Navy security boats may race around you at 40 mph with machine guns at the ready, but don’t worry.” This was part of the racing instructions at a recent San Diego Yacht Club skippers’ meeting for nearly 200 Sabot racers. The young racers had gathered from throughout Southern California to compete in the 42nd Annual Dutch Shoe Marathon.

Two thirds of the fleet were veterans of the Dutch Shoe Marathon in past years. This is known as a traditional rite of passage in San Diego for young racers, and they just keep coming back as long as they are able. It’s certainly not your average junior regatta.

Racers move their small Naples Sabots almost 7 miles from deep inside Shelter Island Gulch, out into San Diego Bay. The trick is that they must cross a busy commercial and military shipping channel, sail past security zones of a major naval installation, navigate under the span of the Coronado Bridge (where winds gust in opposite directions) and then beat into Glorietta Bay toward the Coronado Yacht Club.

Rite of passage did we say? It’s often a grueling marathon that tests the racers both physically and mentally. And every year, as though someone with a sick sense of humor had prearranged it, a large ship arrives at the fleet crossing point just as the Sabots emerge from the Gulch.  This year was no exception. A 648-foot, San Antonio-Class LPD transport dock, capable of doing 22 knots, merged with the Sabots as they sailed out from behind Shelter Island.  “Lucky it was one of ours,” said a retired naval officer watching from shore. Uncharacteristically, the military ship kindly slowed to make room for the fleet.

Panic? You betcha. But it’s all part of the fun for these kids. Past racers have had to deal with large automobile carriers, cruise ships, tugboats pulling barges, a 100-foot antique steam yacht, visiting tall ships and even dueling America’s Cup boats.

This year winds were light at 8 to 10 knots—manageable for most, even in a Sabot. Over the years winds have gusted to 30 knots on occasion, causing the majority of the fleet to capsize at least once en route to the finish line. Unlike a Laser, the Sabot fills with water and is difficult to right after a knockdown.

In 1999 there were 106 knockdowns. Needless to say everyone survived, but race committee boats were kept busy all day. If you accept help your race is over. Many of the determined young racers waved off would-be rescuers and rejoined the race (tiller in one hand, sponge or bucket in the other).

Early in this year’s race, B Fleet’s Ian Brill was crowded into the first weather mark and hit the buoy. Racers seem to all agree the start is the toughest part of the Dutch Shoe, as everyone heads for the first mark hoping to establish position and right of way quickly.

“I was pretty sure no one knew I hit the mark,” said Brill after the race. “But I knew. So I did my penalty circle right there. That was the honorable thing to do even though I figured my race was over.”

As fate would have it the fleet of tiny wooden shoes spread out on the long leg past North Island Naval Air Station, leaving Brill to do his best to keep up. By the time they passed through the shadow of the Coronado Bridge Brill was doing a pretty good job of covering the other boats.

“I realized I was in the top five of my fleet just before the leeward mark at the bridge,” he said. “I could see the finish line at that point and then, all of a sudden, I was leading B Fleet.”

Brill was speeding toward victory, just four or five feet away from the finish line. He was about to defy all odds and become first to finish in the Dutch Shoe Marathon. “That’s when I saw her,” said the young racer from Mission Bay Yacht Club.

Bearing up on him from behind was Helen McCarthy in C Fleet. As she began to pass him she became so excited that she stood up in her boat. “I did everything I could do,” Brill said. “But she caught a nice puff and went right past me. It was a good race.”

The crowd went crazy. It was one of the most exciting finishes in the history of the regatta. But the story at the 42nd Dutch Shoe Marathon was about an honorable decision made by a conscientious young racer at the first weather mark. --Joe Ditler

Deltaville, Virginia, population 800, was dubbed “Optiville” for one very hot week in July when 315 Optimist sailors descended for the 2010 United States Optimist Dinghy Association Layline Nationals Regatta.

Although hosted by the Fishing Bay Yacht Club, the club did not have the space required for 315 dinghies plus their entourages, so Keith Ruse agreed to accommodate the regatta at his Deltaville Boat Yard and Marina. The Deltaville Maritime Museum also opened its arms for the event, offering parking to the visitors and plenty of space for the many vendors at the event.

 

The first Optimist dinghy was designed in 1947 by Clark Mills in Clearwater, Florida.
He intended the design, originally a simple five piece wooden construction eight feet by four feet with a pram bow, to be suitable for a young child to sail solo. If he were alive in 2010, he probably would have been astounded by the success of
his design, as the surface of Jackson Creek in Deltaville resembled a meadow covered in hundreds of swooping white butterflies. Optis are now built on five continents. There are 130,000 of them registered with the international organization and a possible 150,000 sailed world wide in 110 countries.

The competitors traveled from across the United States, Caribbean and South America. Thirteen-year-old Frederico was missing part of the school year in Uruguay. What he stood to gain from the trip was obviously worth it for his family and his father Roberto noted, “His English teacher will be happy at least.”

The winds were light at 5 to 8 knots for the start of team-racing, with temperatures that soared above 100 degrees. Finally, a front brought a 15-knot breeze out of the southwest to carry the sailors out to the mouth of the Piankatank River for the finals. The regatta also featured a Girls’ Nationals Day, where Olympic Gold Medalist and 2009 World Sailor of the Year Anna Tunnicliffe signed autographs and answered questions about her achievements in sailing.

 

For boys or girls the Opti fleets are divided by age into White
Division, 10 years old and younger; Blue Division, 11- and 12-year-olds; and Red Division for 13- to 15-year-olds. The sailors must not turn 16 in the calendar year of competition.

The Green Fleet is for novice sailors of any age from 8 to 15. At competition events all Green Fleet sailors win a prize. After they place well in Green Fleet racing they are expected to move into their age-appropriate fleet. Leigh Sterflinger accompanied her 14-year-old son Peter from Long Island, New York, for his final regatta before aging out. She said the benefits of the Optimist program for her son included increased self-confidence, fitness, physical and mental resilience, sportsmanship and seamanship.

“Peter now researches the tides, currents and buoy weather reports when preparing for a regatta,”  she said.

Many Optimist sailors go on to race Lasers and 420s and take advantage of attractive university scholarships in team racing. At the Beijing Olympics, 85% of medal-winning skippers were former Opti sailors. The old saying goes, Optis are “bathtubs that breed the best sailors.”

The overall winner was Nic Muller, 13, of U.S. Sailing
Center of Martin County. No matter where the others finished, they left better sailors, and at the very least, they understood the importance of staying well hydrated during extreme physical exertion in the record-breaking heat. The sailing, the travel and the thrill of competition are all important factors of Optimist sailing, but when asked, most Opti kids say they enjoy “just hanging out with my friends on the water and having a lot of fun.”  --Virginia Cross

Sailor and journalist Dodge Morgan, whose record-breaking round-the-world voyage made international headlines in 1986, died September 14 at a Boston hospital. He was 78.

Morgan was the first American to complete a solo, non-stop, around-the-world voyage, which started and ended in Bermuda. His time: 150 days, 1 hour and 6 minutes. The accomplishment bettered the previous record of 292 days set by Englishman Chay Blyth.

Morgan made the trip aboard the 60-foot American Promise, custom built in Marblehead, Massachusetts, by yacht designer Ted Hood. In the mid-1980s, Morgan was a familiar face on the Marblehead waterfront. He spent six months “camping out” at Hood’s Little Harbor Boat Yard while the high-tech yacht was under construction.

The $1.5-million cutter-rigged American Promise was the last boat built by Hood in Marblehead before the company moved its facilities to Portsmouth, Rhode Island.

When Morgan passed St. David’s Light and crossed the finish line in Bermuda on April 11, 1986, he wore the same tuxedo and red suspenders that had added color to his start. His wife, Manny, from whom he would later divorce, was there to greet him with son Hoyt and daughter Kimberly. After 150 days at sea, Morgan wanted two food items: a hamburger and a bag of popcorn. Both were waiting at the dock.

Later that day he shared with this writer by phone the highs and lows of his ordeal. Of the Southern Atlantic, he said, “I wouldn’t recommend going there to anyone. It’s like a long, slate-gray tunnel. The sea is dark gray, darker than the sky. There’s virtually no sun. Limited visibility. It’s a world without light.”

Did he ever consider turning back? “There were times when I sure as the devil wished I were somewhere else. But I never considered stopping” he said.

To pass the time, Morgan read books and set up milestones of minutes, hours and occasionally days in his mind. As he explained it, “If I thought any farther ahead than that, say a whole week, I wouldn’t be able to reach it. I had to take things in small increments; one at a time.”

Morgan said the boat was stocked with music cassettes but he didn’t listen to it. “I found that if I listened to music, it saddened me rather than picked up my spirits. Music has too much human emotion in it, and that’s the one thing I didn’t want to think about. People. I came here to get away from all that and I had to keep my thoughts on the job at hand,” he said.

Morgan was born in Malden, Massachusetts, and attended the Governor Dummer Academy in nearby Byfield. His father, a pharmacist, died when he was 3, and his mother remarried. Threatened with flunking out of college, Morgan enlisted in the U.S. Air Force as a teenager and learned to fly fighter planes. Upon discharge, he attended Boston University, earned a journalism degree and moved to Alaska where he found a newspaper job. He also dabbled in public relations and lobbying work, saving money to buy a boat and sail—a goal he soon realized.

Controlonics, a high-tech company in Weston, Massachusetts, that Morgan founded with three employees in a garage, steadily grew to employ more than 300. It was sold in 1985 as part of a $32-million stock deal. The sale allowed Morgan to fulfill his dream of solo sailing around the world. In 1985, he cast off. At the time, he was living in Portland, Maine. Only six weeks before embarking on his historic voyage, he bought the Maine Times, an alternative weekly newspaper. Morgan later purchased the Casco Bay Weekly. He published and edited the influential Maine Times until 1997.

During that period, Morgan wrote a book about his solo sailing experience, The Voyage of American Promise, and a movie was later released called “Around Alone.”  The film contained footage captured by the six automated cameras aboard, three on deck and three below.

In 1991, Morgan was inducted into the Single-Handed Sailors’ Hall of Fame. That was the same year American Promise, which Morgan had donated to the U.S. Naval Academy as a training vessel, sank to the bottom of Chesapeake Bay after the midshipmen collided with a coal barge and tug.  The boat was later salvaged and sold to the Rozalia Project, an environmental group that removes marine debris from the ocean.

A savvy businessman, Morgan used the proceeds of his ventures to buy Snow Island off Harpswell, Maine, in 1998, where he built a small cottage. In his later years, he was often seen cruising aboard his schooner Eagle, when not sailing to the West Indies on his sloop Wings of Time. By then, a French sailor had bettered Morgan’s round-the-world record by 41 days, his story of  “American Promised” continued to inspire sailors worldwide.

Morgan once remarked that it takes three things to sail around the world alone: a good boat, an iron will and luck. --David Liscio