Yesterday I volunteered, and was accepted to crew on a Bahamas sloop, Thunderbird, to crew in the regatta. I don’t have much time to talk about it this morning as I have to head to shore to crew today.
I will say that the wind yesterday was amazingly strong, gusting into the high 20s with seas to match. These lightly ballasted boats rely on crew to keep the boats upright. As the boats are very heavily canvassed, the crew, some in the 250lb range (there are 5 including the captain) have to hike out on long wooden boards that stick way out over the water to weather. This means that when the boat tacks there is a mad scramble from one side of the boat to the other, all the while moving these heavy boards to the other side of the boat.
Once in place on the board you, that means me, scramble out to the end of the board to get enough weight outboard to keep the boat from tipping over. Oh yea,I forgot to mention that these long boards are varnished to a high gloss so that you can slide easily outboard. That’s good except that the slippery boards also make it really, really easy to fall overboard. Oh yeah, there are no life jackets aboard. As you can imagine, everyone holds on like their life depends on it, and it does.
I’ll be writing more about this but for now it’s sufficient to say that this was the most adventurous sailing I have ever done and my arm muscles are sore today from gripping on for dear life all.
As we were blasting to weather, it was a two leg race, one to weather and the other a drag race back to the starting line, we were submarining into each wave with tons, or at least many gallons, of water coming aboard with an electric bilge pump running non stop to keep up with the on-slot.
Of the 9 boats that were competing from all over the Bahamas, many brought to the race on the deck of the mailboat from Nassau, most all were crewed by Bahamians and there were precious few non-locals and a lot fewer little white guys like your’s truly on board.
I have to say that the race, and they only had one because of the very strong winds, was really fun. I think that it is safe to say that the race was the most fun I have ever had while being terrified at the same time.
Hope to have even more fun, and be a little less terrified today.
Oh yeah, we came in second. I expect that we would have had a better chance of winning if we hadn’t run aground near the weather mark. But, that’s another story.
Wish me luck.