A Cruise to Remember

Imagine: Someone comes along and says, Hey, why don't you take a ride on this bike that Lance rode in the Tour de France? Well here's a proposition that's arguably better: Someone came up to me and said, Let's sail Stars & Stripes, the boat in which Dennis Connor raced for the Americas Cup in 1995. And so yesterday, off we went cruising.

Some background: I once sailed in a San-Deigo-to-Ensenada race, and another member of the crew was a woman named Camille Rasdal, who has a husband named Andy, who not so long ago bought a Beneteau First 36.7 called Valhalla. Andy and Camille needed crew to race the boat, Camille remembered me, and now I crew for them regularly.

More background: There's a guy who was affiliated in some background way with several of the recent Americas Cup regattas. He purchased two of the boats — Stars & Stripes and Abracadabra — and keeps them at the Broadway pier in downtown San Diego. On them, he takes passengers cruising on San Diego Bay. Andy and Camille decided to reward their crew after a season of racing by taking us out on Stars & Stripes. (Pretty successful racing, I might add: After an admittedly shaky start to the season, we placed third in the West Coast Championships of the Beneteau First 36.7 class, and in the final race of the season we took our first first place.)

But: Back to Americas Cup sailing. The boat was amazing. I know you're wondering, and yes, I did get to steer it. Although I still have great respect for the sailors who compete in Americas Cup racing, I have to say that this was the easiest boat to sail that I've ever been on.

First of all, the hull is made entirely of carbon fiber, which makes it very light; as a result 80 percent of the weight of the hull is concentrated in the bulb of the keel; as a result the boat is incredibly stable. Most large boats have lifelines (wire lines suspended from stanchions about two to three feet above the rails); to hike, you sit on the rail facing outward, with your feet dangling overboard, and lean your chest against the lifeline. As originally designed, an Americas Cup Class boat has no lifelines, because there's no need to hike; no matter how close you are to the wind, the boat heels a tiny bit and just stays there. (S&S now has lifelines, but only because the Coast Guard requires them for the taking out of passengers.)

Second, it's incredibly fast. Lots of times yesterday, we were sailing faster than the wind speed (and this was with a suit of sails that had seen better days). I don't know if you know about sailboat handicapping: Because boats often race against boats of differing capabilities, every boat gets a PHRF (Pacific Handicap Racing Formula, I think) number that corresponds to a number of seconds per mile. The higher your number is, the slower your boat is. Valhalla (a pretty good boat in its own right) has a rating of 80-something (for the sake of explanation, let's say it's 80). If another boat had a rating of 90, then for every mile of a race Valhalla would owe that boat 10 seconds — that is, if the race were three miles long, 30 seconds would be added to Valhalla's time to evaluate its performance against the other boat. Well, the rating for Stars & Stripes is negative 120. It's really fast.

This was a family event, and I was very happy to have Emma with me. (She brought a book along, of course.) I was also thinking of Dad while I was out there — I'm sure he would have loved to have a crack at a boat like that.

There are pictures: go to this link.