Alcyone Sail Training

Hi Leslie,

Here I am trying to fulfill my promise to write the newsletter article about
the McNish Classic race. Our father is pictured below in the blue shirt on his
yawl Cheerio II.

I guess the important thing for people to appreciate is the race in its entire
context. Our father started the race in 1977 so he'd have an event where he
could race his H-28 without getting wiped out by more modern fiberglass
boats. He set it up through his yacht club and for it first fifteen or twenty
years it was called the Pacific Corinthian Classic Yacht Race. Somewhere
along the line, they changed the name to the McNish Classic Yacht Race. It
has forever been raced around a seventeen-mile course which contains almost
no purely upwind legs. You sail starboard tack close reach/close hauled to an
oil platform, you tack around the platform, you sail port tack close reach to
the Ventura buoy, you jibe around that, you sail close reach/beam reach to
the Mandalay buoy, then you crack off to a broad reach, put up your
spinnaker or spinnaker-like sails and race to the finish.

An admirable thing about the race is that it features an inverted start with
the handicap built into the start times so the way boats finish at the end of
the race is their official, corrected finish. This year, for instance, the first of
35 boats started at 1:00 PM and the last, supposedly fastest boat had its
start around 2:40 PM. If the handicapping is correct that gap is closed
throughout the race and the end of the race is exciting with clumps of boats
finishing pretty close together.

For many participants it is their one race of the year. A large portion of the
boats come from ports other than Channel Islands Harbor (this year 5 out of
the 37 boats were from Channel Islands Harbor), several arriving from San
Francisco, Santa Barbara and San Diego. It is a fun event, in part owing to
our father's involvement. Many contestants know that it is "his" race, that it
is his effort and enthusiasm that has kept it going over the years. Our father
is a genial man who puts a lot of effort into making the race special and
friendly. Also, he has taken Cheerio II (Cheerio II, a 46' Shock-designed yawl
built in 1931 and once owned by Errol Flynn replaced the H-28 in 1981) to
other wooden boat races in San Diego, Long Beach and Marina Del Ray. The
Friday and Saturday nights of McNish Classic, the yacht club bar does big
nights, which is why the fancy yacht club puts up with having the rowdy
wooden boats tied up to its guest dock and stuck into empty slips for the
weekend.

Leslie and Sugar have never had Alcyone down for the McNish Classic
because it takes place the first weekend in August, right in the middle of
their charter season. This year they scheduled the beginning of their
year-long cruise to the South Pacific early so they could participate in the
race. That meant, of course, that I should try to bring Valiant down from
San Francisco for the race so all three McNish wooden boats could
participate. It should be noted that Leslie and Sugar raced in the Pacific
Corinthian Classic Yacht Race before they owned Alcyone, in 1983 or 1984,
winning the Sloops and Cutters Class with their rebuilt 20-foot Mermaid
sloop Spray.

My boat, Valiant, is a 45 foot Sparkman and Stephens designed sloop that
was built in Argentina in 1960 and raced in the 60s out of Newport,
California. I have owned her for fifteen years. The last time I had her out of
the Golden Gate and in the proper ocean was ten years ago. During that
time I had the decks replaced which involved my carting a lot of junk that
had been onboard into storage. Much of that junk didn't even deserve to be
stored, but some of it relates to sailing the boat safely up and down the
California coast. Also, I hadn't been too intimate with Valiant for three years
since I'd been living in Baltimore. I had raced her in two recent Master
Mariners Regattas in San Francisco, but when you know your boat will be
back at the dock in the evening and when you don't leave sight of land, you
tolerate a lot of laxity in your boat that you wouldn't allow sailing the 300
miles from San Francisco to Ventura.

Bridget (whom newsletter readers will recognize as the deckhand and teacher
from the Ireland trip) and I moved out of our place in Baltimore at the end
of May when we flew to California and hauled Valiant. Then we went back
to New Jersey to get married, roamed around Europe for a month on
honeymoon, then flew back to New Jersey to pick up our car which we drove
across country. That landed us in Alameda around July 25th with a week to
get Valiant ready to sail down the coast.

We arrived in Oxnard Thursday afternoon. Alcyone was already tied up in
front of the Pacific Corinthian Yacht Club and we rafted Valiant next to
her. The buzz was that the wind had been exceptionally light for August and
our father was worried whether they would have to shorten the race course,
something that had never happened in twenty-eight years. The other buzz
was that Alcyone did not have a lot of crew for the race. They had had a
crew of seasoned sailors with them from Port Townsend to San Francisco,
but the leg from San Francisco to Ventura had been crewed by the family
(Leslie, Sugar, Alyce and Darby), Alyce and Darby's friend Celeste and
Robin, their tutor/crew. The average crew weight for peaking up halyards
was probably around 140 lbs, and there weren't many of them. In order to
remedy that situation, our father had been recruiting crew for Alcyone. The
trouble was his recruitment consisted of sending Alcyone every non-serious
sailor who was looking for a comfy ride on a pretty and stable boat. So now
they were starting to overflow with people who didn't know a raffee from a
radish. The good potential crew members were being sent to Cheerio II,
because our father needs people who know what they are doing in order to
make a good showing. It is, after all, his race, and, at 78, he thinks of himself
as more in need of big guns and rock stars than Sugar.

Channel Islands Harbor had a parallel salty event taking place that weekend.
A tall ships regatta was taking place up and down the Pacific coast this
summer and had landed in Channel Islands that weekend. All around the
harbor, at the larger guest docks, there were larger, salty-looking vessels to
be ogled. The Californian was tied up in front of the Whale's Tale
Restaurant; the Lynx, a 122 foot Pride of Baltimore look-alike was firing off
cannons regularly from in front of a park which one afternoon featured live
music; there was the R. Tucker Thompson, an 85 foot gaff topsail schooner
from New Zealand and a 151 foot steel-hulled brigantine from Antigua called
the Kaisei (by way of Japan, because it had Japanese characters painted over
on its stern). There was the Bill of Rights, a 129 foot Gloucester fishing
schooner recognizable by her white topsides with a big red stripe, Talofa, a
97 foot staysail schooner and Royaliste, a 72 foot gaff ketch that held sea
battle reenactments with Lynx. My research also reveals that at the park
where Lynx and R. Tucker Thompson were docked a bunch of Civil War
reenacters were bivouacked.

By Friday the Pacific Corinthian Yacht Club docks started filling up with
boats. There was Hilda B. Sly, a bright-hulled 42 foot schooner from Morro
Bay; Sally, C.F. Kohler's 1928 10 meter sloop from San Diego; and
Samarang, Ernie Minnie's 62 foot staysail schooner from Newport Beach.
From Santa Barbara there was Orient, a beautifully-restored, 65 foot 1937
sloop. Alsumar, a 70 foot yawl, slid in to raft up beside Alcyone. Somebody
had single-handed a Lapworth 36 down from San Francisco. There was
Bolero, a 44 foot Island Clipper down from San Francisco. There were
smaller, well-loved wooden sloops and ketches. The raft-up in front of the
yacht club was three boats wide and five boats deep, a jigsaw of spars,
varnish and happy sailors. Alcyone had her rowing dories out for people to
go on excursions to watch all the harbor activity. Sugar rowed over to chat
with the Californian. Bridget, Robin, Alyce, Celeste, Darby and Kobo rowed
around the canals behind the bridge (the yacht club dock is built just
overlooked by a bridge, so you would look up from your boat to see joggers
and walkers and sight-seers peering over and you could hear the rattle of
skateboards zooming by above) and then up to look at the tall ships.

That afternoon, Bridget, Alyce, Celeste, Darby and Robin went to see
"Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," returning in time for the
make-your-own taco dinner at the yacht club that evening. After dinner, I,
Jeff, went played guitar to C.F. Koelher's trumpet down in Sally's deep,
narrow, varnished trawler-lamp-lit main saloon. I met C. F. through Leslie
and Sugar aboard the Californian maybe twenty years past. I can remember
playing guitar to C. F.'s trumpet in Alcyone's forepeak in San Diego several
trips ago. Or was it the forepeak of Cheerio?

Saturday: race day! Alcyone had found enough able-bodied sailors to get
around the race course, a couple of them off Kaisei, the result, I think, of a
visit Robin and Alyce made to that vessel. Leslie can record how many total
mouths she served lunch to; the number was considerable. The other issue
that morning was whether there would be wind. At the skippers' meeting an
exceptional announcement was made: For the first time in its 28 year history
the start of the McNish Classic would be postponed for an hour to let the
wind build.

The postponed start made for a rather dispersal of the raft-up in front of the
yacht club. The 52' Cherubini (Hereshoff-like) ketch Spitfire shot off a
cannon as they went by Lynx who then hustled to respond in kind. Sally
sailed off the dock and glided up the harbor in light winds. A nice parade of
wooden boats hoisting sails headed out the harbor entrance. Then they
milled around outside the breakwater, waiting for 1:00 PM, the time of the
first start. Aboard Valiant we ate sandwiches and sailed around following the
many pretty boats that tacked back and forth staying in sight of the
committee boat. The start-the parade of boats awaiting their start times,
readying themselves or killing time or trying to time the most efficacious
approach to the line-can be as much fun as the race.

Then there was a race. It was okay. Because the McNish Classic
handicapping is based on results in previous races, the really good races are
the ones in which the conditions replicate the conditions of the previous
races. Generally, that means that the wind starts out at about 10 knots at
noon and builds to around 15 knots by the finish around 3:00 PM, coming
out of the west, give or take five degrees. Everyone who finds the start line
on time and doesn't break a halyard or something, sails pretty much to their
handicap and finds a couple of good challengers to race against along the
way.

This year the wind never got above 12 knots and in the first hour of racing
(1:00 to 2:00 PM), when the slower boats had their starts, the wind blew
between six and nine knots from the southwest. The first leg, which normally
everyone but the most unweatherly vessels lay in one tack, this year went
unlain by everyone but a few of the most serious race boats, which were built
to point high and which started later, after the wind filled in and shifted
west.

Basically, race boats did well; larger work boats didn't have enough oomph
to get their waterlines working. Most of the drama (frustration might be a
better word) occurred at the first mark of the course, the oil platform Gina,
as boats tried to judge a layline to tack around the platform in the fickle
breeze. A lot of catching up and falling behind was done on that leg. After
that there was the long close reach to Ventura, the jibe, a beam reach and
then the final cracked off leg to the finish. Some boats got caught and passed
in the more normal manner on those legs. As always the finish, just behind
the Channel Islands breakwater, saw most of the boats at their best, sailing
off the wind with every sail they could raise hoisted.

The big fast boats won. First to finish was Miramar, an 80 foot ketch. Second
was Sally, a 59 foot 10 Meter sloop. Then came Orient, a 65 foot sloop. Then,
much to her credit, was South Pacific, a local 39 foot Alden yawl with a
reputation for being slippery. Then came the 44 foot Island Clipper from San
Francisco. Valiant did well, as she should since she's a race boat, finishing
about 20 seconds behind the Island Clipper, to get a fourth in our class.
Alcyone came in third in her class and Cheerio was also third in her class.

The boats paraded back into the harbor, past the tall ships, threading their
way among the regular weekend flotilla of fiberglass sailboats, powerboats
and kayaks. The raft-up was pieced together once more and on the deck of
the yacht club a bustling buffet dinner was consumed and a four-piece jazz
band played. Our father announced the winners and handed out prizes. The
skipper of Miramar, the overall winner, won his weight in champagne.

Sunday, the bulk of the raft-up cast off their lines and headed home. That
evening a bunch of us went to Grandma and Grandpa's house for dinner.
Alyce, Celeste, Darby, Robin and Bridget put on a marionette play authored
by Celeste about Hemingway the Dolphin. When Sugar and group arrived
back at the boat Celeste's family was there waiting, they had driven down
from PT to retrieve their wandering daughter.

Monday, Sugar made new battery cables for my boat, Robin hitched a ride
back to San Francisco she will be returning in October. Monday evening a
bunch of us went to Golf 'n' Stuff where we played miniature golf, drove
go-carts, played laser tag and splashed in little doodle bug bumper boats.
Darby came home sporting an impressive black-eye that she had scored
playing laser tag.

Tuesday, Alcyone and Cheerio were the stake boats for the next leg of the
tall ships race, so around 11:00 AM Tuesday morning Alcyone and Cheerio
headed out to stake. Valiant tagged along, because afterwards Alcyone and
Valiant would sail out to Santa Cruz Island to spend the night.

The race started at 2:00 PM, so there was lots of drifting around watching
the tall ships assemble and listening to skippers passing the time of day as
they communicated on VHF channel 69. The largest tall ship, the 270 foot
Mexican naval barque Cuauht�moc, had been too large to come into Channel
Islands Harbor. It was somewhere else over the weekend, but it showed up
for the race, its first officer speaking on the radio in halting, accented English
with the ASTA (American Sail Training Association) representative aboard
Alcyone, trying to get the skivvy on the race. That was not the first time that
we aboard Valiant had heard that voice. We had left San Francisco in sight
of the departing Cuauht�moc and the first night sailing down somewhere off
Monterey Bay we heard the Cuauht�moc on Channel 16 letting the Coast
Guard know that they had no power and were lying dark somewhere north
of us trying to fix the problem, which they eventually did fix. It had been,
however, an interesting little drama for us to check in on during a midnight
watch.

The race started in winds probably lighter than the Saturday's breezes.
Cuauht�moc coasted to an early lead, having run her engine in gear right up
to the start line, or so it was speculated by a couple of skippers commenting
on Channel 69. The flotilla reached off towards Catalina Island, a
heart-stirring mishmash of older rig variants.

That accomplished, Louise Noeth, photographer and publicist for the
McNish Classic, set out in Alcyone's BT with Alyce at the outboard to
photograph "the McNish fleet" of Alcyone, Cheerio and Valiant. Louise had
a handheld VHF over which she encouraged us catch up with one another in
a relatively close pack so she could get some good shots. Grandpa ended up
to leeward, closehauled, with Louise advising him, "Okay, now Cheerio, just
come a little more to the right [upwind] and close the gap between you and
Valiant."

After pictures, Grandpa and Cheerio headed home and Valiant and Alcyone
sailed to Yellow Banks anchorage at Santa Cruz Island, about twenty miles
from Channel Islands Harbor. Once we arrived and anchored, Alyce, Darby,
Celeste, Meghan and the Celeste and Meghan brothers (John and Rory)
swam over to Valiant and then encouraged us to swim back with them to
Alcyone. I don't swim often in Californian waters, but it was not bad.
Valiant's new knot meter recorded the sea temp as 68 degrees.

We had dinner aboard Alcyone. The next morning a bunch of people went
for a hike on the island and in the afternoon we tried spinnaker flying off of
Valiant. Spinnaker flying is when you anchor your boat from the stern and
hoist a spinnaker off the bow with a bosun's chair tied to the clews. As the
spinnaker fills it lifts up whoever is in the bosun's chair. Opinions as to
whether this is a fun, yacht-y activity or a recipe for disaster vary. Long ago
in New Caledonia, Leslie and I tried it on somebody's boat. I had a great
time. Leslie got her hands all rope-burned.

After sorting out the various lines and figuring out our precautionary
scenarios, I got into the bosun's chair beneath the gently billowing spinnaker.
The spinnaker lifted me up so my ankles dangled in the water, not the result
I expected. I had put on some weight since New Caledonia and maybe the
wind was a little light. Everybody watching me from aboard Valiant started
looking elsewhere, spinnaker flying was deemed a bust. Then a breeze filled
the spinnaker and lifted me about ten feet off the water.

Okay. That was better. I tested it out and maybe went twenty feet high in
the puffs. It seemed safe, so Alyce swam out, got in the chair, the spinnaker
flew and she hung upside down from the bosun's chair suspended in the air.
Pretty cool. Darby was going to give it a go, but in the transfer from one
occupant to the next the spinnaker kind of got away from us. I hung on to
the tag line we had tied to the bottom of the bosun's chair and was lifted
about fifteen feet aloft, encouraging somebody to PLEASE grab the line and
get me down before I gave up my grip. Sugar laughed, dove in and he, Alyce
and Darby rescued me. It seemed as though the breeze was picking up a bit
and that maybe the spinnaker was a little large for Darby-how would we
ever get her down? So Sugar went for a ride and then we gave up.

Valiant sailed back to Channel Islands Harbor that afternoon to get ready to
go north the next day. Alcyone stayed out that evening and came back in the
morning. Sugar helped me and Laurie Moore, my crew from San Francisco,
take the boat back north. It was a very benign, un-windy, overcast or foggy
trip with a lot of whale sightings on the calm sea. We stopped in at Morro
Bay, had dinner with Laurie's dad who lives there, had a wander around
town and took in a movie. The next morning we had breakfast at a nice
diner, bought reading material at a used bookstore and were underway for
Monterey by noon. We arrived in Monterey at 8 the next morning, where
Laurie, Sugar and I had breakfast at LouLou's caf�, next to the lift where, in
pre-Alcyone years (1983), Leslie and Sugar had hauled out and trailered
their newly purchased Mermaid sloop. Around noon, Leslie arrived from
Ventura to gather up Sugar. Laurie and I could manage the final stretch
north to San Francisco, since I knew the way from there and Sugar had to
get back for more Alcyone adventures, sailing the schooner to Catalina to
avoid the full-moon, low tides which would ground Alcyone in front of the
Yacht Club.