Race Three

Sure there was a race last Saturday, and there are results to report, but let’s skip straight to the good stuff: the most spectacular collision I’ve ever seen.

Bear in mind, I’ve seen more than a couple in the last couple of years (and, in fact, been involved in a few of them). Even Tom Hirsh, the guy who owns the boats we race and who has publicly proclaimed something close to a you-bang-em-you-buy-em policy, mentioned privately just last week that “if you don’t crash now and again you’re just not trying hard enough.” But this was a doozy.

A cutter called the Californian, the official “tall ship” of the state of California and a beast of some 130 tons, often cruises San Diego Bay. This particular day, it was out and about along with another sailing ship — name and exact size, I regret to say, unknown, but it was nearly as large, and let’s call it the Phantom. The two were scheduled to go out and blast cannons (plenty of gunpowder, no actual balls) at each other the next day, and they were, I suppose, warming up.

And there we were — “we” being myself and Midshipman Krabby Kyle — close-hauled on the final leg of our race, battling it out with archrival Steve McNally for first. We were on port tack, and I could see that the Phantom was on collision course on starboard. He had, in other words, right of way. But you know what? That didn’t matter. The law of gross tonnage applied here, and I was going to get out of his way. We tacked, and it cost us, and we were annoyed that we had to tack, but all was well.

Now, the Chapman brothers were in our race. As it happens, I am the only person to have entered a boat in these races longer and more regularly than they have. They’re established. But they have a record — a “crash-to-takeoff ratio,” as Tom put it in that private conversation, far exceeding that of any other entrant. They’re also remarkably uneven sailors; sometimes they’re way back in the fleet, and sometimes they contend for first. This was one of the latter occasions. They’d led much of the race and, only in a late leg, had fallen into a close third.

So, a minute or two after we were clear of the Phantom, I heard a noise. I looked back. There were the Chapmans, in exactly the same situation in which I had found myself a few minutes before, except apparently they’d never heard of the law of gross tonnage. (Admittedly, it’s a concept that’s essentially intuitive; I doubt it appears in any rule book.) They were crossing before the Phantom, on port to its starboard (as if that mattered!), and they had already made contact — hence the noise. The Chapman’s mast and the ship’s bowsprit had fouled, and I watched their mast being literally ripped right off their boat.

Hoochie Mamma! But, amazingly, there was no hull-to-hull contact, and no one was hurt. Even so, I turned back to offer any help we could (a decision that seemed obvious to me). It took less than a minute to reach them and to have them convince us they were ok and wave us back into the race, but by then we had no chance of catching Steve. (And in fairness to Steve, we likely would not have caught him anyway.) But the turning back led us to be caught by another boat, and we ended up in third.

So, in the final race a week from this Saturday, it seems highly unlikely that I’ll catch Steve (I’d need to beat him by four boats), and even less likely that the third-place boat will catch me. So it looks like it will be a nice, leisurely affair resulting in a second overall. Providing, of course, that I don’t run into anything……