My crew and I are back from Chicago and the international regatta at the Chicago Yacht Club. No, we didn’t win, but as I posted on my Facebook page, it’s hard to be disappointed when you’re competing against the New Zealanders, who never live more than an hour from the water, and the Brits, who have a seafaring history that dates to the Vikings, while I, on the other hand, come from a heritage whose proudest nautical achievement is getting a matzoh ball to float.
That said, I am so very proud of my crew, which competed with honor and class and unbelievable fortitude in the face of every kind of weather Lake Michigan decided to throw at us, and of the respect we earned from the crews who didn’t even expect us to be in the hunt. We were, admittedly, the Jamaican bobsled team of the regatta. Although our tactician is a world class sailor and our jib trimmer owns a sailing school in Sausalito, fourteen months ago I had never set foot on any sailboat larger than a Sunfish, and four months ago, my mainsail trimmer’s experience was limited to beercan regattas in the 80’s and 90’s.So to give the Brits, the Bostonians and the Kiwis a run for their money is an experience I’m never going to forget… until the next experience.Here is a basic illustrated history of the week.
Home sweet home
We sailed on a 23 foot Sonar. The first question many people ask… since we are a bunch of visually impaired sailors… is if this is a boat specifically designed for sailors with visual impairments (and hence the name). The answer is no, and that the Sonar is just a coincidental name. I’m actually always thrilled to be able to say, when people ask what rtrofits we make to the boat to accomadate blind and visually impaired sailors, that there are none. While what I truly love about sailing is that, with the right retrofits, a boat can be made accessible to anyone with any level of impairment, be it mobility, visual, auditory or cognitive, blind sailing only requires retrofits to the sailor… learning, or rather re-learning, to use other senses that otherwise take a back seat. We sail and race on boats that are the exact same as would be used in any mainstream race… and have done so on express 27’s, J24’s, J22’s, Tom 28’s and others as our range grows.
I love the Sonar… although there is a little love lost over one design feature. You may notice, as you look at this keelboat, that unlike many boats this size, there is no lifeline, the taut lines that often ring a boat to prevent you from falling overboard when the boat gets a little tippy. I really, really, wished we had those lifelines in some of the sailing conditions…
Rain, rain, go away
One of the hardest learned lessons about sailing is that so much of it is sitting around waiting to sail. On two occasions, both our regatta and that of another competition taking place at the same time, were postponed because of severe weather. Serious lightning on Lake Michigan took us down for several hours on the first day, and powerful wind fronts kept us on the shore on the third day. When the waves are over nine feet high and the forecast is for… I am not making this up… life threatening conditions on the beaches… best to take a break. The fact of the matter is that when the winds are coming from the northeast, waves have three hundred miles to build up strength as they come into Chicago across the width of Lake Michigan, but even when we were sailing in rain and wind unlike anything I had ever experienced, I learned two lessons. The first is that if you trust the boat and your crew, you can enjoy some of even the harshest conditions and even have fun. The second lesson is that the New Zealanders are commpletely unflappable. I mean it, no flap whatsoever. Asking one of my maktees from filming earlier in the year about his impressions of the conditions, his reply was, “Yes, I suppose now that you mention it, it was a bit wobbly out there.” Sigh, no flap.
your call
At least the water washed it off
Really, it was only the second time I got vomited on that irked me a little. I mean, I suppose you have to be ready for a little digestive turbulence when you’re with a crew who doubled down on the Red Velvets the night prior. Not talking about the cake, by the way, but one of the many microbrews that do Chicago proud. Onnce, you get a mulligan, but twice? That just seemed uncalled for. Thankfully, it was raining so hard, and the water washing over the rails was so consistently heavy that Lake Michigan did double duty as a washing machine. No harm, no foul.
Champagne is not a good thing
I’ve heard this referred to as “glass” as well, but the last race of the last day was called because of… great weather. Or rather, what would be considered great weather on shore. Bright sun, good thermals, high temps. On the water, however, winds less than two knots do not make for a fun day or a doable race. There is simply nothing you can do in dead calm, and water is referred to as champagne. There’s not enough wind to power the sails. So we had to settle for a day of four races instead of five, take our suntans and call it a day.
This was actually a real shame, because the last day of racing was certainly our best on the water. We had actually beaten both the Brits and the Kiwis in one of the races. Our tactician was completely on point, and I was feeling more in the groove than I had felt for most of the week. At one point, sailing downwind towards the leeward mark, we were almost silent running. We were, in fact, whispering our strategic calls to each other so that the boat ahead of us wouldn’t hear us coming. It was one of those rare and intoxicating times when four people are thinking with one mind, and if you aren’t of a disposition to be involved in team sports, I would simply encourage you to experience this feeling of athletic ESP just once. It’ll change your life.
It’s kind of crazy, but it just might work
That was the big takeaway. I’ve been training in the sport of blind sailing, an apparent oxymorong if ever there was one, for just about a year, but in the back of my mind, I wondered. What is this really going to be like, with every boat in the race speeding towards the same ideal starting position on the line, the cacophony of the wind on a flogging sail and the shouts of crew members around me and near me from every other boat with literally feet or even inches between us… and the blind guy (me) is the one responsible for steering the boat? Scared much? My mantra before the week was “just don’t break the boat. Just don’t break the boat, just don’t break the boat…”
But to see it actually work. To siphon out the sounds you need from the ones that don’t matter. To feel the shift you need to do what you need to do with the tilling, Not just to get out of the race safe and sound but actually to perform to your highest capacity.I know this sounds like a PSA from the Ad Council, but you don’t need drugs when you have access to that kind of high.
