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I asked the Editor if he wanted me to send a report from the Melges 24 World Championship this week here in Key Largo. I told him the report would be written from the perspective of our very Corinthian crew instead of the usual news article about the top 6 guys, published two months later in Sailing World. For those unfamiliar with the term Corinthian, it means “crappy” (actually there are some unbelievable non-pro crews here). To the IMCA (the international class authority) Corinthian means that there are no Class 3 sailors on the boat. Or maybe no 2s or 3s, I can’t remember. To put it in perspective, Of the 100 or so entries, only 30 or so are Corinthian. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you how Pegasus nailed every shift, or that Flyer and Star had a sick tacking duel to the upwind finish, because I couldn’t see them. There were 80 boats between us and them, and Melges mainsails are not yet transparent. I can tell you other cool things though, like the conditions, the parties, the fact that the dude from “Marrakech Express” has a super hot Italian chick who sees him off every morning, and I can write about the general mayhem that is a 100-boat fleet. Hopefully someone is interested. By the way, I think the Ed’s answer was “sure, bitch.” The boat is USA 570, Cujo, a 3-year old M24 based out of Crescent Yacht Sail Club near Detroit. I met the owner when I sailed a J/120 with him a couple years ago, and this summer he asked me to join the crew calling tactics for the gold cup regatta in Zenda and a few others. When we did well (for us) at Lake Geneva, he invited me to sail the worlds and KWRW with him. I have never sailed at a world championship of anything before, and never even seen one, unless you count the NBA finals or Super Bowl as a world championship. It would turn out to be a learning experience in every way. As you wonder “who is this moron?” I’ll just fill in some blanks- I’m a lawyer, real estate developer, in my previous life I used to run big old sail training schooners and charter Beneteaus down in central America, Mexico, and the med. I’ve got more ocean miles than most people I know, but I’ve only been racing for 8 years or so, and really at it hard for just a few seasons. I race hard, I study racing hard, I like to think I know my shit, but probably not so much. But I love sailing almost anything, and despite my unfamiliarity with the M24 (and not a lot of practice time), I figured we’d still have fun, try to do better than the boat did last year, and get the hell out of icebound, dreary Michigan for a week or so. I arrived in Miami, rented a crappy Pontiac, drove down here to Largo into this weird resort master planned community at the Ocean Reef Club. It’s all a little eerie and subdued, but pretty enough for a converted mangrove swamp. I parked the car, tracked down the crew, and turned out I got here just in time to weigh in with the race committee. Each sailor weighed in what was basically a bathroom scale, and the limit for the boat is 792 lbs. As we were getting on the scale, the crew from Cagey (the race chairman and us Melges president Karen G.’s boat) was just getting off the scale. Keith, a friend and trimmer on the boat, looked a little cagey himself, or maybe just a little sick. They had just dropped 8 lbs. as a crew in the sauna. They cut it a little too close, but that’s what the top guys do. And they didn’t suffer for long, as post scale the crew made up for lost food. Our crew weighed in heavier than we thought we would, but we were still over 40 lbs. short. It makes a pretty big difference on these boats, which are incredibly weight sensitive. The boat is overpowered in most wind, and those 40 lbs. hiked well could mean quite a bit of boatspeed. Our light weight would be the least of our problems though. We did have a little bet going on what the total weight would be. Observation: People are almost always bigger than they thing. Or wish. The first night there was an opening ceremony (collared shirts only, please) with a lot of self-congratulatory comments, some gratuitous sponsor ass-kissing, and a 60 dollar a plate dinner. The only free booze was fruity pink drink stuff that I really tried to get hammered off of, which didn’t work so well. I had to suck up the 12 bones that a nice vodka-rocks ran me. So the food was a rip off and not particularly good, the party had no music or anything and half the crews are on totally strict curfews so it felt like I was out with a sewing circle or something. To be fair, people are spread all over this sprawling resort, so lots of folks are hanging out in houses somewhere in the development, but still, you’d think that with 400 + sportboat sailors and support crews, many of whom are legends for their antics, there would be some crazy shit going on. The “family nature” of the resort could have something to do with it… Day 1 we got out very early. The boats are being stored all over, but there are about 35 in one little floating dock area next to the main pool of the resort. We were tied up next to a French crew (how come all the French crews have big ass sponsors like DHL, by the way?) and the awesomely named “free range lobster.” We put the boat together and left to go and tune, check the wind, our tacking angles, our gibing angles, and see what the current, shifts and puffs were doing. We fooled around for 90 minutes or so, with the wind getting a bit lighter and RC postponing the 10 am start for about an hour. With the wind from the shore and fairly light when we went out, I thought we were at the end of the overnight thermal and that we could have a seabreeze, but I forgot about the warm water and that we’d not have any of that. Instead the wind settled into a shifty 325 degrees at maybe 7 knots. A 100-boat line is truly wild to be on. This one has a boat in the middle and one at either end. The middle boat is the signal boat, and there are judges on the water as well calling fouls. The line is about 2/3 of a mile long and it can be hard to see signals (and hard to be called over sometimes…) As usual, we got a second row start and followed the fleet to the windward mark, the first of five legs. The windward and offset marks were crowded, as is every rounding in every race in this fleet. The really interesting stuff happens at the leeward mark, though. The guys who are totally honed in on the tactics seem to float in effortlessly and away they go, the rest of us scream and slam into each other and do our turns. There was about a 20 boat pileup ahead of us that we managed to avoid and power around the outside of. 20 boats, literally parked at the mark. Most of them caught us the next leg as we were stuck in a parking lot at the windward mark. With 120 feet of some random floating black polypro line that somehow caught the rudder and keel and wrapped around both. At least it explained the 20 degrees of leeway and the funny noise the kelp cutter was making. We started tacking on more shifts, since they were 5 to 10 degrees, and we made up some ground. We work really hard on our boatspeed, and upwind we’re able to go faster than a lot of class act boats around the course, although we give away boatlengths in lots of other ways. We ended up 87, beating 12 boats. The second race was more of the same, except there was a big left shift up the course that we got stuck on the wrong side of, with ten boats tacking inside us at the top mark. Then we looked up on the downwind and noticed the long full batten falling out of the pocket slowly. We were not planing, but the owner didn’t want to drop the main to fix it, so he shook the sail hard. The batten managed to crash down to deck, leaving the moderate roach to start flapping. Of course, the leech cord wouldn’t hold because of beaten up Velcro, but we managed to find some string and make a repair that would hold. Strangely, we still had good upwind boatspeed measured on our competition after the mark despite the ugly hook in the main leach. We finished 83rd. As we hang around here and as we drink with much better sailors and talk to everybody, the same themes come back with some of the more inexperienced crews. Like us, a lot of boats feel that they are always on the wrong side of shifts, or they get screwed by leeward boats, or never really get to optimum VMG downwind and so seem to be consistently at the back of the fleet. I think what I’ve decided is that this is a really cool sport. Imagine if you could play 3 on 3 basketball in a tournament against Michael Jordon, an old Larry Bird, and Wilt Chamberlain as well as a bunch of your friends, and then that those same guys would get drunk with you later and tell you how they thought you’d do better if you changed your shot a little, or recommended a smarter way to dribble. And if you could afford it, you could have Michael and Larry play on your team. And they’d give you a cool shirt when you registered. Just too cool. Sailing fast is not brain surgery. There are a few people who are truly gifted, artists with a tiller or at knowing what will unfold on the racecourse. Then there are quite a few who are dedicated and who spend their time and money getting better. LOTS OF TIME. And sometimes even more money. And then there are a bunch that love it and don’t get to sail or practice as often as they’d like. I know for a fact that I just don’t have the experience on the M24 or any sportboat to put her in the right position at the right time very often. In conditions I’ve spent a lot of time in, I do fine. Same with the driver. But until we’ve experienced lots of conditions lots of times in a competitive atmosphere and spent just as much time on preparation and practice, we’ll be sucking it up at the back of a world championship fleet. I was pounding drinks with Eric Nerlinger, one of my absolute favorite people down here. He owns Inside Voice, a Chicago boat, and his whole crew is awesome, some of the funnest people you’d want to meet. They sail well, and hard, they practice a lot, they play together and get along, and they have pretty crew clothes. They have been sailing together as melges crew for over two years. Eric said if they can be middle of the fleet, they’d be really happy for the week. After two years of regattas all over the country, with coaches, the best equipment, max sail budget, and so on, they will be happy with a 50. So what should we be happy with? Not being in Detroit right now is good enough for me. -AL 12/14/05 Top By Alan Block Last week I wrote to you about how incredibly enlightening it was to be racing in an event like the Melges 24 World Championship. It was surprising to an eternal optimist like me how demoralizing it can be too. The caliber of sailors in a 100-boat fleet that are kicking your ass can easily make it almost impossible to maintain the kind of enthusiasm and positivism that you need to keep enjoying yourself out there on the course. But if you can pull it off, your improvement can be really significant, and make it all worthwhile.
Carol, the dive boat captain we met up with, is the former owner of Rich Coast Diving in Costa Rica, a dive outfit that I used to partner with when I ran charter trips on a big wooden schooner down there. I introduced her to blue water sailing, and she caught the bug big time. Big enough to have moved back to the states after selling her dive shop, marrying a J/35 racer and licensed skipper, and saving every shekel for her own “round the worlder.” So it was great news to hear she and her husband had found and bought a gorgeous 50 foot steel cruising boat, and even greater to just talk boats for a while. For two hours we talked rudder shafts and expansion tanks, Panama Canal and pirates, washing all of the conversation down with those bloody big stone crabs and bigger Absoluts. Just being there with two cool and salty sailor chicks reminded me why I was in Key Largo in the first place. TO HAVE FUN. It was a reminder I would need at times throughout the week. Thank god Krista was driving, as there is only ONE road going through the Keys, meaning driving drunk is not only dangerous to your health, but very dangerous to your legal status. When I woke up the first time, we were somehow back in Homestead, Florida (that’s the mainland) driving towards Miami. WonderWoman does not have such a wondrous sense of direction. I redirected her and passed out again. My second awakening found us back at the Ocean Reef Club. I climbed the stairs painfully, watched Krista stumble into the hotel room and into bed with spinnaker trimmer Joel, while I grabbed a pack of smokes and Dave Perry on One Design and read until 4 AM trying to find the silver bullet that would get us into the top half of the fleet. The breeze was kicking, the stars were bright and I was hammered and reading about downwind lanes, outside, in a pair of shorts. NICE.
Unfortunately Monday’s conditions did not include the breeze that I felt when I was drooling on myself the night before, with a pretty steady NNW 10-12 knots. We went out and practiced a bit, checking our angles and jib leads but mostly just puttering around. The RC got off the first race quickly and we pretty much picked up where we left off the day before. Which is really not what we wanted to do. The RC was setting VERY square lines. They were using hand bearings, GPS and I’m pretty sure radar too to get their angles perfect, and invariably the right end of the line was going to be where the best guys would start. So we stayed out of the fray and tried to be somewhere near the line with good speed and a big hole to leeward at the start. Unfortunately that virtually guaranteed that we would be knocked back and forth like a pinball in this huge fleet on the way to the first mark or stuck out in the land of the over stood or just ducking boat after boat after boat. But we stuck with it for Day 2 and sucked ass even worse than the first day. There was enough wind to need the extra 40 lbs. that we lacked on the upwind leg, and our downwind VMG was not good enough to overcome our poor upwind performance by the leeward mark. We finished well near the back of the pack in the first race, then the second race was even worse. First, we tacked too close to a boat about 40 seconds before the start. The right of way boat did not protest us since he had other things to worry about, like the start! I told Greg not to take a penalty after counting to 15 and seeing no red flag, but for some completely inexplicable reason, he decided to do a 360 (proscribed penalty turns from the SI) which left us, well, spinning in circles at the gun. I’ve seen empty floating cans of beer have a better start than this. I was genuinely pissed off, and showed my amateur nature by being totally unable to get over it for half the first leg. We got our head back into it, but by then we were well toward the smelly end of the fleet. At the first leeward mark we were protested for no reason at all that I could figure out, and indeed I was all set to ignore it and flip the protesting boat off, except that an on-the-water judge blew his whistle at the same time. Unsure if he was blowing at us, we took another turn there. We motored in after the race without too much conversation. We were frustrated, angry, annoyed, and self doubting, which is a stellar combination. Tuesday morning (day 3) we woke up and HALLELUJAH! It was blowing nicely. At 15-20 knots with bigger puffs, like most sailors, we live for this shit. Plus, the few regattas I’ve done on an m-24 have been blowing like mad and the entire crew feels comfortable in the stuff. So we headed out with big hearts and smiles, although I knocked over BOTH coffees I brought out with me. For some reason, it became a ritual every single morning of the week for either me or Joel to knock over our coffee on the way out, and by the end I was bringing three cups out just to drink one. We hoisted the main and unfurled the jib, with Greg reveling in the conditions that he is really fast in. I just bought Greg’s I-14 that he played with for years and years, and I think that boat more than anything else made him the fantastic featherer that he is. The Melges 24 is a knot or more faster in 20 knots with the first third of the jib luffing, the main a completely flat bed sheet, and the boat flat than with the sails drawing well. We were stoked for the day and we starting dialing in our upwind trim for real about 10 minutes before the warning flag. Greg had just asked me to put the outhaul on “as hard as you can get it,” which is a big mistake for anyone to say to me. Realize I’m 6 foot, 2 inches, 225 lbs. and spend a lot of time in the gym. There are not a lot of boats that need “as hard as I can get it” but I didn’t think about it too much. Until Greg went full on the mainsheet and the clew of the Kevlar sail ripped out like the gold ring on a merry-go-round. That would be the end of our day. Unbelievable, but not something to get mad about, as it can happen any time. Of course, you didn’t see Dave Ullman’s clew ripping out, but Corinthian also means that sometimes things break that probably wouldn’t on a top boat with the budget to replace things all the time. We were not in a good frame of mind as we sailed under jib to the dock, passing the line of boats just starting their pre-start. We made a sail-finding plan on the way back to the dock so we could at least get back out by Day 4, tied the boat up and started our hunt for a new main. Just then a couple of other boats came in with problems, although two of them were able to make it out to the racecourse for race two. One boat busted her tiller extension (although I woulda thought any sailor worth his salt could have rigged something up to work with a bit of line), Aoxomoxoa (wtf is that, anyway?) blew out their jib sheave and might have replaced their entire rig, and a third boat just heard “crunching noises.” We ran around for awhile as Greg made phone calls, finally getting some good news and some bad news: The good was that another competitor (who pulled out of the worlds after being unable to make it) was willing to lend us her very lightly used and beautiful Quantum main for the remainder of the event (THANKS A BILLION CINDY!!), the bad news was that the sail was locked up at the place that Mike Dow from Flying Toaster was renting so we wouldn’t be able to get out for race two. It may have been a blessing in disguise, though, as the four of us went down to the beach, sat on some lawn chairs from which we could watch the mayhem, and the skipper ordered up some rumrunners for all of us (umm…12 bucks a pop for a dixie cup? Are you for real?). We decompressed and had a nice conversation, solving quite a few of our communication issues at the time. A very attractive young brunette happened to appear right about then, and she sat next to us, pulling off her t-shirt and shorts to reveal an excellently designed bikini. We struck up a conversation, and it turned out she was best friends with Anthony Kotoun off of Star (the factory Melges boat) and would be out watching the event from their tender, Starlight, for the rest of the week. Would she mind bringing my girlfriend out there tomorrow when she arrived? No problem! So that was a nice treat as well. We all turned in early that night, resigned in our minds that our championship would begin anew in the morning. I got a great few hours sleep, until 2 AM when Mer (the infamous g.f.) arrived along with her friend Cheryl, who drove down from Delray Beach to come and play with us. They also brought 1.75 liters of Ketel One, 1.75 of Patron Añejo , three bottles of Pinot Grigio, A little bottle of Rose’s Lime, a handle of Mount Gay, and a bottle each of margarita and piña colada mix. Do I need to mention how cool these girls are? We went down to the pool bar toting bottles, Mer went behind the deserted bar to mix drinks, and we had our own little low-rent Ocean Reef Club after-party that eventually moved to the quiet hot tub. After a couple hours of sleep, we were up and out again with our pretty new mainsail. Greg had been down for hours making sure the rig was perfect, since he really wanted to see how this Quantum performed. Obviously we would need a new main before Key West, so if the Q worked for us here, it would make his decision easy. We did get some little hints from the Toaster guys- the sail needs a little less outhaul than the North, a little more twist, and no cunningham at all, ever. We went out with brighter attitudes than the previous days, in part because of our unexpected lay-day, for me it was nice to have Mer down to visit, and we were excited about our new sail.
Thursday was one of those days you dream about, with 15+ knots of southerly wind, lumpy but predictable seas, bright sunshine with some squalls mixed in, and a crew that was really feeling good. The first race we were looking for our little lurking spot again, but couldn’t get there on time so we ended up about 1/3 of the way down the line from the boat end. We did have a huge hole to start in, although the boat was stalled head to wind just before the start to keep from being OCS. Good position, bad speed is better than bad position and bad speed. We had a great view of the line as poor Karen on Cagey ducked first one boat, then Philippe’s boat, then just didn’t seem able to duck the third, which they sliced into like a pool cue through drywall. It was the Black Seal boat from Britain, and they were holed well below the waterline, needing some aggressive bailing and a fast tow from Sean in the USA 525 (Pareto Optimal) coach boat. Karen is a good friend of the boat, we partied fairly hard at the house she rented for her crew Keith, John, Mensa, and Brian, and we felt terrible for them, but got our heads back in the game as soon as we could. About 400 yards up the course a British boat tried to leebow us but tacked way too close, sticking their rudder directly in front of us. As we stuffed the boat into the wind to keep from anally raping their boat with our bows, we heard their tactician say lamely in thickly accented angle-ish “we thought you said cross” although all I personally said was “Starboard” and the rest of the crew said nothing but “Asshole,” then “Protest” and “do your turns, you WILL lose the protest” while I pulled the flag out. We finally got the boat going again after falling off about 4 lanes below this asshat, sat in his dirty air for a second expecting him to take his penalty, and finally tacked away for clear air. We flew around the course, Greg doing his feathering in the puffs, Krista ignoring her A.D.D. for huge amounts of time, calling waves and puffs like a champ, and we finished ahead of 20 boats. Immediately after the race, I walked up to the pool and jumped in, wetsuit, booties and all to try to clean them of saltwater and sweaty stench. I grabbed two beers and made my way to the protest office to fill out my form. I filled it all out and we sat around to wait for the driver of the protested boat (I’ll call him “Richard” for this article) so we could first see if there was the possibility of mediation, and if not, get his sorry rear DSQ’d from the race. I called Mer to see if she would come hang out with me, and then spilled beer all over my blackberry, which promptly froze up. I don’t know how many of you have these things, but my blackberry is the reason I’m able to do these regattas. I can still work quite a bit without internet access so long as the ‘berry is on. So that sucked, but Mer saved the day with a big tumbler filled with Ketel, ice, and lime. As the end of the protest time drew near, I overheard the crew of “Richard” talking about how they were going to win the protest. I had Mer run down all of my crew in case we needed more witnesses, and had Greg try to hunt down Chuck off of Flyer, who saw the whole incident. In the meantime, a chubby old British guy came up to where we were seated, and nice enough said “Hello, how are you, I’m Rick and I’m hoping we don’t really need to be here. Do we?” I asked him if he knew that because of his tack we needed to go head to wind to avoid him and that I didn’t see why he didn’t just do his turns? We really didn’t need to “be here” if he had just done his turns like everyone else does who obviously fouls a boat. Did he think we were there for him to practice his fouling? Instead of manning up and showing some sack, apologizing, and offering to buy us a couple rounds of drinks in exchange for dropping the protest, he then tried to lawyer me. Those of you who know me through this site or in real life know that’s a really bad idea. His offer was something along the line of “I’ve got tons of witnesses, and there’s no way you can win. You really want to waste all this time? You’re not even in the running for the Corinthian trophy.” My answer was short and predictable, and since he couldn’t name the planet that his conduct would be legal on, it was off to the mediation room. Just before that, I said “thanks for the conversation, Rick.” His answer? “It’s Richard.” Prick. The mediator told him that he had no chance and they took a 40% penalty, although we probably should have not accepted the 40% and taken it all the way to the jury and had him thrown out. Try to lawyer me. C’mon, I dare you. Even though we may not be near the top (or middle) of the fleet, we will not allow ourselves to get a reputation for being soft, because guys remember that. We have plenty of friends out there who we will let cross us anytime. We have plenty of buddies who will let us. The second race was a continuation of our good team energy, and we beat more than 30 boats on that one, passing some really good boats on the downwind screams. 15.4 knots was our max speed, but most of the runs we were above 12 the whole way, gibing through about 50 or 60 degrees, really deep. Upwind our lack of weight on the rail really was obvious when we were next to some top guys with max weight, but we were completely happy with our results, considering our lack of practice and general prep for the event. Our tacks and jibes were still a little slow and sticky, but we’re getting there! Thursday night the Club held a “Street Fair” for the competitors. There’s this little part of the club that looks like a little main street of a New England fishing town. In a “Stepford Wives” kind of way. We went over there, had some burgers with some good friends (thanks for the drinks, ‘wood) and took a long walk before getting an early night at the hotel, watching “the Truman Show.” Good movie.
We motored out to the course to find a southerly wind of about 5 knots with big calm patches. At 1000 the RC postponed with no real idea as to where the wind was going to be. The next two hours saw a constant dialogue between the mark boat, a volunteer boat, and the RC talking about the crazy wind. A big dirty thunderhead went by a mile or two offshore, and a couple went by over the land, with competing winds cancelling each other out and the RC readjusting phantom lines over and over. To their credit, they wanted this final race, which would crown a World Champion, to be a real one and not a total crapshoot. If they had started any earlier, there was the real risk that an “upwind” leg might have had spinnakers popping out. I would have enjoyed that level of uncertainty, but the RC clearly didn’t. Throughout the week that same RC showed some real skill at waiting for the real wind, at resetting lines, and at getting off starts, and I think we all appreciated it a lot. With a two hour postponement you might have expected some grumbling and “just get it started” comments, but I heard none of it. There was too much respect for the guys and girls out there getting it done. I had a nice little surprise when Mer showed up sitting next to Sean, the aforementioned coach for the Pareto Optimal team, on his little 18 foot RIB. They spent most of their time taking sail trim pictures of Pareto, (see below) but had a chance to get some of Cujo too. You can see one of the little squalls that rolled by us in the Pareto shots.
The Committee finally got a line set up when the wind went around to the NW, and set up a another five legger (upwind finish), which was their preference throughout the week. The SI specified that if the attention signal for the second race was not given by 1430 that there would be no second race. With the fairly light wind (6-8 knots) and the late, late start it was unlikely there would be a second race. So we put everything into race 1 and got off a very clean start, rounding the first windward mark ahead of a LOT of really good boats. We got a lot more of the big right shift than most of the fleet and rounded in the top 25 boats. Downwind we got passed by some boats, but sailed a clean race until the last upwind. We did have another obnoxious port/starboard with another Corinthian boat where we had to duck hard to avoid clocking him. And once again, despite being very obviously wrong, they didn’t take their turn. For those of you who haven’t sailed in too many week-long regattas, there is often the attitude out there that “no one’s going to protest on the last day” and racers will take some irresponsible chances crossing. When the boats are being hauled that night, often this is the case. At the Worlds, boats were not going to be pulled out of the water until Saturday, so they were SOL and there was no way I was going to let it go regardless of our place in the standings. We did hear them call “Tack or cross!” at barely above a whisper less than a boatlength away. That’s just won’t cut it. We also watched Flyer and DHL get into it near the windward mark, with some contact and shouting but without any damage that we could see.
Friday night was the Closing Ceremony and dinner. The crew started drinking hard right after our protest was over, and Mer and I ambled over to the conference center where the party was being held. Interestingly, we noticed a more formal party just outside the door to the conference center. This one had waiters with trays full of wine and hors d’oeuvres and partygoers in what looked like black tie garb. I assumed this was for sponsors or perhaps some of the wealthier teams’ families, but was to be proved wrong. We sat down with the rest of our crew, sitting at a table with a bunch of the Cagey guys and all of us pounding the wine pretty well. We went for one more round, where we had our little encounter with Buddy, and brought the drinks back to the table. Mer was looking a little green, and when I asked what she had eaten all day, her answer was typical: “a piece of fruit.” Great. So I let her lean on me as we went outside for some air, and we walked three-legged race style down to the formal party area. Mer grabbed a waitress and told her that if she didn’t eat a piece of bread or something she’d probably throw up right there and then, and the waitress ran back to find something. Imagine our shock when an old buxom blonde appeared at the front of the little outdoor nook and started belting out arias, full-on opera stuff. The surrealism was a little much for us in our slightly stupefied state, and we started cracking up. The maitre’d glided over to us in that way that only a maitre’d or southern belle can and told us somewhat fiercely, “This is a MEMORIAL service. We’ll bring you bread. Please move back to the other party!” Kudos to the brilliant planners at the Ocean Reef Club for booking a funeral complete with opera singer LESS THAN TEN FEET from a party with five hundred drunken sailors. A waiter brought a plate of fries out to Mer and me, and we made our way back to the party while she got something into her belly to soak up the Chardonnays. Along the way we passed a half dozen sailors on the porch laughing and joking about the opera. I guess they didn’t know either. Oh, and when Buddy did go up to present trophies, he was hammered and his stories were hilarious, although they made no sense at all. I was glad to have contributed to that. Saturday morning haulout was the usual crazy affair, with a bizarre numbering scheme for scheduling and two hoists set up in less than convenient spots. One of the hoists had to get the boats up about 50 feet to clear the palms, and that was a cool sight. Karen G. and the volunteers did their best, but of course there were the usual whining and obnoxious pricks who just HAD to be hauled out this second or were just POSITIVE they could have set it up better themselves. Although I am pretty sure none of them volunteered to help with anything before that point. Funny how the guys with the most money often are the loudest whiners. Is that how they got so rich? It’s not like they’re doing the work anyway, is it?
I know we all like to win. Like pretty much all of the Corinthian
teams, we went to this World Championship knowing that we didn’t
have a chance of that, and indeed that it was unlikely that we’d
even get near the top half of the fleet. Despite that fact, we
were all tremendously lucky to be a part of this stellar group, and the
learning curve at an event like this is like the slopes of Everest. You
feel as though you will never get to a plateau as there is just too much
to learn. Even after years of sailing together, I am sure (and
I hope) it’s like this the next time I get to sail the Melges 24
Worlds. Here’s hoping you get to do something like this too. I
suppose there are guys who would rather never compete with people who
are much better than them. I’d rather keep improving as a
sailor, and the humility does wonders for me as a person as well. Here
are our results. You can see how things went after our lay-day. That’s
the kind of learning curve I can handle.
12/22/2005 Top |
