My dad and I were going through some trunks in the attic when I was a teenager, and I remember we found his uniform from World War II, neatly folded and stored for who knows what reason. I’d been too young to know him as a flier, but I knew this uniform: there were pictures around the house showing him in it, usually surrounded by a bunch of tired-looking guys standing under the wing of a bomber.
And there, underneath the folded jacket, was his hat. It was a classic “50-mission” hat: khaki with a brown leather visor, and the top was shapeless in the middle where his earphones had crushed it during long missions. In those old photos, he wore it insouciantly, cocked on his then red hair with a devil-may-care rake.
Today, kids think they’re cool by wearing baseball caps backwards (oh, puh-leeze!), but in those days, the visor was crucial to keep the sun out of your eyes in the cockpit because the sun was always where the enemy fighters lurked. Fifty-mission caps were the mark of a seasoned veteran, a survivor, a man who had been to hell and come back.
“You know, I wore this a few times when I came home from the war,” he said, and his voice trailed off. “But then it wasn’t right.”
I knew he’d also worn a leather bomber jacket until it literally came apart, so I asked why he’d stopped.
“Oh, the bomber jacket was fine, but pretty soon, all kinds of guys who’d never been in a plane started buying these caps at the surplus stores, and they’d beat them up to look like this one. I guess I didn’t want people to think I was just another phony.”
So that was it: Once the 50-mission cap became a fashion accessory, the real heroes didn’t want to wear it any longer.
Flash forward 40 years, and I’m sitting in an airline lounge, waiting to make a connection somewhere. Across from me is a tanned guy wearing a polo shirt embroidered with the number 12 above a slash and then US-62. Aha, I thought, a 12-Meter guy … maybe even an America’s Cup guy.
But I just couldn’t come up with a Twelve that was US-62.
When he stood up, I stopped him and asked, “What Twelve was that?”
He looked at me blankly and then saw I was looking at the logo. “Oh, I have no idea what that means … my wife bought this for me. I think it has something to do with sailing.”
I couldn’t wait to get to a computer to Google 12-Meter US-62. And I quickly discovered it doesn’t exist. There’s no such Twelve. What we had was a fashion statement. Faux.
Since that time, I’ve become adept at spotting the ways that sailing has infiltrated the world of haute couture.
A couple unloading their luggage to check into a hotel had a brightly colored duffel bag with big sail numbers stitched on the sides. Faux. In another airport (I fly a lot!), I tried to start a conversation with a fellow carrying a briefcase of carbon fiber sailcloth bearing the name of an international sailmaker. Turns out he bought it on eBay because he’d heard that the dark gray carbon wouldn’t show dirt. Faux.
I looked up a company that made sailcloth duffel bags and discovered part of the appeal in their sales pitch: “How does carbon fiber sailcloth compare to regular materials for a duffel bag? Well, for one thing, it’s extremely cool.”
They don’t mean “cool” like it keeps your clothes from wrinkling in the heat: they mean “cool” like it’s something Steve McQueen would carry if he were a sailor.
The cool of sailing seems to extend everywhere. There is an expensive, rephrase that, an incredibly expensive luxury car (OK, it’s a Rolls-Royce Phantom convertible) that actually has planked teak decking on the panel that hides the top when it’s down. No one is ever going to step on this very yachty teak deck. It’s all about sailing cool. Faux.
At a mall, a sailing watch caught my eye in a case and I stopped to look. It had the usual count-down starting timer with five red balls for minutes but they didn’t do anything! It was a fake! It wasn’t even waterproof. Of course, it would look great at a cocktail party.
I saw a red Mount Gay hat on eBay recently. In fact, I saw lots of them. Once the province of elite ocean racing sailors, they’re now everywhere. You can pick from Annapolis Race Week, Antigua Race Week, Big Boat Series, Bitter End Pro-Am. Cripes, you don’t even have to endure the busted knuckles and late-night partying to earn one. Just have the winning bid. Faux.
So this brings us to deck shoes.
I’ve been wearing deck shoes of one kind or another for half a century. Topsiders, Sebagos, Docksiders, now some from West Marine that are comfy on my increasingly flat feet. I wear deck shoes all the time (not to bed, unless Mount Gay rum is involved). I wear them around the house, doing yard work, with my tuxedo and white dinner jacket. Oh, yeah, I wear them on the boat, too.
But if you look around, everyone is wearing deck shoes. They were once the province of sailors, who loved them even more when they had salt stains and looked a little ratty. She Who Must Be Obeyed draws the line at having the soles held on with duct tape, so I have to keep that pair in my shop for secret use.
But deck shoes are everywhere. Rednecks down here in Florida wear them to go ‘gator hunting, pilots wear them in the cockpit, and they’re de rigueur at cocktail parties a thousand miles from the nearest boat.
And now Ralph Lauren is offering the Barx deck shoe, which is too queasily close to barf for my liking, but his advertising notes it is finished with “sporty, nautical details.” By nautical details, I don’t think he’s referring to the big nick on the side of one of my deck shoes where I kicked the anchor loose from the bow roller. Lauren adds the Barx is “a preppy sneaker taking style influence from the boat shoe.”
Preppy? Yipes!
Like my dad before me, I guess I’m going to have to retire those 50-regatta Topsiders to a trunk in the attic. There are just too many imposters around these days.
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Trust me on this one. I know bloodcurdling screams. As a kid, I used to go to the Saturday horror matinees, and no scream in the world matches the sound of several dozen 8-year-old girls when the screen flashes a close-up of a blood-soaked monster. Just thinking about it raises the hairs on my neck.
But here we were in the middle of a long-distance ocean race, a bunch of guys who’ve moved beyond horror films and even sci-fi scares. Granted, it was a pitch-black moonless night. But this scream had a distinctly male note to it.
And here’s the strange thing. It was coming from inside the cabin.
Now, I’ve heard a few ungodly onboard shrieks in my time. There was the Congressional Cup when Leo was easing the spinnaker sheet and somehow eased his finger right into the winch. Loud and undoubtedly painful, but not like this.
Then there was the Acapulco Race when the spinnaker halyard got away from Eric as he was getting ready for douse. Well, it didn’t actually get away from him, because he had a really good grip on it with one hand when he released the halyard from the cleat with his other. In the cockpit, we weren’t quite ready for him to uncleat the halyard because, in fact, the chute was drawing well.
Real well.
About 70 feet of halyard smoked through his hand in less time than it takes to read this sentence and, yes, that would qualify as a bloodcurdling yell. Except that there wasn’t any blood. This was a very tidy accident because the first 35 feet of line carved a groove across his palm and the next 35 feet of line neatly cauterized it. Had to hurt a ton but, still, not a yell like this one.
And it wasn’t even close to the one that Doug let out as he lost control of our boat surfing down a wave during the Transpac race. We could tell the extent of his problem by his volume control. It started quietly: “Oh-damn-oh-damn-Oh-Damn-OH-DAMN-OH-DAMN-OH-DAMN.” By the time he had moved beyond the litany of oh-damns into some more innovative constructions of four letter words, we were in full knock-down mode, hanging from the lifelines and studying the mast, which now lay flat on the water. Good yelling, but no gold medal.
That honor was earned on this moonless night. When we heard the first shriek from down below, all of us on watch looked at each other. Usually we werethe ones shrieking, “All hands on deck … get up here, you guys.” But it wasn’t us: the sound came from the cabin.
Then there was a great crashing and banging around, and someone yelling, “Kill it, kill it, there it is.” One of our more daring crewmembers poked his head down the hatch and asked what was going on.
“There is,” said a quavering voice that had recently been shrieking at 200 decibels, “the biggest #($*%& rat I’ve ever seen, and it’s in my bunk.” The banging, which we later learned was with a frying pan from the galley, continued.
Our navigator, deep in sleep, had rolled over to find something very furry snuggled up against his forehead. Usually one of the last to get up for the change of watch, he set a new record for exiting his bunk, thus setting off the entire hunt.
Afterward, I reflected on the concept of fear, which is a very personal thing. Every sailor has a fear threshold, but it is a different fear for every person.
Fear is a healthy emotion because, in many cases, it is your subconscious warning you of danger. All the safety lectures and magazine articles aren’t going to make you wear a life jacket in rough weather: it is the fear of going overboard that makes you put it on.
Good seamanship, in many ways, is based on healthy fears. When the sea is a churning maelstrom and sand is blowing in drifts across the beach road, this is probably a good day to enjoy the club bar.
There is a skipper down the dock in my marina who pays no attention to his engine. It doesn’t get oil changes, it doesn’t get tune-ups and, in fact, I don’t think he’s ever looked at it. But before sailing, he checks every turnbuckle and every clevis pin to make sure they are properly secured. It’s obvious he has no fear of having his engine stop, but equally clear that he is afraid of losing his mast.
I’ve sailed with a bowman who has ice water in his veins when it comes to dancing onto the plunging bow of a careening ocean racer to change headsails, buried to his chest in foam and then hanging on to a lifeline as the bow tosses high. But when it comes to going up the mast, no way. The merest mention of retrieving something that is only a few feet out of reach turns him pale. He can’t do masts.
I don’t recommend living on the edge, but a little fear can be a good thing, if only to remind yourself that you’re alive. Fear can be exhilarating in small doses, which is what keeps the roller coaster industry in business. Besides, being a little frightened makes for great stories at the club later.
The point is that there’s no reason to fear going sailing. Look at your fears, and deal with them. If you fear getting lost in fog, improve your navigation skills. If you dread strong winds, sail in a breeze with someone experienced to allay those fears.
Back to what we now refer to as The Great Rat Hunt. Because we had limited space, we were hot-bunking … when someone went on watch, his bunk was then occupied by someone coming off watch. In this case, the bunk was our skipper’s, being shared with the navigator, who was our shrieker.
Think Woody Allen hunting the spider in Annie Hall with a tennis racket. Think a nautical version of the Keystone Kops and Three Stooges falling over each other in the hunt for the rat. And then, just as we have the rat cornered, the skipper exits the head, looks around innocently, and asks, “Anyone seen my toupee?”
I was wandering through a boat show recently, alternating in equal measures between lust for a new boat and gasping from sticker shock.
I came upon a pretty little 22-footer that reminded me vaguely of several small boats that had populated my past, and so I stepped aboard to take a look at this latest generation. No sooner had I settled my fanny in the cabin than Smiling Bob, the Boat Salesman From Hell, parked himself in the companionway. My exit was thus blocked unless I signed on the dotted line.
I find salesmen who follow you around to be loathsome creatures, whether it’s an open house or a car dealership or a boat show, but that’s a topic for another column. I just didn’t want to body slam Smiling Bob to get out.
“Pretty darn comfy, isn’t she?” he started. “Betcha don’t have a couch that soft at home!”
I fingered the settee. “Feels like leather,” I said, hoping to distract him. “It is!” he said, sensing a pending sale.
I took another look and, sure enough, this little weekender had genuine leather upholstery. And as I looked around, I realized that I had stepped not into a 22-footer, but a 60-footer that had taken reverse steroids. Built into the bulkhead was a flat-screen television that was larger than the one I have at home, which guests laugh at when they visit. There were stylish wall sconces that looked like they came from a mansion. And there on the wall was … a power receptacle! This itty-bitty boat had shore power!
Smiling Bob saw me looking, and went to Page Two of his pitch: “Yep, plug your blender right in there and knock out pina coladas all weekend!”
The thought alone knocked me out. I was dumbfounded. This toy boat, which was powered by an outboard on which you still had to yank the starter cord, had leather seating, a flat screen television and shore power.
Yipes.
I managed to get past Smiling Bob without signing, and left him moping in the cockpit. From a safe distance, I turned to look back, and the years seemed to fall away.
I was remembering my Cal 20, which was everything that this boat wasn’t. It was simple. It was cheap. It was bulletproof.
And it was great fun.
When I bought Cal 20 No. 60 and named her Ping Pong in honor of her hull material (I’d previously owned only wooden boats), it had a pair of vinyl cushions that redefined the word “thin.” I’ve seen thicker postcards. I actually looked inside one to see if someone had stolen the padding. But I could spill beer and potato chips on them, and never be concerned. And I seemed to sleep just fine after a day on the water, too.
Certainly the most endearing feature of the Cal 20, aside from her simplicity and joy to sail, was that I could literally rinse her out with the dock hose after a weekend at the island.
When I bought her used, she had apparently been owned by a chain smoker, and the fiberglass headliner was yellow with tobacco stains and the boat smelled like an ashtray.
The solution was simple, of course. I put on my bathing suit, threw the cushions on the dock, grabbed the hose and a short-handled brush, and lay down inside. Half an hour of upside-down scrubbing with a bucket of soapy water and the stains were gone. I pumped the bilge, and the boat was soon dry and smelling pleasantly of Tide detergent.
Simple.
What happened to hose-them-out boats? Do we really need leather cushions and flat screens to have fun sailing? And where would I get the shorepower to run that blender if I’m sitting at anchor in a quiet cove? The mere presence of all those goodies would mean I was consigned to sailing endlessly from marina to marina.
Flashlight batteries powered everything on Ping Pong that needed electricity, from the running lights to the reading lights to the radio. No fuss, no muss. The bilge pump was muscle powered, but with her shallow bilge, a couple of yanks on the handle emptied her quickly. This was long before GPS, of course, but I was perfectly safe and quite content to use a paper chart and to hone my navigation skills so I could hit the outer buoy in a dense fog. The steaks were grilled over charcoal on a transom barbecue, and they (along with the beer) were kept cold in an Igloo filled with ice.
Other of my boats didn’t even have electric reading lights, but had gimbaled kerosene lamps that sailors have used for centuries. There is something both romantic and relaxing to enjoy a good book by a light that occasionally flickers.
The more complex the boat, the less likely you’re going to really enjoy it. Complicated boats cost more to buy, they’re more expensive to maintain, and they give you more reasons not to go sailing. “No, we’re not going out today. We’re waiting for the service guy to look at the flat screen TV.”
What kind of misplaced logic is this?
Leather upholstery or blenders or televisions do not improve sailing. Just sitting in the cockpit gives you the widest screen ever. Sailing is about freedom: freedom from land, freedom from complications. It’s just wind and sails and spray and you.
The world is in economic upheaval, and I would suggest that one way out is to simplify our lives. With my Cal 20, I could be sailing on a whim: grab a jacket, cast off the lines, hoist the sails, forget my troubles.
I’m not alone with this line of thought. I have several friends who have downsized from rather luxurious sailboats to simple weekenders. The original reason was to save money, but they’ve found they’re having a lot more fun, too.
Boatbuilders are struggling to stay afloat in this economy, and I would counsel them to consider the simple boat as a life preserver. Make them uncomplicated, make them inexpensive, and sell lots of them.
Now is a good time to get back to the basics. Go sailing on a simple boat and enjoy.
I blame it all on the zipper. I had been standing at the stern of the yacht in the position of sailing men immemorial, taking care of business, when I suddenly toppled overboard.
The gods must surely have been giggling uncontrollably when they created the physiology of men and women. In the process, they made it remarkably easy for men to kill themselves by falling overboard while relieving themselves from the stern of everything from Grecian triremes to the very latest ocean racing yachts. Women, clearly the smarter sex, always go below to the safety of the head. Men go over the stern.
Literally.
In this case, my excuse was that damn zipper. Fumbling inside my foul weather gear to zip up, I chose that particular moment to let go of the backstay.
At the same instant, the helmsman gave the tiller of our careening sled a quick shove to help take off on the face of a swell. The stern of the boat jumped sideways a few feet and I launched into the blackness of a midnight sea far from shore.
Let me be clear: it was not a pleasant experience. I surfaced just in time to see the white stern light disappear over a swell and then I was quite alone in a cold and very black sea.
The crew swears to this day that I didn’t yell, “HELP!” as I claim but, rather, used the F-word with such loudness and clarity that it even woke the offwatch.
As must be obvious since I’m here to write this column, I survived my overboard experience. This was long before the GPS had even been a glimmer in Mr. Garmin’s dreams, so there was no button to push to give the crew my position within inches.
Instead, one of them grabbed a big orange horseshoe-shaped life preserver and lobbed it over the side which, in the process, dragged a floating light with it. This was before modern strobes, too, so the light was really just a glorified flashlight and not a blindingly powerful beacon.
Our crew had actually practiced for just such an eventuality, so they were able to blow the spinnaker and get the boat turned around quickly, although it seemed to take months as I paddled clumsily toward the dim light. I managed to get rid of two very expensive sea boots by only swallowing a third of the ocean and, when I saw the red/green bow light coming toward me, I was clinging to the horseshoe.
I give them credit for good crew work, although it’s only fair to point out that because I’m not a good poker player, I owed several of them fairly large amounts of money. I’ve always believed that debt, more than training, was why I was rescued so quickly.
And, of course, they had to finish with the same number of crew as when they started.
Let me digress for a moment about the telling of time. When I moved to Florida from California, I discovered that Floridians tell time differently. When asked how long I’ve lived in Florida, I no longer say “six years.” I say, “five hurricanes.” It’s much more accurate, and completely clear to other Floridians.
As I reach the point where I’ve been sailing for half a century, I realize that there is a better (or, perhaps, worse) way of counting the time under sail. Instead of using years or decades, I might better say, “Two.”
Because that’s the number of times that I’ve been on the edge of ending my sailing career rather abruptly. It’s not a number that I’m particularly proud of, and I can only hope that the modern generation of sailors will be able to reach a fine old age and say, “Never.”
My second time was when I borrowed a Finn to race on San Francisco Bay. It was a breezy day on the Bay, which is to say that dogs were being blown off their leashes and the incoming tide was creating square-edged seas.
I wasn’t a complete novice to Finns: I’d actually seen one before this regatta. So it was with some surprise that I found myself at the first weather mark in the companionship of some class champions. We took off on a screaming reach and I realized I was in trouble as the first three boats each capsized at the jibe mark.
The difference between an experienced Finn skipper, who spends so much time in the water that he has webs between his fingers, and a first-timer like me, is that they know how to quickly recover from a capsize.
Of course I capsized: I’d never jibed a Finn in calm water and this was a maelstrom. So there I was with a slippery upside-down Finn and, because the board had fallen back into the trunk, no leverage to right it.
I decided to hang onto the rudder while I considered my options, and quickly discovered two things. First, I was drifting rapidly away from the race course and, second, I had no options except to hang on.
And so I did. I saw the fleet finish the race and head for the clubhouse, and I imagined the steamy heat of the shower and the crisp rustle of dry clothing. I was in a full wetsuit, and pretty damn cold.
Eventually, the owner of my boat realized that I wasn’t just last and he organized a search for me. By the time they found me, I’d drifted past Alcatraz and was at a point where I couldn’t feel my fingers clenched on the rudder. Or my toes. Or my face. Or much in between. Later, after I’d inhaled several brandies, I realized what a very close call I’d had. There’s last, and there’s dead last.
Remember the sergeant on Hill Street Blues who always warned his men, “Hey, let’s be careful out there”? He was right.
Safety at sea isn’t just about life jackets and flares: it’s about a constant awareness of the dangers. It’s about never letting yourself be lulled by the sea.
I’ve had my Two. I’m a lot more cautious on the water than when I was younger, partly from experience and partly from self-preservation.
And part of it is from the childhood memory of what happened when my father counted all the way to “Three.”
It’s both the end of summer and the start of boat show season as I write this and, as a result, I’ve been going through a lot of different sailboats recently. Some were new boats at shows, others were friends’ boats, but overall, I had a strange sense that something important was missing. It was as though I was in a familiar room from which something had been removed, and I couldn’t quite figure out what was absent.
It wasn’t until I was looking through an old box of slides for a photo of our crew from a Transpac Race decades ago that I realized what was missing.
Pilot berths.
They seem to be as rare as honest politicians these days, but once they were an essential part of any sailboat that was designed to venture offshore, and many that weren’t.
For those of you who aren’t old enough to remember rear-engined Volkswagens or First Ladies wearing furs, pilot berths were single bunks tucked outboard of the settees on each side of the cabin. They were supposedly adapted from pilot boats, on which the harbor pilots had to sleep soundly in all conditions while waiting offshore for incoming vessels.
Pilot berths were usually fairly narrow and close under the deck, but their distinguishing feature was a high rail on the inboard side which would hold the occupant in place at high angles of heel. On racing boats, “lee cloths” were often added, which were canvas flaps that lay flat under the bunk cushion until needed, and then could be snapped or lashed to the overhead to provide absolute security even in a knockdown.
In looking around many modern sailboats, I can’t imagine how you sleep when the yacht is offshore and heeled over. Yes, having berths wide enough for two people is wonderful for a lot of reasons that I don’t need to discuss. Having all that acreage of mattress in a marina or a quiet anchorage is one thing; trying to stay on it when the boat is heeled far over in big seas is another. I’ve tried, and it’s like napping on a bucking bronco.
I love the master stateroom on a fairly new sloop owned by a friend, but I ended up sleeping on the cabin sole while helping him deliver the yacht because it was just too hard to stay on the big bed. And that berth was complicated because it was angled across the cabin rather than fore-and-aft, so one tack was like sleeping on a slant board and the other put my toes far above my head.
I’ve spent a lot of very happy and secure hours tucked in pilot berths on long passages. Cal-40s had great pilot berths and, having ended a watch on an ocean race like the Transpac, I would drift into Nod-land with the slosh and roar of water rushing past just inches from my ear. I could allow myself to relax into a deep and refreshing sleep because there was no fear that the other watch might change tacks and I’d fall out of bed. I was as secure as a baby in a crib.
I mentioned the absence of pilot berths to a yacht salesman, who pooh-poohed them. “Just a waste of space,” said he, pointing out that the offwatch could sleep just as comfortably on the wide settee cushions.
I can only speak from my own experience, but sleeping on a settee during an ocean race is like sleeping on a bench in Grand Central Station. The other watch is always coming and going, getting Cokes or jackets or rooting around for a Band-Aid or repacking a sail on the cabin floor. If you’re in a pilot berth, all this can go on without disturbing your sleep at all. You’re cosseted away from sound and light and thoughtless crewmembers in your own little realm.
Pilot berths aren’t just wonderful offshore, but at rest as well. Though I’ve spent a lot of hours sailing across oceans while tucked in a pilot berth, some of the best times have been at anchor on a rainy day. Snuggled in a pilot berth under a soft blanket with a good book and the rain pattering on the deck just overhead is an exquisite pleasure.
At one point, I had a 37-foot Dutch yawl that was excruciatingly unfriendly in many ways: a tiny knee-banging cockpit, a head compartment so small you couldn’t turn around, and a galley with no counters. But she had a pair of cozy pilot berths behind the button-tufted settees and, even better, a tiny charcoal fireplace set in Delft tiles on the forward bulkhead. Of course, the fireplace gave off about the same heat as a single birthday candle, but it was all about the flickering glow and the ambiance. I spent a lot of pleasant hours in those pilot berths, reading books like Riddle of the Sands. Those pilot berths were solely responsible for my ownership of that yawl for much longer than was sensible.
Pilot berths have other uses, too. First, they’re a great catch-all when daysailing or even weekending aboard. Everyone tosses their duffel bags and jackets and
sweaters into the pilot berth, where they are out of the way but readily accessible.
And they’re the perfect place for kids. Babies can be tucked in a pilot berth without worries, and youngsters can have their afternoon naps in complete security.
I don’t begrudge modern designers and builders who want to use all that space for wetbars and flatscreen televisions and cute little louvered lockers. Those things certainly look better when you’re standing in a quiet marina or at a boat show.
But when it’s blowing 25 and the lee rail is buried in white foam, trust me: there’s nothing better than climbing into a pilot berth for 40 winks.
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