I wrote the following story last year shortly after a practice sail on Avion in April 2013. Tom posted a video yesterday that he took during that practice. The incident discussed at the end of the story happened a few minutes after Tom took that video so you can have visual of what it was like out there at the time.
We have only 24 Hours until the start!
Broken Boat Parts
(Practice, Practice, Practice)
4/27/2013 3:45 A.M.
The boat was pitching and rolling like a carnival ride gimbaled to allow movement on all three axes. As I was attempting to keep my balance while ineffectively struggling to put on my new heavy weather foulies, I saw Tom coming down the companion way. Realizing I was already up he said, “Oh I see you are up, no hurry, take your time”. Good thing! There was no way I was going to get my gear on, relieve myself and replace him on watch by my scheduled 4:00 a.m. I was amazed that even with my 10,000 plus hours of sailing, I couldn’t remember experiencing rougher conditions than this. And “this” was merely a practice run. Avion was pounding along at 7 knots in 15 plus knots of wind carrying a 30 degree list to starboard while beating to weather and pitching in 3 to 4 foot wind waves over 6 to 8 foot swells, I asked myself, “what the hell have I gotten myself into?”
The infamous “this” was practice # 4, where we had planned to go out the Golden Gate turn to weather and sail at least 50 miles and then run back flying a shoot (sorry for the sailing slang, a shoot is a spinnaker, the big billowing sail out in front of the boat while sailing downwind). The direction didn’t matter as long as it didn’t involve land and was initially beating into the wind. The time frame we allowed was no less than 24 hours but no more than 36 from portal to portal. Our goal was to see how we worked as a team through 4 hour shifts, and learn how to sail Avion as fast as we can offshorer.
We couldn’t have picked a better weather window, 10 to 20 knots of wind were predicted through the weekend coming out of the West, Northwest. Our 5:30 P.M. planned departure time was close to max ebb tide going out the gate so we could easily pass under that beautiful orange bridge before sunset and head out into the channel with all the other ship traffic coming and going in one of the busiest ports on the west coast. No problem, the crew was up for a little challenge, after all this was nothing compared to the 12 to 14 days to race to Hawaii that we all signed on for; not to mention the estimated three week delivery back.
I just couldn’t find a place to sit and pull on my bibs, sailing boots and heavy parka. I tried leaning against the bulkhead but the pitching of the boat made that impossible. I tried sitting in the berth but it was too short to effectively sit and tug at clothing. Getting dressed was like a cowboy trying to put on his Tony Lama boots and leather chaps while riding the rodeo’s champion bull. Somehow I found a way to crawl into my gear and while attempting to put on my life jacket and tether, I felt the first sign of nausea coming on. This is impossible I thought to myself, I have never gotten seasick, even when I was making that delivery to Mazatlan and I was the only one on board that was not incapacitated! I was thinking that this was not good and I had just told everyone aboard while knocking on a piece of wood that I had never been seasick. Oops, maybe that was fiberglass I was knocking on rather than wood! I needed to stick my head out the companionway to breathe some cool night air and look at the horizon, and do it soon. Great, what horizon? All I could see were mountains of waves and three crew members sitting tightly together in the cockpit with grins on their faces asking if I got any sleep. Sleep? Yea right! Try and sleep in constant motion in all direction with all of the amazing sounds a boat makes while rushing through water with every slight rigging noise amplified 10 fold through the amazing sound enhancing qualities of fiberglass; the Bose acoustic engineers could learn a thing or two from sailboat manufacturers. Oh well, they say you normally get used to it in a few days, that is, I was thinking, if you don’t go stark raving mad first. Too bad we will only be out for a little over a day; at least it shouldn’t be enough time to go crazy, as if that was going to be a problem for me. The mere fact that I was out here in the first place proved that theory wrong!
Back to my question; what the hell was I doing here? Well to answer that we have to go back a ways. A year or so after the loss of my wife I decided it was time to get out and about in the world. Yes I had dated, though not very successfully, and I had a great support group of friends and family, but I felt a need to get more engaged in the sailing community. I decided to join the Encinal Yacht Club just down the street from the gate to my boat. I figured at least I wouldn’t run the risk of a DWI; all I had to do was stager a few hundred yards back to my boat if I found myself drinking a few too many beers while embellishing stories to my fellow club members. Though the yacht club experience wasn’t quite what I had hoped, I did meet some interesting sailors. There was one in particular I was drawn to, not initially due to sailing, but more from having similar life challenges that we all face, some time or another, while experiencing the human condition. I was introduced to Tom Abbott by a mutual friend that I was dating at the time. Tom and I immediately hit it off. We would meet periodically at the club, which were never planned, and talk about how things were going with our lives outside of sailing. We would always talk about getting together away from the club to go sailing or some other fun activity as new friends typically do, however, nothing seemed to progress. This went on for nearly a year when by chance we ran into each other at a bike show at Jack London Square in Oakland. I was there with my new love, Morgan, and he was meeting a friend for dinner. This seemed to be the occasion that broke the ice and I decided to ask Tom to go out on my sailboat, Antigua, to watch the America Cup 45 races and the Blue Angles performing during fleet week. He accepted and joined 8 of my friends for a wonderful day on the bay.
A few months later Tom called me and asked if I would be interested in joining the crew he was putting together to race the Pacific Cup in July of 2014. He said that he was impressed with the way I handle Antigua in what he called “controlled chaos” where I wove through at least a thousand boats all jockeying for position to get the best view of the races and of the Blue Angles. He said it was obvious that I knew my way around a boat. As if he needed to convince me further to join him he continued to explain that he liked my life experiences of going cruising for 4 years in Mexico and riding my mountain bike across the US from Canada to Mexico paralleling the Continental Divide. He explained that he felt I understood what was needed for conditioning, endurance, planning and successfully undertaking extreme challenges like racing a sailboat to Hawaii. Obviously I was flattered and very much interested in coming aboard but I needed to think about it and asked if I could give him an answer the following day. He said there was no hurry and to take whatever time I needed but he stressed the commitment also required the return trip back to San Francisco and that there was a sailing opportunity this coming weekend; it turned out he was shorthanded for that race.
I hung up the phone and said out loud with no one around, “WOW”. I live for this kind of thing and what did I need time to think about. This was an opportunity that doesn’t come around often and besides I can do this. I have a job that has the flexibility to allow being gone for an extended period of time; this was proven when I took care of my late wife, 24/7 for 6 months. I have a girlfriend that loves the fact that I do fun stuff and live life to the fullest. I have a family that emotionally supports me and confident in my capabilities, after all I have done some pretty extreme adventures. And besides I’m a fair sailor with quite a bit of experience. So I asked myself, “why not?”
The unknown here was the crew and the boat and that was the potential “not” in the “why not” question. I had confidence in Tom but I didn’t know much about his boat or the other crew members he was assembling. The phone call was made on a Thursday and he was planning to race in the Mid Winters Race that weekend and wanted me to come along and join the crew to determine if the boat and her crew would work for me and vice versa. He knew the timing was short and he had been thinking about getting me involved earlier but now was the time and apologized for such short notice. I called him back the next day and told him I had nothing planned that weekend so I could commit to the race that weekend and see how it goes before the making the broader commitment to Hawaii. He said that was what he preferred, though he had seen me in action he needed to see how I interacted with the other crew members before we both made that commitment.
My goal for the weekend was to learn as much about the boat and crew as possible. I had a plan. I would talk to each crew member about how he met Tom and why he got involved in the adventure, the key ingredient here was the relationship with Tom. My plans are to create a character development for each crew member as the story unfolds but for now I just wanted to introduce the primary characters. The first crew member I met was Nico Colomb when I picked him up at his dock where he lives aboard a boat in Oakland, in the same Marina Tom keeps Avion. Nico is in his early 20’s and teaches sailing for a living. When we arrived in Marin to join Tom I met David Lyons. David is in his early 50’s and is a systems engineer for Cisco. Then a short time later Hugh Fields arrived off of his boat in the same Marina Tom had moved Avion over for the race. So we were all assembled for our first race together with literally no experience as a team. As we left the marina and I was below stowing gear I felt the boat slightly shudder as it briefly scrapped the bottom and I remember think to myself, I hope this isn’t an omen of things to come!
Considering the crew was green as a team we actually did fairly well with in the race. We placed 8th out of 17 boats in our fleet, however in reality this wasn’t really important. My competitive sailing friends would probably think this as an odd statement. How can you race a sailboat without caring how well you did against your fellow competitors? To answer that question you have to understand the skipper’s philosophy of the process of building a team. His profession is in the high tech field where he wants his staff to fail early and fail often. He takes the same position in developing his racing team. He wants us to initially fail and fail often so we know where our issues lie. I’ve got to say we didn’t disappoint Tom.
Tom felt 6 crew members would be the ideal crew size for the race to Hawaii on the Bianca 414, Avion, a Danish manufactured 41 foot sloop. He had some thoughts on the 6th crew member but was open to suggestions. I told him I had a friend, Kent Bliven that grew up around sailboats, races, has always dreamt of sailing in the Pacific Cup and can fix anything. My thought here was that he would be a perfect balance to Juan, who can break anything.
With all my gear on and outside in the cockpit trying to get my bearings Tom proceeded to explain what had transpired during the 4 hours I was attempting to get some sleep. He explained that we were trying to stay clear of the northern shipping channel and stay clear of Point Reyes. We had come within 3 miles of the point and tacked off to avoid being a victim of that particular ship graveyard. Now I understood what the entire ruckus was about earlier that threw me from one side of the berth to the other, not that it woke me up or anything! Tom asked me to make sure Kent was up and that he and David were ready to get some shut eye; good luck with that!
Nico had come on his watch 2 hours earlier and was at the helm. Earlier in the week Tom had emailed a recommended 4 hours by 4 hours crew rotation that he wanted to try out for this practice. As I studied the spreadsheet I saw that it called for 2 team members to rotate together replacing 2 other team members and then 1 individual members would replace another individual member half way into the 2 crew team shift. This would always allow 3 crew members on deck and there would be a crew change every 2 hours. Tom indicated that there were other crew rotations we could experiment with but he wanted to test this particular one this weekend. As I studied the rotation I thought about who would work best together as 2 person team members and who would be the best for individual rotations. I thought Tom and I shouldn’t be on the same team. We were the oldest members and the least mobile of the group. I thought Tom and David would work well together while Kent and I, for obvious reasons; I break it Kent fixes it and no one is the wiser! The individual rotations then would be Hugh and Nico, whom I referred to as rogues. They are youngest of the crew, most mobile and willing to perform foredeck work whenever needed. In my mind referring to them as rogues was a term of endearment; their personalities are such that they are fun loving free spirits that aren’t ones to follow the crowd. Tom suggested that we call them watch captains. I’m not sure but I think that they preferred being referred to as rogues because the term watch captains carried an implied responsibility!
The first thing I realized was that it was cold. I figured that when I was trying to fight off the nausea and poked my head out the companion way and saw Tom, David and Hugh tightly squeezed in the cockpit, conserving warmth. The wind was blowing a good 15 knots, the water and air temperature was hovering around 45 and it was spitting rain while Avion was tossing up spray at nearly every wave. This is when I was happy about my expenditures the prior weekend at the Strictly Sail Boat Show. I took advantage of the show deal to purchase heavy weather offshore parka, bibs, boots and glove in addition to an offshore inflatable life preserver and a tether line. Just to give you an idea what it takes to acquire the proper gear for offshore racing, by purchasing the gear at the show I saved over $500; good gear is expensive and times like this is when the cost benefit analysis of that gear should be performed not while you are in the comfort of the store.
Thank goodness our 4 hour watch was uneventful. Avion was beating to weather well and our only concern was staying out of the shipping channel to avoid the container ships coming and going to San Francisco Bay. We were running a reefed main with the number 4 jib, basically a storm jib, carrying 7 knots of hull speed with less than 15 knots of wind. Avion seems happiest to weather with a conservative sail plan. I was glad to see Tom struggling with putting on his gear for two reasons; he was about to relieve me on my watch and he was having as difficult a time as I was 4 hours earlier. He did explain later that he was having seasickness issues and recommended to the crew that we all be pro-active in preparation for that possibility during our offshore racing. A sick crew member is ineffective which causes the boat to sail slower than its competition unless of course the competitors are suffering with the same symptoms.
One of the purposes of the practice was to plan and prepare meals for racing. Hugh loves to cook and volunteered to provide the Saturday morning breakfast. He had planned a gourmet breakfast with eggs, mushrooms, green peppers, onions, cheese and sausage served with Peets coffee. If you think this sounds ambitious, you are entirely correct, because he had nothing prepared. One thing we learned on this practice run was that chopping onions, peppers and mushrooms are better served in the comfort of your Kitchen at home. His first obstacle was to figure out how to hold on at a 30 degree list bucking through 6 to 10 foot seas while operating sharp objects. The stove and cutting surface was to the high side of the list so he managed by leaning back against a strap he tied to the cabinet frame and the bulkhead freeing his hands to chop the vegetables. While watching all of this unfold Tom decided the prudent thing to do would be to fall off the wind, leveling the boat and start the run back home giving Hugh an easier go at preparing breakfast. Besides we were over 50 miles out and beating to weather for 14 hours out of the Gate was sufficient practice.
When I got up an hour before the end of my shift the spinnaker was flying and so was Avion. I discovered that putting on foul weather gear with the boat level and loping through waves rather than bashing was infinitely easier and less nauseous. For a medium displacement boat she is very capable of surfing. The theoretical hull speed of a displacement boat is a function of its waterline because of the wake the boat creates, the longer the waterline the faster the hull speed. When a boat starts to surf it can overcome the effects of that wake and run faster than the formula calculates. This is all well and good but a displacement boat isn’t supposed to surf! We discovered that flying the largest spinnaker in 20 knots of wind with 10 foot following seas allows the boat to surf down the backside of the wave. We also learn the importance of the term “all hands on deck”. During the shift change of Hugh and Nico we decided that we would jib the spinnaker. We knew at some point we would have to do so and we thought this would be a good time. Well it turns out that we were wrong! We discovered that it either takes more crew members than 4 to jibe the spinnaker in 20 knots of wind or a more experienced crew of 4. After we regained control of the broached boat and doused the spinnaker, Tom and David came up the companionway to find out why they were so rudely ejected from their comfortable berths. We also discovered that the boat jibes much smoother running on a reefed main only! Now with all 6 crew members wide awake with adrenaline coursing through their vanes it was decided to see how really fast we could make Avion surf. We quickly learned something else during this practice run; how much wind and speed Avion can carry before something breaks.
Nico had just taken the helm from Kent, Hugh and I were running the spinnaker trim, Dave and Tom were available for help, and Avion was flying. While watching the knot meter showing boat speed through the water, Tom hollered “9.6, 9.8, 10, 10.3, 10.5, 10.77, WOW”. As that wave passed, the boat speed lowered back to around 8.5 knots and as the next wave filled under the hull her speed began to rise to 10 knots, Nico called for helm relief. As the boat picks up speed and surfs down the back side of the wave the boat naturally wants to head into the wind. The helmsman’s responsibility to keep her pointed downwind but if the force is too great on the rudder to control with the tiller the crew has to start spilling wind. The first thing to go is the Cunningham that reduces the downward pressure on the boom allowing the top of the main sail to twist off allowing air to spill off. If this doesn’t control the help the main sheet and spinnaker sheets have to be eased out. If this doesn’t work then the sheets have to be let all the way out as quickly as possible or the boat starts laying on her side at which time the rudder has no bight on the water and the boat becomes a really big wind vane. After letting the spinnaker sheet go I had nothing left to do but to hand on and scramble to the high side of the boat, which at that point was straight up. I knew I wasn’t going to be separated from the boat because I was tethered. At that moment I was very happy about Tom’s rule that once we are out the Gate we were all required to be tethered either directly to the boat or to the life line that ran from the cockpit to the bow.
With all the sheets blown and the sails flogging, Nico was able to regain control of the helm and the crew worked at getting the sheets back in proper trim and once again Avion was loping through the waves. With her under control we discussed why we had broached and agreed that the Cunningham has to be in some ones hand at all times in these conditions to be released at the first indication by the helmsman for helm relief. With more experience we all knew that the crew will be able to anticipate the need for helm relief simply by the action of the boat, not the excitement of the helmsman. A short time later when the adrenaline stopped flowing and we were in a nice grove of riding the waves but still seeing close to 10 knots of boat speed, I heard a loud bang and saw the spinnaker pole slam into the forestay and the spinnaker violently flap in the wind. I heard someone say, “What the hell just happened?” The question was greeted by silence from the crew and incredible racket from Avion. At first no one knew, and then it became apparent that the ½ inch double bradded Kevlar core line, called a guy, that was holding the spinnaker pole back and attached to the tack of the symmetrical spinnaker, parted. I have never personally seen anything like this, which was a top quality line, rated for a far greater loads capacity it was experiencing while under load on a 41 foot sailboat. After we recovered the spinnaker and secured it down below we put up the storm jib and agreed that it was time to collect our wits and limp on home. Tom got his wish; fail soon and fail often. Hopefully by the start of the race we will have all of these type of issues resolved.
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