In which Sid and Doris find out how many sails you can get up at once on a classic yacht.
It takes 21 people to race Black Watch – a 68′ yawl (which means a yacht with two masts) (if you want more technical detail then Mr Wikipedia’s Yawl entry is waiting to be helpful), and every one of us will have a job. The team on board are made up of the boat’s permanent crew, owners and their guests, and also some young full-time sailors who tell us that wandering round the pontoons in Maine asking if boats need extra crew is a very pleasant way to pass the summer.
The permanent crew are Captain Kyle and First Mate Max. Captain Kyle’s first task is to assess everyone as we assemble on the dock and then allocate them to one of six teams: Foredeck, Mast Hands, Mainsheet, Sail Trimmers, Helm and Mizzen Crew. The selection criteria become obvious once the sailing is underway:
- Foredeck: Young, fearless, and know what they are doing.
- Mast Hands: Strong and/or tall, willing to work as a team, do what they are told, and do some heavy lifting.
- Mainsheet: Sid and Doris are in this team so I guess the criteria are simply beauty and intelligence, or more likely a willingness to do what the helm requests when it is requested.
- Sail Trim: A combination of people who know what they are doing and people who are strong enough to grind winches all day.
- Helm: People who are willing to call the shots, namely Joe and the tactician, with quietly tactful help in key moments from Captain Kyle.
- Mizzen Crew: There is a little extra mast crammed in to the narrowing space at the back of the boat with its own sail, between the backstay winches. I think the keyword for selection for this team is lithe – the crew chosen for this area are small and strong, able to fit into a crowded area and make their own decisions as they are behind everyone else.
Max runs the foredeck/mast area and Captain Kyle runs everything aft of that.
We have three days of sailing: Friday we learn how to sail the boat, Saturday and Sunday we go racing.
The weather from Thursday to Saturday was perfect. Blue skies, excessive amounts of sun, just about enough wind and plenty of photo opportunities. The mast hands start to realise just how much work lies ahead of them as Captain Kyle seems determined to get every sail up, and often more than one sail at once. Five sails seems to be the maximum: a headsail and a second staysail at the front, the mainsail, the mizzen sail (which looks like a mini-mainsail on the rear mast) and something called a mizzen staysail which appears to be attached to random bits of the boat and must have been deliberately designed to give the mizzen crew something to do in those long languorous downwind segments. Black Watch also has several spinnakers and asymmetric sails – these are the big ones which look so lovely and are really, really hard to manage if you don’t know what you are doing. And they are big Big BIG sails. I wandered down below at one point when people were repacking spinnakers and the whole cabin area was just full of sail material, billowing up to shoulder height.
The two race days brought mixed fortunes. On the first day it was still lovely weather, and of course that meant there wasn’t enough wind to start racing, so we stooged around for an extra hour and eventually had just one race, with a long wait at the end until all the boats finally drifted across the line.
On the second day it was cooler, cloudy, occasionally foggy and often raining. Aha said all the Maine residents – this is back to normal July weather, thank heavens for that. The wind was stronger, the sail handling was harder and Sid and Doris went in search of wet weather gear (which we hadn’t brought due to the complexity of the whole Vamos trip). Two jackets were offered but no trousis so it was time to sit in some puddles squelch. Fortunately the water was warm and rapidly became skin temperature as the skin temperature cooled to match it.
The windier conditions meant that the organisers could fit two races in, and with shorter courses and higher speeds the teams were kept busy. There were some hooley moments too, with the whole boat leaning over a long way and the mizzen team enjoying a refreshing full-body wash. At one point Captain Kyle was heard to opine quietly “I am not sure we should fly the spinnaker on this leg” which I believe translates to “Are you MAD? Do you want to SINK US?” [Not many pictures of this day, for the obvious reasons – D.]
Black Watch is a big yacht, as I have mentioned, and the classic yachts race under a handicap system. This means that you all start the race at once, and then your final time is adjusted depending on whether you are a faster (usually larger) or slower (usually smaller) boat. This means that we don’t just need to finish the races first, but finish first by a substantial margin. After two days of hard work we crossed the line first in one race but ended up with a second and two thirds after the adjustments were done.
Joe and Betka were despatched to prizegiving and returned with a smallish race trophy and a very large illuminated Most Fantastic Boat award. Much dissection of tactics awaits before next week’s races in Camden, about 40 miles to the north of BoothBay.
