, on farthest east point facing Rattlesnake Island. It was a bit exposed for my tastes, but the scenery was beautiful.

Saturday’s racing was brutal. Zorro’s boat is still out of commission, so I turned over the helm of Black Magic to him. He brought along his loyal crew-member Twinkle Toes, and Cornhusker rounded out the crew. (Pat served race committee duty on Twinkle Toes’ boat, Windependent.) It was a rough day’s racing, and a whole lot of things on the boat broke – the traveler, which we’d only fixed a few months ago, failed again, and Zorro spotted a serious problem with the way previous owners of the boat had rigged it that was causing it to break. The bracket holding the tiller extension to the tiller broke. And the upper shrouds started to fray. We retired from the racing after the second race – those who participated in the third said things got really exciting.

The boat wasn’t the only thing damaged. Cornhusker and I both got a bunch of bruises, and Twinkle Toes’ nose had a collision with the boom. He kept insisting it was nothing, but he looked like a hockey player at the end of a particularly brutal game.

That night was the anniversary party. The guest list included my folks (about to celebrate their own 50th next year), Fuego, who’s currently in New Mexico to work on a spaghetti western (it’s an Italian film company, but with the current ratio of the dollar to the euro and New Mexico’s incentives for filmmakers, it’s cheaper to shoot here than in Italy), Twinkle Toes (who made quite an impression with his bandaged-up nose), Zorro, Cornhusker, Mother, and Dumbledore. We had also been expecting Magnum and Mrs. Magnum, but he got called away on a case at the last minute and couldn’t come.

Sunday, Black Magic was too beat-up to participate in the races, and Zorro had disappeared anyway. The original weather forecast had been for stiff conditions, but instead, there was a lot of rain and not much wind. Pat and Twinkle Toes took Windependent out as committee boat, while I went back to the trailer to rest, grade papers, and finish the mystery novel that Cornhusker had left on the shelf by the bed, which I had started reading Friday.

After the racing was over, we hauled Black Magic out of the water and parked her at Mother and Dumbledore’s place, while we wait for replacement parts that we have on order.

Before: frustration. After: pain. During: not too bad.

Adventures involving nearly dead air, then lots of air, multiple spilled soft drinks, a stolen sandwich, and more …

This weekend is the Rio Grande Sailing Club’s signature sailing event, the Sunrise Regatta distance event. Sailors may choose to enter a 10-, 25-, or 50-mile race, although low lake levels in the recent past have meant that this is the first time we have held a 50-mile event in many years – with low lake levels, there’s less lake to race upon, and there’s more danger of boats hitting submerged hazards in the darkness. This year, we have more water in the lake than we have had in a long time.

I am using the present tense “is” because the event is still going on. The 10- and 25-mile racers have finished, but the 50-mile racers are still on the water. I have returned to the motel after competing on one of the 25-mile boats, but Pat is still at the marina, monitoring the finish line as the 50-milers come in. As the regatta’s name implies, the 50-mile race typically finishes around sunrise.

Our original plan had been to race Black Magic in the 10-mile race (boats without cabins can’t do the 25- or 50-mile races) with Zorro as either crew or guest skipper. But Pat couldn’t find another boat to do committee boat duty, so we had to bring Syzygy down from Heron, and we didn’t have the time or resources to de-rig and bring both boats down.

So Zorro and I ended up on Twinkle Toes’ Hunter 34, Windependent, in the 25-mile race. Joining us on the boat were the Dutch track star Blondie and Dino’s roommate, who, based on physical resemblance and sense of humor, I will henceforth call Jack Black. It wasn’t the all-star crew we had had on Windependent last spring for the Anniversary Cup, but at least we had enough people that we could run such a big boat.

The first two hours of the race were frustrating. Pat had set the start time for early afternoon because that’s when the winds typically begin to come up. But today they didn’t. They were light but enough to make boats go when he started the race, but then they got lighter and flakier – not enough lighter or flakier to call off and attempt to restart the race, but definitely enough to get really frustrating for people sailing heavy boats like a Hunter 34.

About an hour and 50 minutes into the race, I decided I was hungry enough to eat lunch. One of the great things about sailing with Twinkle Toes is that he always brings sandwiches, really good ones, whether he’s crew or skipper. So I got one of the sandwiches and had taken about four bites of it when, suddenly, the wind showed up. I quickly dropped the sandwich onto one of the cockpit bench seats and got to trimming the jib – by the end of the day, I would be hugely thankful for the super-heavy-duty winches Twinkle Toes had installed when he refurbished the boat last year. The wind hit so suddenly that even Zorro wasn’t completely prepared – the cola that he had been drinking ended up spilled over the compass binnacle and my lap, and for the rest of the day, I had no worries about my shoes slipping on the cockpit floor – there was too much sticky, syrupy soda residue for slipping to be any problem at all.

Once the crisis was over, Zorro picked up my sandwich and ate most of it, sharing a bit with Blondie. I think his own sandwich may have gone overboard.

Finally, we had enough wind to make the big, heavy boat actually move. Twinkle Toes had installed a new, fancy data processing device on the boat, so we could see things like our speed and heading and wind speed and other nifty information. Downwind, we got the boat up to 5.5 knots, in actual winds of about 12 knots. Somewhere along the way, Zorro had another cola, and again, a sudden wind shift threw it off the totally inadequate beverage holder on the wheel pulpit, this time mostly missing my lap but hitting my shoes squarely.

Because of wind shifts, we found ourselves on a broad reach for most of the journey to the mark at the north end of the lake. Once we rounded that mark, the wind had shifted again, so we were on a hard beat for most of the rest of the journey to the finish line.

We had to tack as we made our way back. The way tasks fell, Twinkle Toes was on mainsheet trim, and Jack Black and I were on jib trim. On a boat this size the winches for jib trim are on opposite sides and far enough apart that it works best to have two jib trimmers, one for when the boat is on starboard tack and one for when the boat is on port. It was probably not fair to Jack Black to subject him to having to learn how to tack the boat under competitive conditions – it can sometimes be challenging even under protective lesson conditions. I can give him great credit for doing the best he could, especially when Zorro was getting angry. And his sense of humor really helped him to be part of the crew, even as he was learning.

Upwind, we managed to be even faster than we had been downwind – we got up to 5.8 knots, at least when we were on port tack and I was trimming the jib.

We were in a good position to finish well – we wouldn’t be the first boat across the line, but on corrected time, the big, heavy, clumsy Hunter 34 would finish ahead of the other boats in our race. If we finished less than 12 minutes behind our closest competitor, we would beat him on corrected time. As we approached the finish line, we were only about 5 minutes behind him.

Then the wind died, and the big, heavy boat was nearly dead in the water. The other guy won.

But I don’t really think of it as a failing or shortcoming. We did have a really good day on the water, once the wind came up. We got to show Jack Black how exciting sailing is, and we may have even converted him from stinkpotter to sailing crew – even if he didn’t do perfectly today, he knows he can do better next time around, and he did tell us he had great fun today. He’s promising.

So it isn’t the immense high we got from the Anniversary Cup, but there’s a good feeling.

Of course, there’s the aftermath. Yes, I did put sunscreen on, but still, I have a face that resembles the shell of a boiled lobster. I’ve been rubbing in lots of aloe vera gel. And when the wind went stiff and I was on jib trim, I was doing a heck of a lot of grinding on the winches. I have stinky ointment that can be rubbed on my muscles. I can do the arm and leg muscles. The back and shoulder muscles will have to wait for ointment until Pat gets off committee boat duty.

A disappointing weekend

At least most of the other sailors had a good time

As mentioned in a previous post, this weekend was the Big Boat Challenge regatta at Elephant Butte Lake. The race was to be a distance race, scheduled for Saturday, with Sunday as a backup date in case conditions didn’t permit racing Saturday.

Team Zorro was planning to sail on Twinkle Toes’ Hunter 34, Windependent, and many preparations were made. Twinkle Toes spent hours scrubbing the bottom of the boat to help it go faster. Zorro found a heavy-air spinnaker that could be adapted for the boat. Large quantities of sandwiches and beverages were procured for what was expected to be a large crew.

Saturday dawned blustery and became blusterier, with steady winds around 20 knots and gusts higher. If this had been one of the RGSC’s regular regattas, it would have been called off before anybody left the dock. But since we were dealing with big, heavy boats and large crews, we decided to go ahead and try to hold a race – the fleet and the committee boat would go out, and if things got too hairy, then the committee would postpone to Sunday. Zorro was especially eager to race and not postpone; he had good crew, and he expected much of the competition to have trouble with the stiff conditions.

That, it turned out, was not a good idea.

As we prepared to leave the dock, with a double-reefed main and no headsail, the winds increased. Before we got out of the harbor, we began having problems; the traveler gave way. Fortunately, it was only a knot that had come untied, so once we got out clear of the breakwater, Dino took the helm and took the boat head to wind so Zorro and Twinkle Toes could re-run the lines.

Next the boom topping lift somehow came loose from the boom, and we had to have Seymour hanging out from the shrouds with a boat hook to try to catch it so it wouldn’t foul anything else up.

By this time we had been out on the water for about 15 minutes, and the wind had increased; the steady winds were probably somewhere between 25 and 30 knots, and the gusts were definitely higher.

The end came when, following a particularly violent jibe, we looked up and saw that nearly the entire luff of the mainsail had come loose from the mast. It took Seymour, Dino, and Dino’s business partner – all three of them big, burly guys – to get the sail hauled down, and Dino took a couple of major hits to the head and lip in the process.

Once we got the sail down, Seymour and Dino reported that all of the plastic sail slugs had broken. The sailmakers had apparently never envisioned that a Hunter 34 would be sailed in conditions where a jibe would coincide with a 40-knot gust and so had equipped the sail with plastic slugs and not metal ones. Windependent’s weekend was over.

Motoring back to the dock was not pleasant. Zorro had been so excited at the prospect of an exciting day of racing, and to have all hopes dashed before the race even began made him seriously angry. He was lashing out at anything and everything – except himself. He was angry with the boat for having so many things break; he was angry with the crew for not responding quickly enough to disasters and for allowing that violent jibe; he was angry with the race committee for trying to hold races in these conditions (even though the rest of the committee probably would have called the races off from the dock if it weren’t for Zorro’s insistence that the show must go on); he was angry with Pat and me for allowing Tampa Bay, a talented potential crew member for Black Magic, to sail with Applegal and therefore possibly be persuaded to become part of Applegal’s crew.

As it turned out, racing didn’t happen Saturday after all. Of the four boats whose skippers chose to try to race, three suffered disabling major equipment failures before the racing even began, and the fourth had some minor problems. And Pat, on the water-ballasted MacGregor committee boat, couldn’t maintain a steady position even with a really heavy-duty anchor and a 300-foot rode (in about 65 feet of water) with 20 feet of chain at the bottom end. One of the boats reported a wind meter reading of gusts more than 70, and while that seems extreme, the meter on Windependent was reporting steady winds of more than 40 by the time we got back to the dock.

The sailing club dinner that evening was characterized by many tales of disaster and mayhem, but Zorro was a no-show.

Sunday morning was calm – very calm. Three of the four boats that had tried to race Saturday had been able to make repairs or at least jerry-rig temporary repairs, but Windependent had no means of replacing the broken mainsail slugs, so she was out of the running. Zorro chose to go out on Constellation with Twinkle Toes – even though they wouldn’t be officially racing, they would be sailing with the fleet. I would have liked to have gone with them, but I sensed that the two of them needed some time together, so when Zorro suggested that I go with Pat on the committee boat, I was seriously disappointed, but I wasn’t particularly angry. Yes, I would have liked – loved – craved – spending some quality time with Zorro, but I got the feeling that Twinkle Toes needed it even more.

The first two and a half hours of the race Sunday were the complete opposite of Saturday’s weather conditions. The wind was about 3 knots, gusting to 5, and there were periods of no wind at all. The fleet slowly drifted toward the turning mark. At one point, one of the boats radioed us to ask whether we night shorten course or possibly even call off the race. We raised anchor (remember that 300 feet of rode?) to go to the mark with the thought that we might shorten the course at that mark.

But when we got there, the wind was beginning to fill in. We decided not to shorten course, and we returned to the original start-finish area, where we re-anchored.

The wind picked up nicely, and it was probably about 10 knots for the return leg of the race – and then at the end, it picked up even more. The three boats that were racing finished in winds that were in the 15-to-20 range, with higher gusts.

After the racing boats finished, the wind continued to increase. It was a challenge to raise anchor, retrieve the pin buoy, and then get the boat onto the trailer – although not as challenging as it was Saturday.

So my rating of this weekend was … not good. No actual racing, a series of disasters when we did try to race, far too little time with Zorro, and that little time extremely unpleasant. The events of the weekend did absolutely nothing to provide relief from the increasing stresses that my non-sailing life is throwing at me, I’m suffering stress-related health effects that I no longer have insurance or money to take care of, and I’m left wondering what is the point of anything … except maybe that little slip of paper reminding me of an old gospel song.

A peak experience with Team Zorro (part 2)

Was it a miracle, or was it a really good crew?

All the new hardware in which Twinkle Toes had invested began to prove itself, especially the lovely, shiny, extra-large winches. Some of the other innovations, such as movable jib cars, also helped the boat to handle well. There were still some rough spots, such as the old mainsheet and traveler line, both of which tended to jam, but with much else on the boat working smoothly, those were less of a problem than they used to be. Zorro reported that the helm continued to be much easier to handle than it had been in the past, and the boat was staying flatter, pointing higher, and maintaining speed much better than the Windependent of yore.

Better yet, the crew began to really come together and get the hang of both the boat and our positions – Windependent is a much larger boat than most of us usually sail, especially the Scow guys. Twinkle Toes worked the traveler, and, to a lesser extent, the mainsheet, to keep the boat steady in the gusts. Seymour and Deli Man on jib trim figured out how to cross the boat behind the helm in the tacks to help each other sheet. Space Invader on the bow proved to be a superb lookout. Santa Claus at first had some trouble getting from one side of the boat to the other during tacks, but then he figured out how to slide, if not gracefully, at least efficiently, under the boom without getting tangled up in the vang. I floated, helping where extra help was needed, primarily helping Twinkle Toes with the main and traveler, but also helping on the halyards, genoa furler, and jib trim as needed, and going below to fetch things, especially beverages.

One by one, we began passing boats. Erebus was holding her own about as well as a Hunter 28 could in those conditions, with a captain experienced in ocean sailing and a novice crew who nevertheless were having a great time – confidence in a skipper goes a long way toward preventing crew panic when the boat heels over – but we had more waterline and therefore better boat speed. Next, Cultural Infidel, in spite of having a lot of rail meat on the crew, still was having trouble with the conditions and dropped her headsail to reduce power.

Soon we were catching up to the J/24s and the J/22. Sirocco’s Song was sailing under full sail but took a tack off toward the west side of the lake – not the favored tack. Kachina and Oso had been sailing under jib alone but raised their mains as we passed. Still, we continued to pull ahead of them. When Sirocco’s Song came back, she was behind all three of us, but Oso took off to the west anyway, and again, Windependent was ahead when we came back together. Kachina stayed to the east, but continued to fall behind.

We rounded the windward mark ahead of the J’s and continued to pull out our lead. We took first one, and then the other, reef out of the mainsail, and we unrolled the genoa completely. Now we were really flying, in spite of the Hunter’s swept-back spreaders that kept the mainsail from going fully forward. We passed Cultural Infidel and Erebus, still on the upwind leg, while behind us, Kachina and Oso got into a luffing duel, allowing Sirocco’s Song to pull out ahead and open up a lead on them. About halfway to the finish line, Sirocco’s Song made a daring move, considering the conditions – she launched a spinnaker. Now she was flying along, but Windependent was too far ahead for her to catch.

As the finish line was at the entrance to the harbor, we rolled up the genoa before we got there and finished under main alone; we also had Santa Claus below on the string so we could start and run the engine the moment the finishing horn went off. We got the mainsail down, and with Twinkle Toes on the helm giving instructions to Santa Claus on the throttle, we pulled into the slip in triumph.

Sirocco’s Song finished second, a couple of minutes behind Windependent, followed by Kachina and Oso a couple of minutes after that. Eventually Cultural Infidel finished, with Erebus last over the line – although Erebus finished ahead of Cultural Infidel on corrected time.

To be continued …

A peak experience with Team Zorro (part 3)

The high continues

Twinkle Toes was delighted with how well Windependent, the previous jinx boat and disaster waiting to happen, had done in the race. So he treated the entire crew, plus a couple of spouses, to dinner. Over dinner, the conversation centered mainly on the day’s events, and how well we had done.

We came back to several recurring themes: Even a boat with a slow design can be made to sail fast. Twinkle Toes’ improvements to Windependent were well worth the time and trouble, and although there are still a few things to improve upon, such as the mainsheet, traveler, and throttle linkage, this boat’s in a lot better shape than it ever was before.

A good crew can get good performance out of even a marginal boat. That was one of the best feelings – I’ve had similar experiences when performing with musical groups, such as choirs and chamber music groups. It’s that groove where everybody in the group is working together with everybody else in the group, and the whole is far greater than the sum of the parts. Sure, I can play the tympani part of the Carmina Burana, but without the rest of the orchestra and the chorus, all I am is some booming sound. It’s when the whole group functions that the audience gets the experience – and so do the musicians. Being together with the crew on Windependent was the same way. We were not seven individuals; we were seven components of a smoothly functioning … well, machine isn’t the right word, because we were more intelligent than a machine, and far more flexible and instinctive … we were an orchestra.

And of course, part of what makes an orchestra great is the conductor. Saturday, that was Zorro, who was at the helm and directing the entire show. He was able to call on the various talents of the musicians – er, sailors – under his command and get the most out of all of us. While some of us have sailed with him, and a few have sailed together for many years, we had a couple of newcomers, and Zorro was able to direct them and help them to become part of the ensemble.

As if to emphasize the value of a skipper’s leadership, as we were getting settled in to order our food, the skipper and crew of Erebus showed up. “Ross” has been on adventures in both polar regions, and has sailed to Alaska. His daughter, son-in-law, and two grandsons had never been sailing before. Saturday’s racing involved the sort of conditions that typically will scare off never-before-sailors and make them sure they never want to take up such a dangerous sport. But Ross’ son-in-law reported that the family had had immense fun, and that once they were sure the boat wasn’t going to tip all the way over, there was no fear whatsoever. The grandsons even did a lot of the driving. With a lesser skipper, the family’s experience could have been disastrous, but now, we’re looking at another family wanting to get into sailing as a way to have fun together. And it was icing on the cake that Erebus didn’t finish dead last, but beat Cultural Infidel, a theoretically much faster boat, on corrected time.

People may express doubts about a team of sailors from the desert doing well in the national Mallory Cup finals in San Francisco. But Team Zorro has a crew that can work well together, and a skipper who can inspire. If the team can get some good practice time in – both J/24 training locally and San Francisco training to learn the currents, I fully expect them to do well.

Meanwhile, back to this weekend. Sunday morning, we had the awards ceremony for the spring series races, as well as a sailing club board meeting. The most important results of the board meeting were approval of a cooperative agreement with the Coronado Optimist Club to support youth sailing, and approval of financial support both for Team Zorro to go to San Francisco and for Mother Superior’s team to go to the Adams Cup national women’s semifinals on J/22s.

During the board meeting, Zorro made an official announcement about his team. On his crew, he will have Twinkle Toes, Penzance, and Space Invader, and he will have Dumbledore, the J/24 genius, as his alternate crew. He also named me his press officer, so I will be doing a lot of work on publicity for his team, and, if possible, I’ll be going to San Francisco with the team in September – I’ll have to look into policies for taking leave from work.

In the awards, I got third place in the Etchells fleet for the spring series races, but the fun trophy that I got was for the Jack-and-Jill race. The perpetual trophy is a pail, and the tradition is that the previous year’s winner puts a bottle of champagne into the bucket for the current winner. Zorro and I won last year, and Zorro and I won this year. Since Zorro’s favorite is pink champagne, I put a bottle of that into the bucket this year, and then I shared it with all of Team Zorro. As big of a peak experience as I had this weekend, I could hardly do otherwise.

Sunday afternoon, the hullaballoo died down, and eventually the wind came up. Pat had been suffering severely since Saturday evening, as I and many other sailors had been enthusiastically telling of our adventures, while he had been restricted to a miserable time on the committee boat to get the races started and then sitting at the marina waiting for the racers to finish. So when the wind came up, Zorro invited us out on Constellation, for a couple of hours of low-stress time on the water.

The steady wind ranged from about 5 to about 20, with some higher gusts. We got in some work on shifting gears. But mainly, this time on the water was low-pressure unwinding time. Zorro talked – a lot – he tends to do so … he wants to get sponsorships to go to San Francisco, he wants to get practice time for his crew … and he told me that my presence on Windependent was a valuable contribution to the weekend’s success. He told me that having me on board, seeing me hauling on the main halyard to get the sail up when the engine was having problems, gave him the confidence to keep on sailing rather than giving up.

I suspect that was an exaggeration. I can’t imagine Zorro giving up a sailing race because the motor gave up. More likely, Zorro would have started hauling on the main halyard himself if nobody else was doing it. I just saved him some trouble.

Still, it feels good that Zorro values me so much. And now we’re at a stage where my strongest skills, my writing skills, are something that can really help Team Zorro. Prepare for the media blitz.

The Race to the Elephant

A good weekend, despite some miscues

Saturday, the Rio Grande Sailing Club's Anniversary Cup Regatta took on a new format. Thanks to sponsorship from the company that operates the marinas on Elephant Butte Lake, the race also became the Race to the Elephant, designed to showcase the marinas by starting near Rock Canyon Marina, rounding a mark near Marina del Sur, and finishing at the Damsite Marina, with a circumnavigation of the landform that gives the lake its name as part of the grand finale.

I was sailing with Zorro, Twinkle Toes, Penzance and Space Invader on Twinkle Toes' boat, the Hunter 34 Windependent, the same boat upon which we had that peak experience in last year's Anniversary Cup. Gerald, recovering from injuries sustained in a bicycle accident the previous week and eager to play with his new camera, originally was going to go on the committee boat and take pictures, but at the last minute he was persuaded to join Yoda, Esther, and Cherokee on the J/24 Hot Flash, as Cherokee had a seriously injured shoulder that limited her abilities to trim the jib. Gerald joked that with his injured elbow and her shoulder, the two of them added up to one full crew member. That left Pat single-handing Black Magic, but as conditions were light, I figured he could probably handle the boat all right. He'd actually done fairly well two weeks before in the single-handed Joshua Slocum Regatta, aside from being OCS without realizing it at the start, so what would have been a third-place finish didn't count.

At first, winds were nearly non-existent, so we waited for nearly two hours to get some wind with which to run the race. Just before the deadline at which the committee would have called off the racing to try again Sunday, we got some wind – not much wind, but enough to have a race.

We had three fleets, racers, cruisers, and dinghies, with two starts five minutes apart – one for the racers, and one combined start for the cruisers and dinghies (there were only two dinghies registered for the race, and only one ended up starting; if someone from, say, Rhode Island had showed up with a Laser, he would have stood a very good chance of taking home a really nice trophy).

The racers took off with Pat on Black Magic in the lead; for most of the first leg of the race, he and Mother and Dumbledore on the J/24 Kachina would swap leads several times.

Windependent is not exactly a good boat for light air. But we had a very lightweight drifter for a headsail, sort of a cross between a genoa and a spinnaker. It turned out to be a very good sail for us. We totally nailed the start, and we were off. Soon we found ourselves catching up to the racing fleet, while most of the cruising fleet was indistinct in the distance behind us.

Then the wind came up. As the drifter was only good for wind speeds up to 7 knots, we took it down and unrolled the heavy headsail. For about 40 minutes, we had winds in the 10-12 knot range, Windependent's sweet spot. At one point, even with a start five minutes behind, we were ahead of nearly all of the racing fleet; only Black Magic and Kachina remained ahead of us – and those two boats were gradually pulling away from everybody else.

Then the wind faded. We rolled up the heavy headsail and set up the drifter again. But even with that sail, we couldn't go fast. For a while, we did keep up with most of the racing fleet, but a couple of the boats in the cruising fleet were catching up. Meanwhile, Kachina and Black Magic were vanishing over the horizon.

Unfortunately, disaster struck. Because the roller-furling heavy headsail was mounted on the forestay, we had been sailing with the drifter flying from the spinnaker halyard. It was working well for us, until the shackle on the spinnaker halyard broke. The official race photography boat was right next to us at the time, and thanks to serendipity, the photographer snapped a photo just as that shackle gave way. I ended up on the rail of the boat, hauling the sail onboard while Twinkle Toes and Space Invader got the other headsail working again.

Without the drifter, we were toast. The US 25 Viento Bueno and the MacGregor 26C Mac Goddess were right on our heels. Worse, with a retractable keel, Mac Goddess could take shortcuts through shallows. We had some exciting tactical encounters with those two boats as we did the loop around the Elephant, and we were the first cruising boat over the finish line, ahead of a couple of the racing boats even, but on corrected time, Viento Bueno was first, Mac Goddess was second, and we were third in the cruising fleet.

Still, it was an exciting race and a rewarding experience. The day turned out even better for Pat – after the first mark, he had lost ground to Kachina, finishing about 10 minutes behind her, but nearly a half-hour ahead of the next boat to finish. In the overall, corrected standings for all fleets together, Kachina was first, Black Magic second, and Viento Bueno third.

That night, there was a gala dinner and awards banquet. It was expensive (at least by New Mexico standards) at $25 a head, but the food was absolutely fabulous, at least for carnivores. The centerpiece of the meal was a massive, tasty, tender slab of beef – something on the order of 16 ounces of rib-eye. The Damsite has a new chef, and he really showed off his talents. (He had done some awesome dinner-plate-sized sweet rolls for the skippers' meeting breakfast that morning, as well.)

Sunday, it was time to return the boats from the Damsite (where race participants got free overnight slips) to where they live – we had to get Black Magic to the mast-up storage lot at Marina del Sur, while Cornhusker needed to get her boat, the Freedom 21 Free and Clear IV, which she has just bought, to Rock Canyon Marina. Gerald sailed with Cornhusker, while Pat and I took Pyrat on board Black Magic as crew. He's interested in buying an Etchells for himself, but first, he'd like to be crew for us for a few months to learn how the boat works. This works well for us, as our current loyal crew, Penzance, has just bought himself his own Etchells, and we were looking for a replacement.

Winds were much better Sunday than Saturday. They started light and switchy, and then they filled in to somewhere in the 10-15 knot range. Pyrat had a ball – he's been sailing all of his life, especially dinghies, and he was delighted with Black Magic and how she handles. He's super on mainsail trim, and he's going to be a great crew member for the fall racing series. Meanwhile, I hope we can sail together on a regular basis over the summer as well; we're leaving Black Magic at Elephant Butte this summer instead of taking our usual migration to Heron.

Permanent substitute

An oxymoron

In recent years, Albuquerque Public Schools have been criticized for having a large number of so-called permanent substitutes – teachers who aren't certified as full-time teachers, just as substitutes, who are taking the place of fully certified teachers because of staffing shortages, especially in fields such as math and science where qualified teachers are hard to come by.

While the No Child Left Behind act has shortcomings, a few of its provisions have been beneficial, and one of those was to reduce or eliminate the use of unqualified teachers. APS now has very few permanent substitutes, and those have legitimate qualifications, such as a degree in math or science but no teaching certificate.

Meanwhile, three times this season, the person who was scheduled to serve as race committee for the Rio Grande Sailing Club's regattas has canceled at the last minute, leaving Pat to fill in. True, he does have the official US Sailing race committee certification, but he shouldn't be called upon to be committee every regatta. In essence, he is now being called on as a permanent substitute.

In the past, the RGSC has had a policy of requiring all racers to serve regular turns as race committee. If a racer was unable to serve for the assigned regatta, he or she had to make arrangements to fill the gap, or else face severe scoring penalties in the regatta series. This policy served to keep skippers in line.

We're probably going to re-institute a policy on this order, since right now Pat's just not getting to race at all.

Meanwhile, this Saturday was the RGSC's final event of the year, the Kris Kringle Regatta and Christmas party. A cold front had just passed through – the previous two days there had been a blizzard that actually shut down the freeway between El Paso and Las Cruces. Temperatures at the lake were cold, and there was snow on the ground in the shady places. The plan was for the Etchells to run short course races, while the other boats would have a distance race around Rattlesnake Island and back.

There was a problem, however, with the Etchells fleet: Zorro's boat, Constellation, was in El Paso, where he had spent the past two weeks making hull repairs and painting her. His original plan had been to bring the boat up to the lake Friday to rig and launch, but the highway closure put an end to that plan. Instead, he was to borrow a truck from Carguy Saturday, haul the boat to the lake, rig it, and launch it, all in time for the day's racing.

There was a hitch with this plan, which was that there wasn't a hitch on the first vehicle Carguy had. So he and Zorro went to his lot to find a towing vehicle with a hitch. That delayed Zorro's departure for the lake. Once he got to the lake, he got help from me, Twinkle Toes, and Trail Boss, a skilled sailor who was to sail with Cornhusker and me (and originally also Pat) on Black Magic. Still, there were problems, such as the boat being full of snow and the bilge being frozen solid – along with a lot of the rigging, which pretty much had to be thawed out before it could be run.

Finally, Zorro told Trail Boss and me to go ahead and get out sailing; he and Twinkle Toes would finish rigging and launch Constellation.

So Trail Boss, Cornhusker, and I set sail in cold temperatures and light air. Just about the first thing Trail Boss noticed was that a large number of the lines on the boat were fouled and weren't running smoothly. He also noticed many other things that weren't working quite right – some of which had been on our radar (such as missing a masthead fly), and some of which had not (such as the tracks for the jib cars being placed too far forward; they would be all right in light air, but in heavier conditions it would not be possible to move the cars back as far as they should be).

Conditions to start with were light, but reasonable for sailing in, especially given the temperature, which was right around freezing. Trail Boss decided not to wait around for Zorro to get Constellation in the water; rather, he wanted to sail around the lake, both to give me and Cornhusker some lessons in sail trim and to get a feel for Black Magic and how we might improve her performance.

Then the wind did something it often does at Elephant Butte. It went away. So when Zorro and Twinkle Toes finally got the boat launched, we were becalmed far away.

Meanwhile, Pat was cold and miserable on Cornhusker's boat, Free and Clear IV, which she had made available for committee duty so we wouldn't have to rig or launch Syzygy. The anchor was lightweight, and it didn't have enough rode, so it dragged even in drifting conditions. After starting the distance fleet (two J/24s and a Grampion), instead of waiting for the Etchells to show up, he set a course, and then he had to keep changing the line as the wind shifted. We had tried to call him to let him know what we were doing, but the calls kept going to his voice mail. Meanwhile, he had tried to call us to ask what was going on, but he picked times when we couldn't answer the phone, such as when we were raising sail or tacking. He finally got through to Cornhusker's phone a couple of times when she wasn't occupied with running the boat, but he never clearly communicated exactly what he was doing or what information he wanted from us.

Eventually, we got back to the starting area, and we sailed along with Zorro for a while, but by then, the sun was getting low and the day was getting cold. We sailed back to the marina and put the boats away.

Because of the weather, turnout at the Christmas party was low, but at least it was not as low as the turnout for the regatta; about 20 people turned up for the party. Zorro presented awards, including 2008 Sportsman of the Year (Zorro had been preoccupied with damage to his boat last year and forgot) for Pat, and 2009 Sportswoman of the Year for Cornhusker. The white elephant gift exchange was quieter than usual, but it was fun.

Sunday morning was much warmer, but there was no wind. That was all right, since we wanted to put Carguy's boat on my trailer so he could get the bottom cleaned (it currently resembles green shag carpet) and then Zorro could repaint it; meanwhile, Black Magic could occupy Carguy's slip and be available to sail on or do boat work. Pat, Cornhusker, and I got the boat onto the trailer with no difficulty, and we left it parked just above the boat ramp, so Carguy can come when he's able to de-rig and take the boat to get it cleaned.

As we were finishing that task, the wind was beginning to stir. We went to lunch, and when we came back, there was a nice breeze, and the temperature was probably somewhere around 60 degrees. We got on our foulies and prepared to set sail.

We didn't stay out long. While we were raising sail, the wind came up strong, and by the time we were out of the harbor, we decided that sailing wasn't such a good idea after all. So we went back and put Black Magic in the slip. Then it was boat work time. I went forward and discovered a complete mess. The jib sheet fine tunes, especially the one on the starboard side of the boat, were twisted up. Whoever had run lines the last time the mast had been raised had done a horrible job, so that the mast moving system was fouled up in just about everything else under there. The fraculator had been run through a block that inexplicably had been tied with a bit of string to one of the blocks that the starboard jib fine tune was supposed to run through, and I couldn't fathom a reason for that block to be there, as the fraculator was run straight through that point.

So I spent about an hour up inside the front of the boat, and things are running much more smoothly now. There are still other things to work on, such as the jib cunningham, which used to be routed around the bilge pump hose that's no longer there and which now has too much length of line in one part of the system and too little in another, and the traveler, which right now has oversized blocks that hang up on things.

The weather was predicted to turn worse, and we wanted to get started on the journey back to Albuquerque before it got too late. We tied the boat securely, put the cover on, and headed up the hill, stopping to take pictures in the late-afternoon light of Constellation, with her shiny new paint job, and Black Magic, with a clean transom now that the motor mount has been removed. (It was about time; we haven't actually used the motor in about three years.)

Sunset, moonlight, Sunrise Regatta

Not much time to write; will try to keep this brief

This past weekend was the Rio Grande Sailing Club's Sunrise Regatta, consisting of four fleets: 10-mile, 25-mile spinnaker, 25-mile non-spinnaker, and 50-mile. The regatta gets its name because if the winds are light, sunrise is about when the 50-milers finish.

Pat and I got to the lake Friday afternoon, so he could take the club's motorboat out and put flashing lights on the navigation buoys that were to be used as turning marks during the race, so sailors could see them after dark. Before going to get the boat, Pat dropped me off at the Rock Canyon Marina, where I was to meet Zorro to sail with him. When I got there, he was already out sailing on the lake, but after about a half hour, he came to pick me up.

The wind was brisk, and so I had to hop on board Constellation from the dock while the boat was moving fairly fast. In order to make the jump easier, and since it was only going to be a short sail, I left almost everything in my gear bag, which I stowed on Windependent, Twinkle Toes' boat, on which Zorro and I and a few other people would be sailing in the 25-mile spinnaker fleet Saturday. Thus, when Zorro and I set sail, I was wearing my hat, sunglasses, and PFD, but I didn't have my non-sun glasses, my lip balm, or my cell phone with me. Well, we weren't going to be out long, so I wouldn't need those things – or so I thought.

It was late afternoon, but the wind was good, so Zorro decided to make a reconnaissance trip to the southernmost of the turning marks, to verify exactly where it was so we wouldn't have to hunt for it Saturday. As we arrived at that mark, the wind began to fade. On our way back to the marina, as the sun was going down, so was the wind. Then, when we were about halfway back, the wind went away completely. If I had had my cell phone, I could have called Pat to bring the motorboat and give us a tow in, but, well, I didn't have it. As it turned out, Pat had tried to phone me to ask what was up, but when he didn't get an answer, he figured that Zorro and I were simply enjoying our time on the water.

At this point, well, we didn't have much choice but to sit there and enjoy the sunset and try to find at least a little bit of a hint of a puff of wind. So we did. The sunset was glorious – but I didn't have a camera, or even a cell phone, to take a picture of it, so readers will have to take my word on that.

It was about this point that some song lyrics started humming through my head … and Zorro's too. I ended up with "Slow Boat to China" stuck in my brain for the whole weekend, and then some – it's still floating around my synapses. Zorro admitted that he, too, thought of the same song, although I was thinking of Jimmy Buffett's version, and he was thinking of Bette Midler's.

Just about as the sun set, we picked up just a hint of wind, and then a little more, and the boat was again moving, although not all that fast. The light was fading from the sky, and I realized I wouldn't be able to see all that well in the dark with my sunglasses on, but I didn't have my other glasses to change into. I tried going without any glasses on, but I'm so nearsighted, I couldn't see a thing – dark glasses were better than no glasses. Zorro admitted that his own night vision wasn't so great, either.

Meanwhile, in the east, the full moon was rising. So was the wind. Constellation picked up speed. We put up a spinnaker to get back to the marina more quickly. The wind built. And then it built some more. We were flying along, keeping pace with the waves, as the silvery moonlight reflected off the water like a million diamonds and gave us just barely enough light to see what we were doing. It was an awesome feeling, surfing the waves, the wind in my face, ripping along in the glow of the moon.

When we arrived at the marina, we found the harbor entrance almost by accident, and when we came to the dock, a fisherman on the shore facing the marina had a spotlight that provided enough light to allow us to get into the slip without incident.

I have in the past blogged about a peak
experience
with Team Zorro … this was another peak experience.

Saturday was the Sunrise Regatta. On board Windependent were boat owner Twinkle Toes, Zorro, Blondie, Blondie's boyfriend, and a friend of Zorro's from Belize who now lives in the U.S. and has his own boat. Zorro was at the helm, Twinkle Toes on main trim, Boyfriend and Belize on jib trim, Blondie tailing, and I wherever there was a hole that needed filling. Winds were stiff, and they gradually got stiffer as the day went on, but they never got to the really insane levels that they sometimes get. For the first half of the race, in particular, they were in the range that was great for a Hunter 34, enough to make such a big and clumsy boat move smartly. Later, they got to a level at which reefing the sails would have been good, but this boat's not rigged for easy reefing, so we kept full sail up and just pressed on.

One of the rules of thumb about racing on Windependent is that something ALWAYS breaks. That is especially true in rougher conditions. But this time around, we got lucky. There were two things that broke, neither of them a serious problem. On the first upwind leg, because of the stiff winds, we didn't raise a full-size spinnaker; instead, we used an old Etchells spinnaker that Zorro had donated to the cause. It did the trick, bringing the boat up to the maximum hull speed for a Hunter 34. It also looked very silly, just a little handkerchief high up and out in front of the mast. As we were approaching a narrow channel leading to the northern part of the lake, Zorro was talking about how we were going to take that sail down in order to zigzag through the channel – and then there was a major wind shift and we broached. The spinnaker was ripped to shreds in the incident.

The second thing that broke was the nail on my right pinkie. That's OK; I don't think I've ever had a worthwhile sail on which I didn't break a nail or two. If there were no broken nails, it was probably not fun. Maybe whenever Windependent races, I should be on board so what gets broken is one of my nails, and nothing important.

In our fleet, we were second over the finish line behind the J/24 Hot Flash, but we beat her on corrected time.

Oh, yeah, that song … Consider this a lengthy intro to a Poetry Corner – another one on Frank Loesser, whom I've featured before. This is the version that Buffett sings, adapted from Lyrics Depot.

On A Slow Boat To China
By: Frank Loesser
1948

I'd love to get you
On a slow boat to China
All to myself alone

Get you and keep you
In my arms ever more
Leave all your lovers
Weepin' on a far away shore

Out on the briny
With the moon big and shiny
Melting your heart of stone
Honey I'd love to get you
On a slow boat to China
All by myself alone

(instrumental)

I'd love to get you
On a slow boat to China
All to myself alone
A twist in the rudder
And a rip in the sails
Driftin' and dreamin'
Honey throw the compass over the rail

Out on the ocean
Far from all the commotion
Melting your heart of stone
Honey I'd love to get you
On a slow boat to China
All by myself alone

Honey I'd love to get you
On a slow boat to China
All to myself alone

A few words about Marty

The memorial service for our friend was this afternoon.

Marty was a sailor. He died sailing. For those of his family and friends who don't know sailing, I'd like to try to explain what sailing meant to him, and what he meant to those of us who sailed with him.

For me, the universe changed that day. We knew something was wrong, but not what. Larry was sitting on his boat, hunched up, looking like ice. He said, "Marty's at the bottom of the lake. He went under; he didn't come up."

That did not compute. Not Marty. Not the ever-so-reliable Marty that we could always count on to be there when he was needed. Not the quiet, supportive Marty. Not the gentle, understanding Marty. No. It couldn't be. He couldn't possibly be gone.

But he was.

Marty was the most loyal sailor ever to sail with Larry on Constellation. He was devoted to the team. He showed up for every regatta, unless he was traveling somewhere with Paulette. We could count on him. And he always brought sandwiches; one of the bonuses when I sailed on Constellation was that I knew I would always have lunch – even if Marty forgot to leave the mayonnaise off mine.

As crew, Marty was the most devoted. He never gave up, never slacked off. He gave everything to running the boat, whether it was getting drenched on the foredeck or hauling lines in the cockpit. He may not always have been graceful – I gave him the blog nickname "Twinkle Toes" as an ironic comment, and at the end of one rough day I came off the boat with a bruise on my calf with the exact tread pattern of his boot – but he always put his whole self into what he was doing.

Off the water, Marty was also the best crew a skipper could ever have. He gave generous gifts to Larry for the boat, and he once traveled to El Paso to attend an awards ceremony in Larry's honor.

Marty also had his own sailboat, Windependent. He spent hundreds, possibly thousands, of hours working on that boat. It was something of a running joke among Larry's crew – this isn't exactly a high-performance boat, and there's always something breaking. But a couple of years ago, Marty had done a major overhaul, including replacing the mast. Some of the very best sailing experiences I've ever had have been on board Windependent – most especially the 2008 Anniversary Cup. That was a peak experience, a crew and boat tuned to each other, like a symphony orchestra – and on that day, the only thing that broke on the boat was one of my fingernails. We won the regatta. The euphoria from that day lasted for months.

Marty was quiet, easy to overlook. He tended to fade into the background, especially when louder people were around. But he was always there, a quiet presence, observing, with a knowing smile and a twinkle in his blue eyes. I loved seeing that smile. I don't know that he ever knew that I saw it.

Everybody loved Marty. In a sailing club, as in any organization, there will be people who don't get along with each other, who have personality clashes. But as far as I know, nobody ever had any beef with Marty. I've never heard anybody say anything negative about him – ever. He just didn't have conflicts.

Losing Marty has left me with a hole in my heart. Yeah, we can come out with the cliché that he died doing what he loved. And there's some truth in that, and some comfort. But it's not enough.

Looking forward

Conditions are shaping up for another peak experience – and I could use one about now

This coming weekend is the Big Boat Regatta at Elephant Butte. Entries must be at least 27 feet long and at least 5000 pounds displacement. By ocean standards, this isn't particularly large, but on our lake, these restrictions mean only the very biggest boats will be participating.

Desert lake winds are often fickle, and light winds would make a race of big boats, to put it mildly, frustrating. It takes some air to get these things moving.

Fortunately, the weather prediction for the weekend is for stiff winds. It should be an exciting race.

We're looking forward to a reunion of the team and boat from our peak experience last June in the Anniversary Cup – Zorro will take the helm of Twinkle Toes' 34-foot Hunter, Windependent, and we'll have many of the same people on the crew. Zorro himself is really excited; every time he sees a new weather forecast, he phones Pat or me to communicate how great this weekend's sailing is going to be. The excitement is rubbing off, and that's a good thing. I've been feeling somewhat low lately, with Pat's and my local corner of the economic downturn looking especially bleak. There are times when I feel low, and I know a good dose of Zorro helps a lot. His enthusiasm about the weekend is making me feel better already, and if we have a great experience on the water, that's going to be even better.

The Valentine’s Chute-Out

Pity the individual races didn't officially count

 

This year, Zorro came up with a different format for the Chute-Out. Instead of a basic race in which all of the boats race as individuals, there were two teams, with matched pairs of boats, one representing each team. There were two pairs of J/24s, and one pair of Etchells, sailing around-the-buoys races, plus a couple of pairs of cruising boats sailing a distance course.

The originally scheduled pairing of Etchells was going to be Zorro on his boat versus Applegal and Appleguy on their boat. However, as circumstances worked out, I invited Applegal and Appleguy to sail Black Magic, with me as crew, and at the last minute we got Seymour as well. Zorro, meanwhile, had Pat and Twinkle Toes as crew on Constellation.

Conditions were stiff – winds were in the mid-teens to low 20s, with higher gusts. Even before the racing began, we were all getting wet. Seymour put on his wetsuit, neoprene gloves, and dinghy boots, the perfect attire for foredeck duty in such conditions.

We also worked out some major adjustments in sail trim. Before leaving the dock, we made a decision to use a high-performance moderate-to-medium air mainsail, rather than the super-heavy main that could take a lot of punishment but would also be very slow if the wind were to come in lighter than the predictions. This higher-performance main had caused us some problems before – it was a San Diego sail, and our mast is a Connecticut mast. When we had sailed before with Zorro using this sail, we had never succeeded in pulling it all the way up to the top of the mast, and Zorro had said it might not be possible to get it up all the way. He had advised us to use cunningham and outhaul to tighten it to make it work right.

That wasn't good enough for Applegal. During the maneuvering before the first race, she went head to wind several times in order for Appleguy and Seymour to haul on the halyard and get the sail up high enough that the trim looked pretty to Applegal. Even though I am relatively new to performance sailing, I could both see and feel a difference. Black Magic was really flying now.

We got a spectacularly good start on the first race – because of the high winds, the race committee selected long courses, what the British know as a "double sausage": a half-leg upwind to the windward mark, downwind to a downwind mark, upwind to the upwind mark, downwind to the downwind mark, and then a half-leg upwind to the finish. We led Constellation for the whole race. Because of the stiff conditions, and because the crew, while experienced sailors, weren't experienced sailing with each other (Seymour had never before been on the same boat as Applegal and Appleguy), we chose not to run a spinnaker on the downwind legs. Constellation did run a spinnaker, and did gain some on us, but not enough to make us worry. She spent a lot of time on her side while the chute was up.

The second race was another story. Because a cruising boat that was not racing got in our way at the start, we were 30 seconds late to the line and 20 seconds behind Constellation. We gained some ground on the first upwind half-leg, but we were still behind rounding the mark. We knew that because we were behind, we would have to use the spinnaker, and we had prepared ahead. We executed a near-perfect jibe set, and when everything was said and done, we found ourselves ahead of Constellation, by a significant margin.

Downwind, Black Magic is the fastest boat in the RGSC Etchells fleet. Seymour and Appleguy were working together trimming the chute as if they had always been together, and we just kept flying along smoothly. Meanwhile, behind us, Constellation broached again and again.

I notice here that I haven't mentioned one of the greatest factors in our success: Applegal. Seymour and Appleguy (and sometimes I) were doing great things, but Applegal was directing the show, and she made some great decisions. She spotted wind shifts on the upwind legs, and she made commands that helped our spinnaker operations to be a success. Thanks to her direction, we really stretched out our lead in the downwind leg, and we had a great takedown and mark rounding at the end of that leg.

Zorro brags about how fast Constellation is upwind, and we were looking forward to making an effort to preserve our lead. But halfway up the upwind leg, Zorro quit. I was surprised – we weren't really all that far ahead of him, and Black Magic is not a good upwind boat. I really thought he had a good chance of catching us.

So we sailed the rest of the course, and we racked up two victories against Zorro.

In the end, though, Zorro can save face. The scoring of this regatta was based on team performance. In the Etchells, the northern fleet (Black Magic) won two races to the southern fleet's zero. In the J/24s, the first pairing went both to the southern fleet, while the second pairing was split one race each. In the cruisers, one pair didn't race, and in the other, the northern fleet boat suffered a major equipment failure and didn't finish.

So overall, the southern fleet won, even if the northern fleet boat beat Zorro twice.

Disappointment for Team Zorro

Maybe the dream really was impossible …

If you’ve been following this blog, you know that Zorro and his crew have earned a slot in the men’s national sailing championship, the Mallory Cup, in San Francisco in September. We could stun the world, if a bunch of nuts from the desert showed up and actually did well.

We’ve been preparing. The Rio Grande Sailing Club pledged money to Team Zorro to help with registration and travel expenses. Zorro and Space Invader were working on lining up corporate sponsors to help with other expenses. Twinkle Toes’ wife lined up super-low-cost airline tickets – and apparently she was really looking forward to the trip, as she loves traveling to exciting places. I was hoping to get in on at least the last couple of days of the regatta, and I was planning on arranging time off from work to do that (I have a union contract that allows me some personal leave, but not enough to take the whole week off).

The problem is that Zorro has recently started a new job. When he hired on, he told his employers that he would need to take a week off in September to compete in the championship, and they said that was OK. But last week, they changed their tune and said that he would be fired if he took the week off.

Zorro can’t afford that. He may be unmarried, but he’s the sole support of a dog and a very large number of cats. He has to pay for canned food, kibbles, cat litter, vet visits, and more. Plus he has to pay a mortgage to keep a roof over all those critters’ heads, and he has to pay utilities to keep the space under that roof heated or air-conditioned for the animals’ health and comfort. So losing his job is not an option for him.

We looked into whether the rest of the team could still go to the championship without Zorro – Penzance could take the helm. But no, that’s not acceptable, since the helmsman is the focus of the championship. All of the rest of the team can be replaced with substitutes, but not the helm. So if Zorro can’t go, the team can’t go.

Part of the problem is the scheduling of the regatta – it starts in mid-week, and thus participants really do have to have the whole week free. That’s fine for people who are retired, or who have upper-level jobs in which they have freedom to schedule time off. It’s not fine for working stiffs who have very little control over their schedules. In addition to being nuts from the desert, many of the members of Team Zorro are working stiffs.

I hear complaints that sailing is unfairly labeled an “elitist” sport, and that it is open to anyone who is interested. But then I see sailboats priced in the hundreds of thousands of dollars labeled “entry-level,” and I see regatta scheduling that prevents working stiffs from participating. Yeah, local clubs can run races that are open to anybody who can come up with a fairly nominal entry fee, but the higher levels of competition seem to assume a certain degree of freedom that isn’t available to working stiffs.

I suppose there’s still a chance that Team Zorro can get to San Francisco, but it’s remote. What would be necessary is an employer who won’t fire Zorro for going to San Francisco, so he can keep taking care of the critters and paying the bills. That sort of employer probably doesn’t exist in El Paso.

Two donuts and two rolls

No, it’s not a high-carb breakfast, but something scarier.

The first race weekend of the Rio Grande Sailing Club’s spring series regattas saw some pretty stiff winds and the destruction of a lot of equipment, including some sail batten pockets, a spinnaker sheet, a spinnaker or two, a main halyard, and a 1983 Mercedes 240D.

Saturday’s winds were predicted to be (depending on which weather service one looked at) 10 to 15 mph, gusting around 20. As we headed out to the race course, the winds were much less than that, and the Etchells, having no motors, needed a tow to the race area. Shortly after we got there, however, the winds did come up to the predicted levels, and we had three exciting races.

This year, the racing is divided among three fleets: the Etchells in their own separate class, the A fleet of higher-performance boats, such as J/22s and J/24s, and the B fleet of slower, cruising type boats. Black Magic came in second in the Etchells fleet in all three of Saturday’s races, losing to Zorro in the first and second races, and to Sutherland in the third. We broke a spinnaker sheet during the second race, but even without a spinnaker, we did all right.

After the racing, Zorro came to spend the night with us in the place we’re renting in T or C; we headed back to the boat later to work on replacing the broken spinnaker sheet and re-running the traveler controls. Then we came back to the doublewide, where Zorro and Tadpole looked up weather reports online, and we remembered to set our watches and clocks for Daylight Savings time. We had had a long day, and we were tired, but with morning coming an hour earlier and us being up late, we didn’t end up getting much sleep.

Sunday’s weather was predicted to be much fiercer, with steady winds between 15 and 20, and gusts possibly as high as 30. The committee called an unusual course – instead of the usual straight upwind-downwind course, it was a Harry Morgan-type course, with a triangle followed by an upwind-downwind. Several of the boats, especially in the B fleet, decided not to race, although one of those suffered damage when his main halyard went astray, tangled itself up in his prop, and had to be cut off – and then his engine cooling system got clogged up, too.

During that race, Black Magic suffered some damage to the heavy-air jib, in particular, some torn batten pockets, and we had a spinnaker pole end let go of the sail, and we had a jib wrap itself around the forestay as we rounded a leeward mark, costing us some major distance. One of the other boats suffered spinnaker damage. We finished second, way after Zorro; Sutherland didn’t start.

After that race, Zorro’s crew, Twinkle Toes, had to leave for Albuquerque, so that was the only race the Etchells sailed Sunday. The other boats stuck around for another race in increasingly screaming conditions. We heard later of at least one spinnaker being blown apart, and other boats, lines, and hardware suffering damage.

We and Zorro put our boats away and patched up a couple of things, as well as adding to our shopping list of boat stuff we now need to buy. The day’s racing was immensely satisfying – up until this weekend, I hadn’t flown the spinnaker in anything more than 8 mph, so being able to run it – albeit with a few mishaps – in heavier conditions was rewarding. Zorro was especially pleased with how well we had done. But it was also exhausting, leaving me with aching muscles and all of us tired.

We had a late lunch, and then Zorro had to leave in order to get to El Paso, because his son was coming in from out of town to visit him. We stopped by the doublewide and gave him a couple of cans of his favorite diet cola for some extra caffeine to keep from falling asleep at the wheel. As he was preparing to set off, he did something he doesn’t usually do – he fastened his seat belt. That turned out to be one very smart move.

A half-hour later, I got a call on my cell phone from an unknown number. It was Zorro: “I just rolled my car; can you come rescue me?” Despite the extra caffeine, he had fallen asleep at the wheel, drifted into the median, which woke him up; he then overcorrected, spun around twice and off the side of the freeway, rolling twice on the way down a 10-foot embankment. Thanks to the seat belt, and the fact that 1980s Mercedes were built like tanks, he was not hurt. Some young people saw the accident and helped him out, including lending him their cell phone, which he had used to call me.

As it turns out, Sutherland and his crew, Teddy Bear and Dixie, were returning to El Paso when they passed by the scene and stopped to help Zorro and give him a ride home, so we didn’t have to take an extra trip south.

Because we often had sails piled up in the back seat of the Cavalier this weekend, I had been riding with Zorro a lot, and I always fasten my seat belt, especially since I was once in a car accident that would have killed me if I hadn’t been wearing one. As the weekend went on, Zorro was putting his on more and more, a habit I was glad to see him picking up. And Sunday afternoon, that habit paid off big time.