Finns

1. Finn Sailors

A small contingency of men race an unruly dinghy.

I read somewhere that boating was the largest participation sport in the world. The statistics used included powerboats, sailboats, jet-skis, Kool boats (the styrofoam things you could buy from the back of a pack of Kool cigarettes), model boats, cruise ships, submarines, aircraft carriers and rubber duckies in the tub. Those of us afflicted with the curse of racing sailboats can eliminate ninety-nine percent of all of other boating and count only those who head out to sea to go a hundredth of a knot faster than someone else and, for the expense and effort, claim an ugly pewter prize. There are several hundred thousand avid sailboat racers but for my purposes, I can eliminate another ninety-nine percent and then ninety-nine percent of them until I am left with a handful of strange men who found a connection to a sailing contraption called a Finn. Since its design in 1949, there have been a few thousand lunatics in the world who have attempted to at least enjoy, if not master, this unruly boat. And out of those thousands I can locate maybe a hundred or so out of all the billions of all of humanity who have done it for more than twenty years. I am one such lunatic.

Explaining this aberrant behavior as rational is not easy. If I succeed you may gain a little insight into a peculiar mindset, one that sets itself on the sidelines of society, not as defiant and isolated as say, solo circumnavigators, but less ordinary than accountants. If I don't succeed, maybe you'll have enjoyed a good read.

The Finn is a small, fourteen foot nine inch sailboat, one with enough popularity to race in the summer Olympic Games. (That sailing is an Olympic sport at all is debatable, though not among sprinters, marathoners or weight lifters.) Without that Olympic status the boat would have faded away long ago, saving us a lot of suffering at the expense, for me anyway, of enormous bliss. However, its status as an Olympic class was what drove otherwise sane men to go in search of pain and ecstasy.

The boat is a canoe with its back end cut off. In 1949, Rickard Sarby, the designer, lifted the hull design from a larger-than-average canoe and fiddled with it enough to make a sailboat. He added a foredeck, an afterdeck, a centerboard, a rig (mast, boom and sail) and rudder, and won a judging competition. It's obvious that none of the judges ever took her for a spin, with any wind blowing anyway.

Finn hiking: pain

Sarby put a sail on it that was far too big for an average man to handle, reducing the sailor pool to beefy guys who were too big to sail in what they called the "sissy classes" of sailboats. The only way to keep the Finn upright was to counter the force of the wind by "hiking," another maritime misnomer for hanging one's butt over the side rail with one's feet under straps that are anchored to the floor of the boat. To make the Finn go that hundredth of a knot faster, one needed to hike harder. The problem was that hiking harder hurt more, so races in windy conditions became contests of enduring pain, not so much of sailing skill.

My involvement was a natural progression. At age fourteen, I bought my first sailboat with paper route money and began racing in Newport Harbor, a light wind enclave of rich people. The boat was a smaller version of a Finn, a Kite they called it, built by a company in Newport Beach intending it to be a trainer for the mighty Finn. Sailors were supposed to master the Kite and then step up to the big time. Few did. But I did and so did my friend Woody and we did it at about the same time. We had completed high school and wanted to continue sailing one-man (known as single-handed, but every Finn sailor I ever met used both hands) boats so we each bought Finns. They were old and needed a lot of work. Because of the Finn's Olympic, and therefore international status, we were allowed to put the letters "US" in front of the number on the sail. It made us at least look tough. As a couple of seasoned teenagers we were ready to head for international waters and realize our Olympic dreams. Our biggest problem: we were not beefy.

During the early seventies there existed a talented contingency of Finn sailors in both southern and northern California. In southern California (mostly Long Beach, Newport Beach and San Diego) the men sailed in relatively moderate conditions. Racing was more difficult during rare winter storms and occasionally in Long Beach in summer when the wind blew up to twenty-five knots. In northern California, specifically San Francisco and occasionally Santa Cruz, things were almost always out of control due to the predictable and ferocious summer wind that squeezed through the Golden Gate. Thus, the northern boys considered themselves much tougher than their southern counterparts, and backed it up regularly by winning most of the trophies when the wind blew over twenty. But in every other condition they became confused and mystified as the southern sailors employed their more refined touch and won through the art of sailing tactically rather than through brute force.

A pattern developed early that proved me the ultimate artist.

Even though the Finn requires a large, strong person to sail it, there is a physical limit to largeness because the boat has a low boom that is hard to duck under when a tacking or jibing. Also, too much weight is as much a hindrance downwind as it is a help upwind. As a rule, then, the largest Finn sailors topped out at about 230 pounds. The smallest sailors that could stay on the same lap in heavy conditions weighed about 180.

From my point of view, though, there was no limit to the physical strength of the sailors and for the most part, all the Finn sailors except me and a few others were the Popeye's of competitive sailing. Along with the strength came a healthy level of testosterone, a huge amount of ego and not a whole lot of grace. Generally, they were hard working, hard drinking, brutish womanizers with not a whole lot of respect for municipal ordinances. It was awe inspiring just walking with them as the dock sank lower under their heft. It took a long time to become an accepted member of the fraternity, a time made shorter by winning races.

I have no recollection of my first Finn regatta. I can easily review it though because so many were the same. I sailed my first boat a few times in light wind in Newport, declared myself competent and headed for Long Beach. There, during the light-wind sail out to the ocean I would have reasonable speed against some of the titans. I'd start the first race in fine shape. I'd work my way upwind and see a few of the leaders make what appeared to be lucky decisions. I'd round the first mark in the middle of the pack. I'd gain a few positions on the early reaches. I'd settle into a rhythm up the second weather leg and lose only a couple of boats. The wind would start kicking in. I'd start falling behind. My legs would hurt. My sail would lose its ideal shape. My boat would creak and moan. The wind would come up more. I'd fall farther behind. I'd nearly tip over going downwind as the waves grew. I'd finish after ninety minutes, exhausted, in twenty-fourth place or so. The wind would continue rising. I'd look ahead to two more races in tougher conditions. I'd finish the second race in twenty-seventh. I'd barely survive the third race, finishing ahead of only those who didn't finish, either because they broke something or tipped over. I'd be one of the last to return to the dock. I'd go find a beer and declare the whole thing fun and wonder where I'd garner the energy to come back on Sunday.

2. Inslee

Taking advantage of light wind and smooth water.

This was all quite acceptable. The Finn was the toughest of all boats to sail and I had to pay the price, start at the bottom and work my way up. Instant gratification did not apply. Maybe after five years I could expect to sail in the top ten. Maybe in ten years I could expect to sail in the top five. Maybe once during that span the conditions would be perfect and I might win a single race. But as a seventeen year-old with not a lick of experience and about a fifth of the required strength, the chance of winning a regatta was a distant dream until I did it on my fourth time out.

It was like sneaking out the back door with uncle Joe's whiskey. And it wasn't just any old regatta either. My name was embossed on a prestigious perpetual trophy that sat in the case of our rival club for all to see. It was called the Inslee series and I cannot remember ever knowing who or what an Inslee was. But several mighty famous Finn sailors, oxymoron noted, had to share that thing with me.

Eventually, that hideous looking chunk of wood and chrome had all the plaques removed and was rededicated to some other regatta. The only record of anything Inslee exists in the alcohol sloshed brains of those who participated, maybe. I am writing that record now -- nothing to be suspicious of here.

The Inslee series was a winter event held inside Newport Harbor rather than out in the ocean. Giant Finn sailors griped about it but no race committee wanted to risk going out in the mighty Pacific during a raging storm. Even in the worst conditions the waves inside the bay would be less than eight inches high and the warmth of the bar only a few hundred yards away. Since that's how it was at the event's inception, that's how it would continue until some other pisron replaced it.

This presented an opportunity for Woody and me. Young, too small and too weak to succeed in the ocean, we viewed the Inslee as our only opportunity to shine. Having sailed Kites for so many years, we knew the harbor like no one else, including where the most favorable wind shifts were hidden and how the water flowed during flood and ebb tides. It also became evident that our two boats excelled in smooth water. Conversely, they suffered, as did we, in the chop, waves and high wind everyone else sought in the ocean. So, because of our history in the bay, our accidental boat advantage and a bit of pure naiveté, our successes in this regatta amounted to starting cleanly and staying out of traffic. The rest was routine.

There were four races on the first day, Saturday. I won the first, third and fourth races and got third in the second race. Woody had two thirds, a second and a fifth. By the end of the day, we had insurmountable leads. Previous national and local champions were way back in the pack. No one had a chance to beat us in the three remaining races Sunday. Big, nasty, mean Finn sailors were annoyed at losing to a couple of kids who had no respect for hierarchy. We were not old enough to legally drink, barely old enough to drive yet the two of us upset tradition without much effort.

The kidding on Sunday before the sailing was only half in jest. Walking among the leviathans I heard half congratulations and half back-handed "good luck" wishes. My eye was toward the bay hoping that the wind would remain calm and my advantage secure. So it was. The starts were more difficult now that I was a marked man but I continued starting cleanly. I won all three races on Sunday and the Inslee regatta, well before accepted protocol said I should.

Woody came in second. The local Finn association wrote a letter to the host club asking to hold future Inslee regattas in the ocean. Like all other things regarding yacht clubs, the officials ignored the request. When the Inslee regatta came around the next winter, someone else was in charge and all complaints were forgotten. The club held the regatta in the same place and though the wind was generally stronger that year, the water maintained its typical bay profile. I won again and Woody got second again. And everyone else grumbled again. In the process, though, we had won a smidgeon of respect, showing that the first year wasn't a fluke. Woody and I established a small but important (to us) reputation of at least being good at one, ever so small, part of Finn sailing.

3. Leaks

Going insane over a trickle of water.

The glory of winning had little endurance and did nothing to carry me through the pain of racing in the real regattas, out in the ocean, in real Finn conditions. The familiar pattern of starting out in reasonable shape in the light, noon breeze only to fade as the afternoon wind kicked in, continued. Because the difference in performance between sailing in flat water versus rough water was so glaring, Woody and I began to look for ways to change our boats and stay within the rules.

Woody and I spent many evenings listening to rock, drinking gin and talking endlessly about our Finn experiences. We made relatively inexpensive changes to our boats -- adding stringers for stiffness, improving the centerboard trunk and fixing annoying leaks. Not much changed except we would, on occasion, pull off a pretty good race in moderate conditions and felt that over time, looking at the big picture, we were improving.

When the wind blows over fourteen knots in the open ocean, the Finn becomes a wet boat, like most dinghies. Waves break over the deck and splash into the cockpit. Every Finn has a set of bailers to let the water out through the floor of the boat. They require that boat be moving about half the hull speed (around three knots) to be effective, which is fine since it is in higher wind that they become necessary. The bailers are closed in light wind to keep the water out, however, rare is the Finn that doesn't have bailers that leak just a little.

Mine leaked a lot. Temporary insanity set in as I tried different solutions. I had become obsessed, so much so that the obvious, elegant solution escaped me for a year. I tried applying all kinds of gooey substances like silicone, grease and petroleum jelly, all of which oozed out onto the hull creating drag. None held the water out anyway. I shake my head now at my penultimate solution. I was so frustrated with these leaks that I removed the bailers and plugged the holes with fiberglass and smoothed the bottom as if the bailers never existed. I was able to sail in light wind in a dry boat and I congratulated myself in advance on how much faster I would go without toting all that water around the course.

The next regatta happened to be in Long Beach, also a winter affair. In Long Beach, committees had the option of holding the races in the ocean or inside the outer breakwater where the water was smoother. That weekend the wind was high and the water sufficiently rough, even inside the breakwater, to require the bailers I had just removed. By the start of the third race I could no longer bail fast enough with a bucket and had to quit and sail in carrying nearly a half full boat of water. I reinstalled the bailers that Saturday night. Naturally, the wind had abated for Sunday, leaving me with a leaky boat in conditions that required no bailers.

The solution involved taping the bailers closed with clear cellophane from the outside before launching the boat. The plastic tape was strong enough to keep water out all day in light wind and added minimal drag. It was also weak enough to break free of the hull when I pushed the bailers open in rough conditions. Finally, there were no leaks in light wind and the boat drained as it should in breeze.

4. Aluminum Trees

Kismet from broken gear.

The Finn mast, when stepped, passes through the deck and rests in an adjustable cup that slides on a plate near the bottom of the boat. This cup was another constant problem. Made of fiberglass, it never took the strain required of it. Both Woody and I were always patching, fixing it or replacing it. Mine finally broke for good just before a pisron and I couldn't have been luckier.

Two years into our Finn careers, Woody and I stacked our boats on a single trailer, hooked that up to my VW bus and headed for Huntington Lake in central California. Some nice people at the Fresno Yacht Club, who had nothing better to do, hosted the High Sierra Regatta. The event was so popular for Finns that it served as the California Finn Championship, attracting sailors from the west coast of North America to a neutral sailing venue. Everyone camped out, barbecued, drank lots of alcohol and smoked lots of dope. The racing was world class.

We arrived a day early and sailed to get the feel of the place. At the end of the day the bottom fell out of my mast step rendering the boat unusable. One other competitor from Dana Point also had difficulties on the practice day. Dereck was new to Finn sailing and had dreams and a wallet bigger than all of us. He came to Huntington Lake with a new, never sailed Finn, something we rarely saw. His enthusiasm carried him a little too far that practice day. He tipped over in not much wind and drove his new mast into the mud, breaking it. After sailing that day, we commiserated over the damage and came to an agreement. I would put my mast in his boat and we would alternate races, salvaging some of the weekend.

The Finn class had evolved into racing with their second generation of masts. They were aluminum and featured sophisticated tapering schemes that allowed the mast to flex predictably. The manufacturers offered several models ranging from stiff to flexible with a few grades between. A sailor anticipating windy conditions could use his more flexible mast. It would bend more, flattening the sail and making the boat easier to sail upwind. In light wind, a sail stayed fuller on a stiffer mast. A good portion of a sailor's success depended on his selecting the right mast and sail combination for the day. The good sailors had two or three masts and up to a half dozen sails to choose from. The new, under-funded guys like Woody and me, had whatever came with the boat and maybe one new sail.

The mast that came with my boat was a Needlespar 3B, known as the tree trunk of all Finn masts, the stiffest model made. Few sailors had a 3B because it was too difficult to sail with in heavy wind. The reason I had one is that the previous owner had no use for it. He kept the good stuff for his next boat and pawned the 3B off on me.

However, the 3B probably accounted for my impressive speed in Newport Harbor's light wind and flat water. When, at Huntington Lake, I put the 3B in Dereck's new boat I had the stiffest setup out there.

Dereck is a memorable character to me in one other way. He's the first guy who ever knew me for my Finn prowess, such that it was. "You're the guy who keeps winning the Inslee." Right. I'm also the guy who can't do better than fifteenth in a real Finn race. Since I was an icon in Dereck's limited experience he offered that I should sail the first race Saturday.

5. Ass First

Blowing a big lead.

I pushed off the beach in Dereck's new Finn with my stiff mast and his new sail and within a minute knew I would win the California Finn Championship. Perhaps his boat sailed a half degree closer to the wind. Perhaps it parted the waves immeasurably better with its finer bow. Perhaps it went through the water a hundredth of a knot faster. I felt these things as I sailed away from the beach and verified them as I sailed alongside other boats before the start. I needed only to start cleanly and sail in undisturbed wind. There was no current and the wind behaved in known patterns near shore. I had under me a Finn ideally suited for this condition and no one else had a chance.

When racing began on Friday, I started well, moved ahead and increased my lead, half amazed at my luck but not at all amazed at the result because the feel of this mast-sail-boat combination was so distinctive. My problem would be convincing Dereck to allow me to continue to sail the whole regatta. I won the first race by a margin normally reserved for gods and no one was more excited than Dereck as he watched from the beach. In his mind, the Inslee god was sailing his boat. He offered before I asked.

The conditions for Saturday remained ideal for Dereck's boat, the wind blowing around ten knots and the water flat. I had three victories in three races and only one guy, an Olympian from northern California, was close enough to overtake me should I falter. I had some difficulty starting the fourth and final race Saturday and was buried back in the pack of thirty-six boats. But by sailing clear of trouble and sailing without effort I worked my way back to fourth by the end, finishing right behind the Olympian.

The heavies, the guys with years of experience, the men of muscle, took their frustration out on various substances that night. This was normal for them but their indulgences did nothing to improve their dislike for the young kid who was tearing into their tradition. Woody and I stayed on the fringes of the big campfire and talked about what we had learned that day. I assured him I hadn't changed or improved but that I happened upon some perfectly suited equipment for the conditions. We talked mostly of sailing details: how Dereck's rudder fit tightly on the transom which helped me keep it still; how the little bends in the shoreline caused the wind to move similarly to our home harbor; how conceding a little distance away from the favored end on the tight starting line improved the chance of gaining clean air; how Dereck's new curved traveler helped maintain a constant sail shape; on and on we talked until the fire was out and so were the other sailors.

I didn't win another race that year. Sunday brought the same conditions and with my lead I started more conservatively and stayed ahead of my closest competition. Going into the last race only a mistake would keep me from winning, a mistake I executed perfectly.

The committee gave us a slightly different course which required we sail upwind on the west side of the lake, then cross to the east side and round the final weather mark. Because of this, we had to pass the final mark to starboard, opposite of what we'd done all weekend, opposite of what we'd done all our lives. I had my largest lead of any race that weekend and forgot the proper direction for rounding and turned the wrong way. Sailing down to the finish with my big lead and assured victory I caught out of the corner of my eye a friend waving frantically at me to go back. Realizing my error, I turned upwind to fix the mistake by re-rounding the mark properly. I had to re-calculate my standings for the weekend. The glory disappeared. The ache of loss sent weakness through my knees. The only person who could beat me was out of reach, way ahead. I had to pass six boats to stay ahead of him in points to win the regatta.

After rounding the mark properly, I took a chance and headed out to the middle of the lake hoping for slightly more wind, though sailing a longer distance to get it. I passed five of the six boats I needed but the legend had passed one, also. Thus, I needed to pass two more boats to win. I passed one at the last turning mark and the other right at the finish to win by a point and lose any sense of accomplishment.

Sailing a Finn is a solitary experience. A friend called attention to my error on the course. I had, in effect, received outside assistance, not in any illegal form, but perhaps in an immoral form. I didn't win that regatta, I lost it. Someone else won it for me. Further, I wasn't any different a sailor than when I arrived. I had stumbled into the use of someone else's new equipment. Having my mast work so well with his sail was purely an accident.

I discussed the injustices of the weekend with Woody during the long ride home. "Hey, that's sailing," he said. "Those guys are good. You beat them in your conditions not theirs. They'll beat you in their conditions not yours. If you're worried about that mistake, remember that you sailed without mistakes to have a big enough lead to allow one mistake. That's sailing. You won."

In his eyes and eventually in mine, too. There's no way to tell how everyone else viewed it. The monthly newsletter came out and reported the wrong person as winning, probably because the editor had never heard of me. Maybe he put that other name in there out of habit. But as I write this, I'll bet all I own that I'm the only one who knows who the California Finn Champion was that year.

6. New Wave

The local Finn class dies.

Regardless of how I felt and who remembered and what it meant to such a small number of people worldwide, it was the last of the winning for me. By the close of the seventies, the interest in Finn sailing in southern California declined. The Inslee disappeared from the schedule even though the Finn continued as an international Olympic class. Perhaps all the sailors in our area aged beyond the physical demands, perhaps they aimed themselves at projects more domestic, less individual. Whatever the cause, the old guard left and a new vibrant type of Finn sailor emerged along with Vanguard, a company interested in building the boat. The new boat incorporated minor rule changes and a more robust construction philosophy resulting in a Finn that was far faster than the old boats and a lot more expensive.

During these changes, Woody and I worked our way through college, sailing Finns occasionally but never racing them. Careers and other forms of sailing distracted us from the original idealistic purity. We raced more on large boats and in other more popular small boats. He sold his boat and by the beginning of the eighties I was the only Finn sailor floating about in Newport Harbor.

The new breed of Finn sailors, younger (I was thirty), stronger and more motivated, were working hard in windy San Francisco toward a single goal of winning the Olympic gold medal. They had money for new boats, for professional trainers and in one case, for ballet lessons designed to improve balance. Suggesting ballet lessons to an old guard Finn sailor would result in a physical pounding but this new approach proved effective. Young and driven, the new sailors changed the way the Finn was sailed.

In the old days, sailors compensated for the windy conditions by wearing a half dozen sweatshirts that would get wet and heavy. Old time Finn sailors took the sweatshirt method to extremes increasing the load on their backs to the point of injury. The Finn class limited the weight to forty-four pounds to reduce injuries but I still know people who walk askew because their backs never recovered. The new technique involved wearing a jacket with pockets for numerous water bottles. Since races started upwind, the sailors filled the bottles before the start and then emptied them to go downwind or whenever the wind died on the course.

In my early racing, my lazy solution to becoming heavier was to wear seven layers of sweat pants sewn together. Even though I didn't extend all of the weight over the side, I at least saved my back (and a lot of energy) by sitting on the extra weight. The pants also added some padding where the rail of the boat dug into the backs of my thighs. I went through the windy days a little slower but a lot more comfortable.

While new models dominated the class, I held on to my old Finn and sailed around Newport, enjoying the solitude and expanse of the ocean. Unlike the new sailors, I worked at a career outside of sailing and being alone in my Finn once a week became a way of separating from society's pace. The new sailors had sponsors and money and traveled everywhere. I stayed in Newport, away from Finn competition and raced yachts far easier and more glamorous -- well at least as glamorous as yacht racing can be. Still, on many weekdays, I found solace and quiet in my Finn. I found pressure, visibility and reward in all other forms of racing. I donated my worthless, old Finn to the university and deducted a whopping $700 from my tax return. Finn sailing for me had ended. Not a single Finn sailed in Newport.

7. Just Ask

A free boat, just for the asking.

The world is so vast that many things can be obtained just for the price of asking.

For the next five years I competed in races, mostly involving big boats owned by emditzes requiring teams of ten or so. My Finn experience and other victories put me in demand as helmsman for those campaigns and the success we enjoyed resembled my success at Huntington Lake. Someone else provided the boat and paid professionals to maintain it. Someone else drew the design. Someone else built the boat. The rest of the crew did all the hard work onboard. I just sat there, aimed the sucker and took most of the credit. It wasn't mine but it was easy, hedonistic and fed my ego. I raced long distances to Mexico and Hawaii. I raced short distances in San Francisco and Long Beach. I had privileges to use the boats when not racing. Emditzes paid my expenses. Those who didn't know better thought highly of me.

Meanwhile, Finn sailors all over the world continued refining their mastery of the difficult boat. One day, an old friend sailed by The Club in a Finn that was even older than my original. He let me sail it and for about an hour my mind flew back in time, recalling all the pain, some of the glory and all the fun. That was the only Finn sailing for me for five years.

After the Olympic Games in Seoul, rumors circulated that the winner-take-all regatta to determine the sole U.S. Finn representative to the next Olympic Games in Barcelona would be held in Newport Beach. The light to moderate wind and docile sea conditions in Newport resembled the expected conditions in Barcelona. The national authority had long neglected the west coast as a venue and decided that it was our turn to host the big event, the Olympic Trials. Approaching my thirty-fourth birthday I started inquiring about Finns, their cost new or used, their current idiosyncrasies (still painful in breeze), who was racing them, building them, cursing them and winning in them. Having a settled career that afforded me time and money I rejected the gravity of age and decided that I would take a shot at racing Finns again. I located used boats for sale. I talked to Vanguard, the only U.S. manufacturer, and after a bit of research discovered that all of it would come my way free of charge, at least at first.

Others had left Finn sailing behind causing the national fleet to dwindle. To rebuild it, the national Olympic committee bought ten Finns and lent them to aspiring newcomers to the fleet for a year at a time. Maybe they considered me a newcomer but, more likely, there was an unused Finn sitting in San Diego that needed some work to bring it up to speed. After sending in my résumé and recommendations from local friends, and after waiting anxiously for six weeks, the committee granted me use of the Finn, no charge, no strings attached.

Within an hour of their approval, I borrowed a trailer and a random license plate from our boat yard and was on my way to San Diego. The boat sat on a patch of grass next to the parking lot. The mast was leaning up against a tree. No covers protected the boat. There were holes where the compasses belonged and a dolly sitting, upside down, on top of the boat. Ah, but it was a Finn! It looked rather beautiful to me. A nice person happened by and helped me heft it onto my trailer. I tied it down, put the dolly on top and headed back, rolling into The Club parking lot just before sunset. Pat Metheny's music got me down there and Jimmy Buffett's got me back as did some M&M's, diet Coke and sunflower seeds, the diet of aging, aspiring Olympians on the road.

8. Dreams

Getting reacquainted with the Finn.

During my Finn-less years, I would often have night dreams of sailing one and typically the dreams consisted of sailing from The Club, out the harbor entrance, straight into a southerly, tacking between the jetties. Gray light reflected between the overcast and water. I'd sail in slivers of silver topped waves when the sun cut through. In the dreams, the water was clear and the swells outside the entrance large, sometimes breaking. So frequent those dreams!

I put the Finn together and corrected problems that had accumulated through neglect and laziness of its previous caretakers. Within two days it was ready. My first day of sailing resembled those dreams.

I did not have the right clothing, no gloves to protect my delicate, piano and computer keyboard-bound hands and I had to figure out the control lines that shaped the sail. That was about it. Everything else felt like Finn. Even the bailers leaked.

I left the harbor, rounded the entrance buoy and rode a few waves back in. My confidence returned quickly. I repeated the exercise a few times making mental lists of what needed changing. Finn, oh Finn, it was great to be in one again!

Strange things happened in my dreams. All the water would run out of the harbor. Or it would fill up so much that The Club's bar windows looked like a walk-through aquarium. Or the harbor became streets but sailing still worked. Always something would remind me that I hadn't quite touched reality.

On my second day of sailing the wind came from the west, the other prevailing direction. This wind, when trailing winter storms is significantly stronger and stirs up unruly seas. I stayed in the harbor to continue my re-familiarization. As I sailed, the wind died and clocked to the north. I decided to try the ocean. The waves were mild, flattening as the wind angled slightly from the shore. After sailing upwind to the Balboa pier and being mildly fatigued from a little less than three hours of sailing, I started in. With no swell to speak of, I stayed close to shore where I squished my nose up against the glass that separates reality from all those dreams I'd had.

Not dreaming: along the deserted beach I watched an Asian man, wearing a full business suit, a derby bowler hat, white gloves, sunglasses and black, hard soled shoes, stand where the waves died and sank into the sand. He whipped out his unit and peed into the Pacific's edge, looking down as if standing at a urinal. He finished, shook it good and put it away. Still looking down, he turned away from the water, and trudged up hill, struggling in the loose sand, never having seen me. We were fifty yards and worlds apart.

The target of my efforts was an annual winter regatta in Long Beach. Some administrator on the east coast determined that the Midwinters would serve as the sole west coast qualifying event for the Finn world championships, the Gold Cup, in Italy. The top two finishers in the Finn class would receive funding from the national Olympic committee that would pay for the entire trip. Two others had already qualified by doing well in a much more difficult regatta in Florida. We would sail the Long Beach event in the calmer, flatter waters outside Alamitos Bay but inside the protection of the main breakwaters, the site of my near sinking after having removed my bailers years before.

Usually, qualifiers were determined by accumulated standings over an entire year of sailing. Since we were starting a new quadrennium, the qualifying system for that year became a one-shot deal in a relatively "easy" regatta. It appeared perfect for my reintroduction to the class. I did all I could in the three weeks I had to prepare.

The Dump, where I worked, had access to a gym and advisors. Hating gyms, I went in anyway and introduced myself to a lady who got excited at the prospect of being the personal trainer for someone embarking on a new Olympic effort. "Did you say sailing?" she asked. She passed me off to someone else. I received a ten-minute tour of the machines and was left alone.

My distaste for gyms grew. I worked out for four days and then bought an exercise machine for my home. I bought roller blades and increased my cycling distances. It was going to take a while but I finally started working off the fat that had accumulated during my Finn-less days.

I ordered a new sail for the boat. I didn't have any control over the mast as the boat only had one. I didn't know what to compare it to anyway. I sanded the boat bottom and rudder, reducing their friction, installed new lines and replaced old hardware. I went to Long Beach thinking I could win. I went to Long Beach a fool.

9. Sparkling Jade

Does anyone want a free trip to Italy?

The previous Olympian showed up and sailed as if he were me at an Inslee regatta. He started perfectly and continued to extend his lead in all but one race. Another competitor, did the same, though in second place. The rest of us sailed the two-day regatta as if in a different boat, sailing in a separate event. Despite the enticing award of a free trip to the Gold Cup in Italy, only eleven sailors participated.

Those races were the first I'd sailed in a Finn in nine years, though I'd been active in just about everything else. My technique, as applied to Finn sailing, was rusty, no doubt, but my overall sailing was strong, enough to overcome my physical weakness. The wind never blew more than fifteen knots but at fourteen, I hurt a lot, wimped out and moved back in the fleet. But when the wind stayed around twelve knots I did surprisingly well except for the two guys way out in front. I finished the regatta in third and concluded that I hadn't lost much to the Finn world except for physical conditioning, something I was already working on.

Those of us who race sailboats are among the most jaded people in the world. In exchange for perceived talents we can be flown all over and compete in exotic waters, all paid for by someone entering the game late in life trying to buy adventure. Thus, it was no surprise to me when both the first and second place finishers declined the free trip to Italy. That left me at the top of the list. Not only had some east coast bureaucrats handed me a free boat, but now they wanted to send me to Italy, as if I were some promising athlete entering the class.

However, I have my own sparkling jade. It took me almost a week of arguing with myself over whether it was worth the time away from work, from home and everything else in my perfect little world. Then the Finn association called with news that I wouldn't even have to deal with shipping my free boat over there, that they had another spare on the east coast that they would put in the shipping container. I didn't have to do any work to sail in Italy. I just had to get on a plane and show up. That's what I did.

10. Italy

A Hammond B3 takes precedent over the Finn world championships.

I thought of all the people, systems and hardware that worked in concert to transport me from Los Angeles to Alassio. It was 1989 and in that over-sized aluminum pipe loaded with sneezing, coughing and screaming humans, the Italians smoked more than New Yorkers who smoked more than Californians. I landed in Rome armed with an English-Italian translation book and navigated to my connecting flight to Genoa. The view from that plane revealed Genoa to be a crowded, disorganized, old city. What did I expect, planned communities with underground utilities and cable TV? Despite the rain, nearly every apartment building had clothes hanging on a line. Few buildings had all the windows intact, giving it the appearance of an ancient slum.

I took a cab from the airport to the train station. The cab driver wrote the amount of the fare on a piece of paper so I could compare it to the numbers on my lira. At the station, there were many platforms to choose from and with the help of some non-English speaking students and my trusty phrase book ("E' questa il treno per Alassio?") I ended up on the right train. I panicked when the train started moving, thinking it was heading in the wrong direction. But then I saw the ocean on the wrong side of the train.

In Alassio, Italy, on the Italian Riviera, giant sized boys gathered to try to win a pisron. My renewed exposure to the sport left me feeling like the outsider I really was. I had no business being there, other than that some poorly conceived scoring system handed me a free trip. They couldn't have made it easier, so I thought, until I located my boat. It had lain upside down in the mud somewhere on the east coast. It looked like someone used an excavator and picked it up along with a few hundred pounds of sludge and dumped it all in a shipping container. Someone else had removed a lot of the boat's hardware and dropped it in a box. The compasses, though not broken, had lost some fluid. I spent two days piecing everything together while well-funded competitors sailed their shiny boats and practiced in the Mediterranean.

At thirty-four, I was older than most of the competitors but not wiser, at least in terms of racing. I had, however, my own money and decided to supplement my grant. Instead of the rundown dump my U.S. teammates stayed in, I reserved a room at the Hotel Grand Diana to compensate for my on-the-water suffering, of which there was plenty.

The book on Alassio, as a sailing site, was that it was a light wind venue where competitors would rely more on tactics than brute strength. The book was wrong. After I rebuilt the boat Friday, the winds of spring howled in, forcing even the most fearless to remain ashore. That was fine with me. I wouldn't have ventured out in half that breeze.

I felt like I was at a frat party. Most group meals culminated in food fights. There weren't any women around because it would have been too dangerous. Testosterone polluted the atmosphere. Drugs I'd never heard of were everywhere.

I was obligated to race, to participate, to do something other than reverse my travel and go home. I developed a mindset for survival. And as a true hedonist, I looked around a few corners that might make that trip, at least, interesting.

From my notes:

On the first Friday night, the rain came and quite hard. The boys picked me up at the hotel as I taught Mario, the inept and lonely bartender, how to make Kahlua and coffee. We went to the same place for dinner as last night. After, I walked home since the rain had stopped. The narrow streets of Alassio were wet and smelled the way streets smell after a rain -- it's the same world-wide. My walk home was peaceful. I cannot control the weather, only respond to it. I don't care about the regatta.

The staff turned down my bed and left a blanket in the room. They left it on the small straw stool I sit on to write this. The desk folds down revealing a mirror with my content reflection and three days of facial growth. My eyes are bloodshot despite the drops I use, trying in vain to wash away the sand and spray that annoys them. This room in the hotel Diana Grand is peaceful and I am alone, like at home. The waves break outside my window, seven floors down providing the white noise that almost muffles the passing traffic and the occasional train.

The racing each day was mysterious. I had never participated in anything so spread out, so nonsensical. Each day out in the Mediterranean seemed like an odd dream. I went through the motions of keeping the boat upright and me warm. The event and its outcome were inconsequential. There were days spent ashore because of no wind and days spent ashore because of too much wind. Everything was outside of my normal scope and outside of my control. Each day was a new sailing lesson for me, as if I were seven years old.

On Saturday, still severely jet lagged, I wandered down to the bar before midnight, wide awake. This bartender looked like she had a day job as a librarian in Indiana. Her sandy hair was all balled up in back and she had oversized glasses that dwarfed her tiny face that sat atop a petit body. It felt to me like a porn setup. She wore a name tag: Felisa.

I asked for a drink I knew she wouldn't know how to make. "A Kialoa. It's Mount Gay rum, Kahlua and cream." Of course, there's no such thing as Mount Gay rum in Alassio. "Something amber in color will do."

"Why is it called a Kialoa?"

"It's named after a famous yacht that friends of mine in America race on." America. Yacht. Race. She asked if I was there for the event.

"Sadly, yes." Sadly.

"Pitiful you," she said. I tried to explain that it was a mistake, that I had no business sharing the sea with the powerhouses of sailing.

"It's a mistake that you find yourself in Alassio?" Yep. "You don't want to play?" Nope. "What would you rather do?"

"I'm one of the few who enjoys my work. I have a nice home that I live in alone. There is a nice view of the Pacific. I have a piano I mess with."

"Piano? What do you play?"

"Various things, some memorized. I'm not bad at theory and can noodle."

"Are you in a band or orchestra?" Never.

"Want to try?"

Try what.

Sunday, I had to make an attempt at the first race, or make it look like I was racing. Everything was wrong with the boat. My first chance to sail it came that morning. I was still fixing things on the way to the starting line. I started well in light wind, had reasonable speed with most of the fleet and felt encouraged. That feeling lasted fifteen minutes. I couldn't read the wind shifts with my suspect compasses and a half-percent speed deficit on the open waters left me back in the middle of the pack. It was clear I had a lot of work to do, both in Italy and when I returned home. I resigned to learn as much as I could.

Felisa wasn't working but we met at eight that night at the bar. She took me down to the basement, two floors deep, down a long corridor, right, then left. We entered a room that had been repurposed as a music studio. There were four other people there, a woman and three men, standing around, though looking intently at, and messing with, their instruments. The woman was a bass player, there were two guitarists and a drummer. Felisa played quite a few woodwinds, from soprano sax to contrabass sax, a monster that nearly out-weighed her. Somehow, she could fill that thing with enough air to make marvelous sounds.

For the next six hours I left Alassio behind and existed within a troupe of folks who would never be known by anyone outside their small circle. No one in Italy, Europe or the world knew they existed and about that, they didn't care. These people came together to occupy their minds with something that changed every time they met. And what they did was so utterly simple and luscious.

Felisa walked me around to everyone and introduced me as a reluctant keyboard player who knew chords and could noodle. All this worked at that instant because their regular keyboard player had left for Brussels to attend an annual family reunion that lasted a week. After that, some of his cousins were off to yet-to-be-determined destinations in the upper reaches of the Netherlands for unknown reasons. He would be back long after I returned home.

Felisa then introduced me to my victims, an aeolian upright piano (it had a date plate inside: 1905) and the magic machine of all time, the Hammond B3 organ, right there, right there, right THERE! in front of me. "This is you," she said without any sense of anything. Plus, there was a giant Leslie rotary speaker right next to it.

I went to Italy to race Finns, yet I stood in what to me and the others in the room, was a cathedral of sound.

I squatted down, put my elbows on my knees, cupped my head in my hands and said aloud, but quietly to the floor, "How does this happen?"

Felisa looked at me. "Are you all right?"

"Fine."

The others were looking at me, too.

"What do we do now?" I asked.

Felisa gave me a few charts, easy ones, and walked me through their usual practice. Her advice was to sit there and look at what I wanted to play without playing anything. That way I'd pick up on what the others were doing. "Can I do that all night?" If you want, but, she said, "I'll bet you start hitting some notes sooner than later." She was right. I ended up using about five percent of the B3's potential. I had no idea how to use the foot pedals and left them alone. Otherwise, it was mostly right hand for me. My left had played an octave of bass notes, when I could get it there in time.

I've never been around such supportive people. Sailboat racing is morosely antagonistic, despite its apparent beauty. I'll grant that it was in this group's best interest to bring me along quickly if they wanted piano and organ sounds, but ultimately, to them, it didn't matter. Their regular guy would be back eventually and I'd be a footnote. But for the moment, all they wanted to do was help and encourage me and be the parents I never had. I did not know how to react. I did not know how to accept that. Felisa grabbed me by the shoulders and said, "Relax. Just breathe and enjoy this."

I had played a few thousand hours of piano, alone, sporadically over a period of twenty years, with no audience save the poor souls on the other side of my apartment walls. For the first time I sat with other musicians and had no idea what to do. My hands were shaking. But, Felisa made this inaugural foray into cooperative music simple.

One way to teach a student to land an airplane is to find a quiet airport with a long runway. I used San Bernardino airport. I would have the student fly patterns without landing, descending to, say, a hundred feet, slowing down but holding that altitude. Then it becomes trivial to descend to fifty feet, then twenty feet, then zero. Master each step before the next. Voila, we'd land.

This is what Felisa did for me. She had the band hold a chord while the drummer played a slow 4/4 beat. "Play anything you want using those chord notes." We advanced to add 7ths and 9ths and minor chords and so on. "Now play anything in that key. We don't care." It only took five minutes for my hands to stop shaking. Felisa called out the next chord. Same thing.

I had never heard of vamping. Felisa made that easy, too. "Stay off the beat, play the chord, invert it if you like, right hand only as Ilsa will be playing bass for us. Use both hands if you want on the chord but within the same couple of octaves." The band sped up for this. I relaxed. We went through some of the charts slowly and slowly increasing speed.

Once I relaxed and realized that the band wasn't going to kick me out and lock the door, things moved along quickly. The environment compressed time. The six hours seemed like thirty minutes. Everyone left at two in the morning. Felisa walked me back to the lobby, then up to my room. She rose up on her toes and gave me a peck on my cheek. "We're doing it again tomorrow."

Despite the tiring three-hour Gold Cup race and this foray into an Alice-like rabbit hole, I did not sleep.

When the sun rose Monday, the wind did too. Some anemometers reported sixty knots. With no chance for even getting boats in the water, I checked in with Felisa around noon and wandered down to the music room alone. With no one there, I was nearer to my usual playing environment. This time, however, I had work to do. I wanted to memorize a few of those charts, gain some sort of finger repetition and understand better, the workings of the B3. I met Felisa for her brief dinner break. I finally slept before we met again, in the cathedral, at eight. We played "only" four hours. Band members had things to do early Tuesday. I went back to my room and disappeared into my first deep sleep of the trip.

I awoke in a mild panic, unsure of where I was. As reality set in I thought first of music and smiled but then groaned when I thought of sailing. I gathered myself and hustled down to the cathedral with a goal of understanding the Leslie, that spinning speaker that provides physical rather than electronic vibrato. From my notes:

Just.

Fucking.

Wow.

I showed off my progress to the band that night. Felisa gave me yet another valuable lesson with three words: "Temper that thing."

I developed a routine over the next six days with the racing part of each day feeling like a job and the music (three sessions: two alone before and after racing and one with the band) feeling like a dream.

There were a couple of social events associated with the regatta that paled in comparison to my new purpose. My U.S. teammates wondered where I disappeared to all the time, so I took them down to the basement and showed them. They were about as impressed with that as I was with their regatta.

On the penultimate day, everything lined up for me out on the water. The wind was light, I started well, tacked away from the fleet, picked an inexplicable wind shift in my favor and had a big lead at the first weather mark, with all eighty-some boats lined up behind. Of course, the more capable sailors caught up. Three passed me on the last upwind leg, I know not how, as music engulfed my mind. I finished fourth. My teammates were all worse than fiftieth. It was clear, then, that to succeed in sailing I had to not try, not care and have a mind full of nothing but chord progressions.

That didn't work on the last day. I woke from dreams of home to sounds from the guy in the next room, who, each morning, coughed, gagged and heaved as if he was about to die. He was a tall, older, soft spoken member of the jury for the regatta.

(Sailboat racing has a rule book thicker than the U.S. tax code. If someone feels someone else has cheated, they signal that they're upset (whining) by attaching a red flag to something on their boat. After returning to shore, they file a protest (call the cops) in writing, subpoena witnesses, attend a hearing and await a decision. This horseshit takes the entire evening ruining everything for everyone involved. The decision (verdict) handed down by the jury, no matter how clear cut the violation and how many people saw it and testified, is arbitrary, fifty-fifty, because jurors are old fucks who haven't sailed in four decades and have no idea what goes on out there. Smart sailors, oxymoron noted, avoid the "room" as it's called, as if it housed a combination of HIV, Ebola, smallpox and Aunt Martha's liver and onions.)

The wind was back in anger and it was cold, a front having passed overnight. My objective was to survive without capsizing.

The wind increased all day. On the last beat, in twenty-five knots, I headed right since there was favorable land-induced shifts near shore. But they weren't enough to overcome the higher wind, more favorable current and superior muscle strength the sailors enjoyed outside. I dropped back farther, finished, finished with the Gold Cup, not exultant, not feeling accomplishment, just existing in the reality of the situation. The sail to shore was quite fast. I sailed alongside a guy from Hungary, a man whom I'd sailed near all regatta. He watched me struggle downwind and shouted over to me to lower the centerboard a little. I did and the sailing was easier. These are not subtle things I'm learning, but glaring ones and at the end of a world championship, no less. Did I know this long ago in previous Finn days and forget, or never know it? There's a position to place the centerboard while sailing dead downwind that makes life easy. But where does one position it for speed in those conditions?

Some boats sailed a course away from the entrance to the harbor. I imagined those few were setting up for one final blast reach into shore as the wind exceeded thirty knots. Me? No thanks. I was cold and tired and wanted to sail in. I followed a stream of boats heading for the beach but noticed more hanging out to the right. Some were luffing, sitting near the leeward mark. Perhaps the committee wanted to run a second race, the seventh race that had been canceled earlier in the week. Please, no. So many were sailing in. But that's what it was, two races on the last day to add to my misery. I sailed into the harbor to think it over and hide from the waves. One of my teammates, who capsized on the last run, went in and put his boat away. Even the regatta leader, who now thought he was the world champion, had his boat on the beach as did many others. Hating the feeling of incompleteness I sucked it up and decided to finish the event and not wimp out. I stayed in the harbor, in the wind shadow from nearby cliffs, waiting for the committee to get their shit together. I intended to ride around the course and keep the boat upright. I hadn't eaten lunch, having only cereal for breakfast, and was already tired from completing one Gold Cup race. This was potentially dangerous for me. I approached the race not caring about competing but staying alive.

From the harbor it was a short sail to the starting line. I could barely make out the signal flags on the boat but began sailing out. I heard a faint pop and saw all the flags up which meant I had five minutes to get there and it turns out I was 5:01 away. It was the second-best start of the series for me. Unfortunately, the life jacket flag was up. I struggled to put it on while crossing the starting line. Everyone took off like it was the first race of the regatta. My strategy remained: just sail the thing around the course. I sought out the lighter wind near shore for the upwind legs, had nice rides and hairy but manageable jibes downwind. One Italian and my friend the Hungarian, were in last place with me, on the final run. The Italian wussed out and tacked around instead of jibing. I jibed and determined that I must beat him on the last beat and not lose the race, though several racers quit plus there were numerous on the beach who did not start. Anyway, I beat the Italian and sailed in. This time I left the sail up after beaching the bloody boat.

Fifty-third of eighty-two for the regatta. Wee.

My notes:

I figured out the train schedule and arrived in Genoa. I'm writing in a vacated yet elegant lounge of the Hotel Savoia Magestic. My room is old but sophisticated and costs about a hundred bucks. There's not another Finn sailor around. The boys are cracking jokes and fogging up the car windows on their way to Milan. The rain accentuates the sadness on the faces of the Italian people on the trains and at the stations. Italy, at least along the Riviera, is not wealthy. Yet, the train system beats anything I've seen in California.

For dinner, I was the only person in the hotel restaurant attended to by a maître d', a waiter and a busboy. I ate a great chicken salad, with tomatoes and celery and then a monstrous slab of prime rib. It was real food, the best of the trip. Later, two French speaking men came for dinner followed by a young lady, alone, who spoke perfect "American." Though she had her head in a book, I spoke with her for a minute. She wasn't interested in conversing.

A pilot's strike delayed my flight to Rome by an hour. How a pilot's strike delays a flight one hour instead of cancels it is beyond me. But this is Italy.

On the plane rides home, I wrote a long letter to Felisa, in messy handwriting, on paper, profusely thanking her for introducing me to a new way of experiencing music. She wrote back, confessing a lot of insecurity in her future, whether she should go back to school, wondering, wondering and wondering some more how to approach life. In these days before email we exchanged letters for over a year until she met someone, married him, had three children and disappeared into the abyss of domestic life. I never heard from her again. I've tried at various times to locate her but she has done a masterful job of staying clear of the internet.

I was sitting at The Club a week after returning home when one of the old farts approached me and asked me how I did in Italy. I said that toward the end I kept up with everyone else and felt good about my progress and what lies ahead. The poor sap thought I was talking about sailboat racing.

11. Turning Blue

Out of control

The Olympic committee wanted their boat back. Sufficiently humbled by the pros in Italy, I still wanted to participate so rather than hunt around for a used Finn I stepped up and bought a new one. Even with that, I designed a comfortable, half-Olympic routine in which my work and flying interests took precedent.

One Saturday, six months after my new boat arrived, started out windy from the west promising a big day in the ocean. I worked in the morning, canceled a tennis date and headed for The Club.

More dedicated Olympic hopefuls were already sailing. Out in the ocean, we joined up. The wind built to about eighteen knots by the time we got to the Newport pier. Off the wind it became evident at how much work I had to do just to stay in the game, even in my home waters. One guy went straight downwind and fast in the big waves and building wind leaving the rest of us in the weeds, exposing yet another weakness.

I was cold. Ocean upwelling from the wind dropped the water temperature about seven degrees from the previous week. The air was chilly for an early August day. I told the guys I was sailing in to get a wetsuit and that I would be back out.

By the time I returned, the others were on the way in. My plan was to sail in the ocean a couple of times up to the pier and then sail in the bay for fun.

The sail up to the Balboa Pier was beautiful. Alone now, I didn't have to worry about speed or pain. I chugged up to the mark just under the burger joint at the end of the pier and then reached out a little farther than normal, getting into position so that I could practice running, my intended destination being a beach east of the jetties.

Going downwind I briefly lost my balance to weather and capsized. The boat did not immediately turn turtle but the first of several inadequacies in my new boat's setup caused a long, disheartening disaster that didn't end until later that evening.

Even though I shortened the overall length of the mainsheet, it was still just long enough to allow the boom to go practically to the center-line forward of the boat. This made righting the boat impossible. Standing on the centerboard didn't do anything. The boat turtled and the rudder fell out, though I don't know how. The metal tiller wanted to sink but the rudder held enough buoyancy to keep the combination afloat, though it drifted away. It stuck up out of the water like a shark's fin.

I wasn't wearing my life jacket but quickly put it on. That got in the way more than it was helping so I let it float away, too. I should have just tied it into the boat in case I really needed it.

With the boat turtled a second inadequacy deepened the disaster. There was no system for keeping the mast secure in the boat. I had assumed, incorrectly, that the numerous control lines would do that. But those control lines were pulling stretchable items and they all stretched enough to allow the mast base to come out of its cup. Now I was in real trouble.

With the boat turtled and the boom out in front of the boat, I had to detach the outhaul and the slide sail out of the boom. I did this as a small keel boat pulled up along side offering assistance. I asked them to collect my rudder and life jacket.

I was able to get the boat to its side but the mast, being out its step was working with huge leverage on the mast collar. The sound of grinding fiberglass was sickening and I could see the damage being done. Reality was screaming at me to solve this. The boat was riding lower in the water as the untested flotation tanks were leaking.

I succeeded in freeing the mast from the partner, taking completely out of the boat. I righted the boat but it was swamped. I had neglected to tie my handheld bailer in the boat. It sank. The crew in the keel boat made several efforts to tow the boat but it had too much water in it. We succeeded in towing the boat stern first and for a moment I thought the disaster was receding and that the tow in would end it. However, I had secured the towline around the mainsheet block which pulled out of the floor. The crew refused to make another effort. My only options were to leave them and stay with the boat, or leave the boat and stay with them. I chose the latter and let the boat drift off on its own with only a few inches of freeboard showing. The mast, boom and sail were lying inside the boat along the top of the deck.

Another sailboat was nearby but if they had a radio, they refused to use it. They agreed to stay with the boat until we got more help.

Climbing into the keel boat I cut my legs on whatever was growing below the waterline. I was bleeding as we slowly sailed in.

A harbor patrol boat was towing a small powerboat into the harbor. Someone got the powerboat's engine started. I whistled and waved at the harbor patrol. I explained my story, transferred my rudder and life jacket to his boat and off we went to the ocean looking for my Finn. We began heading south and aimed toward the sailboat I thought was marking my boat. It became apparent that they were just sailing poorly (sails luffing often) out to sea. They had abandoned my boat, but then, so had I.

We saw no sign of my Finn. Binoculars didn't help. We stopped and gazed the horizon and found nothing. A new reality set in that my boat was completely lost. However, with one more glance rearward, back toward shore and much farther downwind than I expected, I saw it bobbing in the waves with not much freeboard left. We motored over to it and began another long effort in trying to save it.

Our plan was to try and use the powerful pump on the patrol boat to get ahead of the waves pouring into the boat. More damage occurred to the Finn, albeit minor, as the two boats bumped each other in the rough seas. We succeeded in getting most of the water out of the boat and began towing it, stern first back to The Club.

We pumped more water out at the dock. I opened the forward tank hatch and water piled out of there. I hoisted the boat out of the water and let the remainder drain out the back. I lowered the boat onto its trailer without much daylight remaining.

The damage to the Finn appeared light in that there was some cracked fiberglass at the mast collar. However, that was a structurally critical part of the boat. Other damage included some scraping from the bumping into the harbor patrol boat, a lost compass and lost rigging which I had cut to get the mast free of the boat. There was a nick in the rudder and a minor kink in the mast track. The mainsheet block needed to be remounted and reinforced.

I went home fully aware at how lucky I was that there was someone out there to help, that I had a wetsuit on and that we found the boat after I had abandoned it. I warmed up and ate dinner while watching a documentary about Vietnam. I went to bed and as I lay down I looked out the window at the incredible view from my room. The luminescence of a full moon and the city lights hid most of the stars. I was alive and well and had only broken a piece of plastic. Mother Ocean delivered a glaring reminder of who is in charge. The severity of the error is relative. I was still healthy and not fighting a war.

***

Sixteen months later and five before the Olympic Trials, I challenged Mother Ocean again. The air behind the powerful system that moved through that December day was dry, stable and strong, dragging mounds of water, forming gigantic wind waves that built on top of whatever ground swell was visiting from thousands of miles away.

It was always shocking to get nailed by that first big wave. "Oh yeah, it's winter now." The water was about 60° which was a few degrees warmer than normal. I wore an old wetsuit, a farmer john with a jacket that had only nylon sleeves. and a sweatshirt under that. Wetsuit or none, the first wave is a reminder that the next thirty minutes may not be all that fun. Again, I joined the more dedicated sailors. We planned to sail upwind to the Balboa Pier, at least. The thirty minutes following that, which consisted of going downwind and riding hairy waves, might be fun but in that weather it was more about survival.

Not only was the sailing physically difficult but on that day I was ridiculously slower than the other boats, by about seven boat lengths per half mile. My neglect of my home training was showing and though I was aerobically fit, I was surprised at how hard I was breathing during the sail upwind. The wind blew about twenty-five knots with wind waves between three and five feet with an occasional wave of up seven feet on the face. As unusual as that was for Newport, it was bound to happen during the Trials, it did happen during the Pre-Trials the previous April and it's fairly typical of what international Finn sailors encounter regularly.

When this condition comes in I prefer to sail any of my three windsurfers. But, I needed some Finn training so I left my boards hanging in the garage.

Part of my preparation for that day's sailing included every single thing I learned from my previous crash, which occurred in far less severe conditions. I double-checked the flange which keeps the rudder in the gudgeons in the event of a capsize. I double-checked the fender washers around the mast collar to make sure they were tight. Those kept the mast in place if the boat turns turtle. I took the tape off the bottom bailers as I would need those. I secured my hand bailer with a line. My duffel bag was tied to the back of the aft hiking straps. It held a new, sharp knife, a hand-held VHF radio in a waterproof bag, fresh drinking water and sun screen. Every time I went through that exercise I thought of my preflight inspections for airplanes, especially gliders. After I learned to fly sailplanes I nodded at the similarity between flying and sailing without engines.

Sailing upwind we stopped three times, mostly to let me catch up. I tried different settings to improve my speed but nothing netted any appreciable results.

We had sailed well past the pier when we turned around and began the downwind scream. I preferred to start with a broad reach to get accustomed to the wave size and direction. For training, the idea was to go as far off the wind as I dared. Dead downwind is typically that, dead. Once committed to going down a big one, some recovery is required to avoid jamming into the wave in front. That recovery, which requires a lot of helm to leeward, is almost always followed by another takeoff on a big wave. Such was the case when I was on port tack, only about a third of a mile from the harbor entrance.

One of the other sailors had capsized about ten minutes earlier and it took a lot of his energy to get the boat up and himself back in it. I guessed that he was finished for the afternoon and just wanted to sail in. The wave I was about to take off on would change that plan.

My boat rounded up to weather as the back of the boat got mowed over by a breaking whitecap. The boom caught the water and my boat capsized to leeward which meant an easy recovery. But, part of my mainsheet had wrapped around my foot which prevented me from climbing over the weather rail. I had to fall into the water to leeward and swim around to the other side. In the time it took to free my foot, the boat was well on its way to turning turtle.

Fiasco number two for me in the ocean in a Finn grew worse when the centerboard fell into the up position. I had to get it back down (up towards the sky) to use it for leverage in righting the boat. It took considerable effort as it was hard to grip. Once in place, I stood on the rail, pulling on the board trying to get the boat right side up.

The big waves made this impossible. I would make progress, then lose it after getting hit by a big foamer. This process went on far too long. The forward air tank slowly filled with water as did the forward side tanks. The aft tanks were watertight. The boat was beginning to lose much of its forward buoyancy, making the recovery more difficult.

Meanwhile, my fellow Finn sailors sailed by and offered ideas that might help. Also, the Point Evans, a Coast Guard Cutter from Long Beach, was just downwind, by chance. Larry sailed over and asked for assistance. They called the Harbor Department while preparing to launch their inflatable.

I made no progress as now the boat was too full of water. I tried using the mainsheet wrapped around the hull but that didn't help since it tightened the sail which worked against me.

I swam under the boat several times to work with lines. I untied my duffel bag and handed it to Larry and told him there was a radio inside. He thought I was referring to a stereo and didn't even open the duffel bag, much less use the radio. But the Harbor Department, having been called by the Coast Guard was on the way.

We tried using one of their lines tied around the traveler across the boat to right it. The first time the boat just went nose down and pivoted, the second time we almost righted it as I hung onto the stern to compensate for the heavy bow. The mast came out of the water and we could see that the sail was out of the track which caused the mast to break in half. After the second attempt to right the boat failed, I realized it was hopeless and began getting cold. I estimated that I had been in the water for forty-five minutes. I opted to get into the Harbor Patrol boat. It was about 4:30.

We could only tow the boat sideways and made extremely slow progress. I went below and wrapped myself in blankets and began to shiver. I was losing ground to hypothermia and asked the harbor patrol officer to abandon the boat and get me to the dock as quickly as possible. He called another boat to retrieve my Finn and floored it down the harbor entrance towards warmth.

Unfortunately, he didn't go full speed to the dock, throttling back to five knots with a couple of hundred yards to go. I asked them to punch it all the way in. At the dock, I hustled to a locker room where I took off all of my clothes and wetsuit and put on some of the department's sweat clothes, beginning the thawing process.

Later, at The Club, a friend said that she had never seen me so pale and that my lips were blue. I was still shivering. I started my car and blasted the heater. I was warm enough to drive home, shower and put on the warmest clothes I owned. It wasn't until about ninety minutes after reaching the dock, probably three hours after capsizing that I finally lost the tingling sensation in my hands.

While I was at home getting warm the second harbor patrol boat towed my boat to the docks at The Club. When I returned, I saw my boat on the ramp, mast bent 90°, a rather depressing sight. My friend got some pumps, we bailed it all out. More friends helped lift the boat onto the trailer. Not so lucky me.

12. Trials

The Olympic trials.

My trip to Italy underscored the enormity of the Olympic undertaking and the dedication and single-mindedness I didn't possess and had no interest in developing. Sailors were sponsored by clubs, companies and individuals and thus were obligated to devote their entire lives to sitting in their little boats, going around and around in pursuit of glory that only a smidgeon of society cared about and that would soon be forgotten anyway. Regardless, since the whole exercise was coming to my home harbor, I developed my own half-hearted program. I had no sponsors, answered to no one, funded my own equipment and when conditions were windy and rough, went windsurfing. I stayed home while other competitors traveled to pisrons.

For the first time, the Olympic Trials combined men's and women's classes. The Europe Dinghy, a much smaller version of the Finn, is a single-handed boat with many of the Finn's characteristics. For the Trials, then, a whole contingent of women, aspiring to be the Olympic representative in Barcelona, traveled to Newport Beach and The Club, to gain an understanding of the conditions and nuances of the venue.

This influx of athletic women to the party added an entirely new profile to the proceedings. Days spent training in the ocean usually ended with some sort of social gathering that were far more civilized. At last, something was happening at The Club that interrupted, at least for three years, the inevitable march of social standing, weddings and mediocre dining.

I was a member of a small percentage that maintained a career while everyone else trained. I worked every day, "six to two straight through" and then chose from my various options for training which might include cycling, windsurfing, minor weight training on my home machine or even Finn sailing. Sometimes the training consisted of light wind sailing in the harbor with lots of beer or drinks premixed in bike bottles, which paid no benefit other than enjoying life in my usual hedonistic fashion.

Even during the Trials, I worked at The Dump every morning until about ten and then wandered down to The Club. The morning sail out and the afternoon sail in were the highlights of each race day. My racing performance hadn't changed since those early days of the Inslee series. I led my fellow amateurs in light wind and got pummeled by everyone when the unexpected, heavier-than-usual breeze blew me backwards.

My fifty percent effort netted a fifty percent result; I completed the event right in the middle of the fleet, shrugged at the end and wondered what to do next.

The results were forgettable for everyone except the winners. But, their behavior wasn't. The antics of some of the higher profile athletes, both on and off the water were, while sometimes humorous, mostly pathetic.

The race course was so far away from The Club that boats had to be towed out in the morning's light wind. There were even rules for that, including one which outlawed being towed with your sail already hoisted. Even something as innocuous as this caused too many shouting matches across the water. This was the first experience for many of the volunteers operating the tow boats, their lack of knowledge causing a lot of confusion, chaos and in several cases resulting in capsized competitors. One tow I was on got to the race course an hour and twenty minutes early.

The sailors were allowed to take a gear bag with them that they could load with food, different clothing for different conditions and so on. As the starting time neared, we'd offload that bag to one of the officials' boats. I put reading material in mine and spent that extra hour reading the New Yorker and Spy magazines.

In light wind, the racing became artificial. Sailors were restricted from getting their boat around the course as fast as possible. When there is zero wind, a small sailboat can still go if you rock side to side generating apparent wind. You can generate headway by throwing your weight forward and stopping suddenly, something called "ooching." And you can pump your sail, sheeting it in quickly which can help you catch waves. Collectively, "pumping, ooching and rocking" are called kinetics and you're not allowed to do any of it if the race committee thinks the wind is light, like under twelve knots. Everyone has to sit still and their movements are monitored by judges, making sailing more like figure skating. If they don't like the way you're sitting they wave a flag at you and you have to make two 360° turns. This situation provides more fuel for endless arguments.

As usual, I took notes:

There's a Finn sailor who arrived on Friday at 3:30, holding up the entire measurement team. He didn't sign up on Wednesday, and so technically shouldn't even be allowed to race. He's so far back in the pack that today the jury sent him in before finishing because they didn't want to wait for him. Yesterday, he was the last to be towed in and while that was happening a pelican flew over and dropped a giant shit right on his boat and sail. The message should be coming in loud and clear. This person turned out to be one of the nicest men out there. He's 60 years old, maybe 150 lbs. I talked to him for a while the second day after the regatta ended.

***

One Finn sailor who is living out of his van, when talking about going to the movies after race 3, said that he didn't care what movie they saw, he just wanted to sit in a comfortable seat.

***

Several of our close circle of friends came by my house for dinner last night. At The Club, a dozen or so sailors ate bad lasagna that The Club served for free and ended up with the trots and hurling all over. One even had to go to the hospital to be rehydrated by IV. Most of them sailed the next day. One Finn guy filed a protest against the kitchen staff. I don't know what rule that's covered under.

***

One bitch in the Europes protested a really nice lady for allegedly flipping her the bird. Bitch was 3rd in the race trying to gain the 2.7 points between 2nd and 3rd. Maybe some day she'll come to understand that hell is a self created place. She is by far the most unpopular woman competing, placing herself in the ranks of the most unpopular men. It's a large contingency. The next day, a lot of people were making fun of her and her protest, flipping each other off. There was so much talk about the protest that it bothered the nice lady to the point that even though her walkman broke a few days ago, she continued to wear headphones so fewer people would bother her.

13. Playground

A celebration of spray.

From my journal:

By noon a system moved through bringing wind for sailing after work. There was a twelve knot, cool, autumn wind in the deserted harbor and only a few older folks working on their boats at The Club. I brought my own drinks in my bike bottles, one laced with rum, the other with gin.

I left the dock at three and headed for the Pacific, helped along by a strong ebb. Between the jetties I put on my wetsuit and experienced a minor sexual shudder as I looked out into the empty ocean. It was the same feeling I had the first time I sailed a Kite by myself, one summer when I was twelve. I sailed often with a friend in his boat and one afternoon he jumped in the water leaving me in command, alone, protected from all humanity by the harbor's murky waters. I resisted the urge to continue sailing on forever, leaving him behind.

But this day, since I was sailing alone, I went upwind, toward the Balboa Pier, to the "Playground," an area reserved for magnificent sailing that no one else cares to use. Imagine having a park in your backyard that is thirty-five football fields square, an area that magically put forth the best conditions for the game you wanted to play. If it was hockey, it would be all ice, perfectly smooth. If it was golf, the greens would be firm, the fairways immaculate, the views breathtaking, the entire course challenging. Imagine that this park exists on the edge of a society that has no interest in it. They don't see it fit for development, for transportation and no one in the society is interested in playing your game. They look at the Playground but can't access it because the game they play, the one that's more important to them, doesn't use it. Instead, they procreate, they build, they fight amongst themselves, they work, they argue and they destroy, all in the name of keeping their nose ahead in a race designed to one day deliver them to an imaginary place that isn't even a fraction as good as the one they're forsaking. They drive big cars armed with machine guns, idling at signals, sometimes speeding, but mostly creeping on concrete, oblivious to the miracle that exists offshore. So, once again, I entered the Playground alone, crossing a boundary that kept the ills of society far away.

The autumn sun, with its shallow descent angle and southerly touchdown threw light that glanced brightly off the water. The waves were steep and short. The beast became benign. I drove the Finn into the chop along the golden path toward Catalina and adapted to the arrhythmic pitching. Within minutes all reflexes took over and my mind wandered away, ecstatic in solitude yet wondering why there weren't thousands more out partaking in this experience.

The wind waves were big enough that, if viewed from behind through a telephoto lens, the boat would disappear, leaving visible only the beautiful Finn sailplan. From my position on the rail I looked back over the stern quarter, toward the harbor entrance and saw the expanse of the Playground loaded with crests and troughs and its extreme blue. I expected to see an acquaintance who has high aspirations of winning a future Olympic berth in Finns, out practicing. But he wasn't, nor were the masses of society, nor the plethora of weekend sailors, nor the more experienced salts. No one was using the Playground. It was mine, all mine.

I sailed on port tack toward the northern border of the Playground, the long, deserted beach. Short of the pier, I tacked out after crossing the line downwind from the diner, a line marked by intoxicating aromas. As I worked upwind I crossed the mile marker and decided to continue up to the next marker. The wind increased by a knot or two, the waves steepened, jets departed overhead, signals at intersections directed the lemmings, the machines at The Dump spewed information, the earth continued rotating.

At the second marker I started out to sea on a long starboard tack reach. In my training days this was work as I pumped the sail trying to catch every wave, but these days I cleat the mainsheet and sail like I'm driving a seventy-footer. I take the point of sail that allows the boat to remain flat with my weight comfortably on the rail. My speed increases to ten knots or so, higher going down waves. Water flies everywhere. My only limitation to distance offshore is the how far I'd have to swim in should I have an unrecoverable capsizing.

Another extra knot of wind, not significant to anyone but me, put a little extra pressure on everything. I jibed toward shore and lined up better with the waves and rode and rode and rode. The hour and a half had passed either like minutes or days.

On a day when thousands of people paraded to celebrate a victory for a football team in Dallas and then started rioting; when thousands viewed the remains of a sports hero killed by AIDS; when a couple who had children but then left them home alone while they vacationed in Mexico were indicted on sixty-four counts of various crimes; and on the day after three physicians were shot at the USC Medical Center, I found wind and waves in a lumpy ocean and drove my Finn off the coast of Newport Beach.

On the way in I crossed paths with a girl in her Europe Dinghy. Blonde and fit, independent and slightly eccentric, she needed to only wink for me to turn around and go back out with her, adding one to the congregation this day. Instead of heading up the beach on port, we sailed out to sea on starboard, her preference. Her eccentricity causes her to lose sight of reality at times so I pointed out the declining angle of the sun and talked her into riding waves back in. We enjoyed five more knots of wind, steepening waves and an even better riding angle. It is what we live for, this unending slide, this celebration of spray.

Sarby's Epilog

Just a footnote.

Writing about Finn sailing now, I'm closer to seventy than sixty yet I own my sixth Finn and sail it in one of the world's windiest venues. I pick my days trying not to sail in wind over twenty knots. Sometimes the wind sneaks up with a vengeance changing my return to the dock into survival mode.

After a couple of decades of windsurfing, I find myself victim to the rhythm and beauty of the Finn. It is no longer about speed. I take my phone to track my path and wrapped in plastic, my Medicare card.

There was an episode I recall now that wasn't in any of my notes that exemplifies the difference between the true athletes that worked toward the Olympic berth and me, just someone who liked floating.

During the starting sequence for one of the windier races of the Trials, someone more hapless than me got all knotted up and capsized right in the prime starting area within two minutes of the start. This cascaded into significant chaos. The Winner, seeing the problem and the solution, tipped his own boat over and swam over to the afflicted, climbed onto his boat, righted it, assisted the afflicted in climbing in, swam back to his boat, righted it, climbed in, started perfectly and won the race.

He later said, "Well, he was in the way. That was the fastest way to get him out of the way."