The mainsail and genoa filled with a thump as we began tacking back and forth to head out towards where we could see the committee boat dropping an anchor. It would mark one end of the starting line for the race, and they’d set an inflatable buoy to mark the other end when they were sure that the wind direction had settled in for the morning. We were the first boat out near the start, but we could see a steady procession of racers leaving the harbor behind us. The starting gun for our class would be fired at 0900, and I planned on using the time we spent waiting to practice a few sail changes with Clark and Ratso. When the ten-minute warning flag was raised on the committee boat, we began jockeying for position with the other eighteen boats entered in our class. I tacked towards the line at the two-minute mark. We sped along on a broad reach with nine other J-24’s all nearby. We hardened up to a beat and crossed the line in second place just as the gun went off. It was a good start for us. I gave the tiller to Clark, and left him to sail the boat with Ratso trimming the sails. J=24’s don’t have anything below decks even coming close to a chart table, so I spread out a plastic laminated chart on the windward thwart and began plotting our strategy for sailing to the first downwind leg with parallel rules and a grease pencil.
This would be my life for the next week and I reveled in it. Sailors live their lives on a slant as the boat is heeled over to one side or the other most of the time. You are constantly in motion at sea, adjusting to the movement of the vessel. It’s almost like continuous isometric exercise, and if you’re a lifelong sailor nothing seems more natural. After offshore trips of a week or more, this constant movement of your body while at sea makes it problematical for a bit when stepping onto dry land. Your balance seems all wonky until you get acclimated to the fact that your world is not heaving around anymore.
As I laid aside the chart and grease pencil, I realized that Clark was sailing the boat intuitively for the first time since I’d known him. Sailing any vessel well is a skill, which has to be felt as well as learned. This is particularly true of racing sailboats, which require constant trimming to get the best speed out of the boat. Clark was letting ¾ Time find her way through the swells rather than fighting the tiller to stay on a course, and he was taking advantage of each slight increase in the breeze to work his way to windward. The upwind legs of any race are usually where the race is won or lost. “Yo, Clark. You’re doing a great job there today!” A big grin on his face said it all. I used my handheld compass to take a bearing on the mark for the first downwind leg. It was a big orange float that we could just make out on the horizon about three miles away. “I think we’ll give it another mile or so and tack. We’re going to have to work our way upwind a bit more before we can lay the line to the buoy. The breeze seems to be freshening a bit. At this point in our previous races together, I would have taken the tiller, but Clark was “in the zone” for the first time, and I didn’t want to take that away from him.
“Hey Ratso”, I said. “Wanna get the chute ready and I’ll trim for a bit?”
“Sure Jimmy. I’m on it.” he replied. He passed me the mainsheet and flipped the leeward jib sheet at my feet. Trimming was minimal at the moment as the wind was fairly steady at about twelve knots, and our sail selection was optimal for the moment. Ratso was the perfect size for a foredeck man on this small boat. He was stocky, wiry, and only about five foot six. Unlike larger boats, the foredeck on a J-24 is tiny and narrow. Agility and balance are needed to be able to work the foredeck effectively. I kept my eyes on our three closest competitors as he dragged the spinnaker in it’s bag up forward and used the brass clips on the sail bag to fasten it down to the small pad eyes near the rail. Next he fixed the spinnaker pole to its ring on the mast, and laid the other end of the pole on the deck just inside the bow pulpit. Running the spinnaker sheets thru the snatch blocks and back to the cockpit completed the job, and he rejoined us aft. “All set, skipper.” he said to Clark, showing me that he’d picked up on the fact that I wanted this to be Clark’s race.
The wind was veering around ever so slightly and the waves in the sound were getting larger minute by minute to the point where we were getting splashed in our faces with the warm eighty degree water every It was quite a contrast to getting soaked while sailing some of the regattas in northern waters like Block Island Race Week. I gave it another quarter mile before I judged that we could lay the line to the mark, and said to Clark, “Tack when you’re ready.”
“Ready about. Hard alee.” said Clark, as we all scrambled to the starboard side with ¾ Time now in perfect position to round the buoy. I stood by the spinnaker and jib halyards while Ratso made ready to help douse the jib and set the chute. He raised the spinnaker pole into position. We had only one J-24 a few boat-lengths ahead of us, and two more were alongside just windward of us. The orange marker was looming larger and larger as I said to Clark, “Pinch her up a bit” and called out to the other two boats, “Buoy room, please. Starboard tack!” We rounded the race marker by inches with only a few feet separating us from the closest J. I dropped the jib and hauled up the spinnaker as we came around on the new heading. The chute filled with a whomp, and we immediately picked up speed on a broad reach to the next mark.
“That was perfectly done”, I said to Clark. “We stalled those other two boats just enough at the mark. We’re in a solid second place and the lead boat is only a few boat lengths ahead of us. Now, let’s see if we can catch him before the next mark.” We spent the next half hour dogging the wake of the leader, and entered into a tacking duel on the next upwind leg, with Clark at the helm all the way. I could tell that Ratso was itching to sail the boat, but he was experienced enough to know that that wasn’t going to happen unless we were either in a commanding lead, or far back in the fleet.
The final leg to the finish line off Man O’War Cay ended up being dead downwind, and even though we tacked away from the other boat in search of better air, the other J-24 crossed the finish line three boat lengths in the lead as we converged. There was no shame in that at all, as that other boat had been last year’s champion in this series. And was owned by a local far more familiar with these waters than we were. This was Clark’s best ever finish in a race since he’d bought the boat, and he just could not stop reliving every moment as we stowed the sails, mounted the outboard, and motored into the anchorage to tie up alongside Vamp. Clark’s reunion with AJ on Vamp began the reliving of the race all over again, and with smiles on our faces, Ratso and I settled back to relax in Vamp’s cockpit with tumblers of Mount Gay over ice and canapés provided by Birgit.
After a while, Clark and AJ climbed down onto their little boat to straighten up a bit, and I went below for a shower and a snooze before the party ashore. With the first day’s racing concluded and yet another dinner ashore sponsored this evening by Bacardi Rum, I needed a quick nap before the festivities. Following Batista’s routing from Cuba by Fidel Castro, the Bacardi family relocated the headquarters of their distilling empire to the Bahamas. It was a great party all over again, and made that much more enjoyable by the absence of Birgit’s nasty little nuisance fellow of the previous evening. Felipe was also nowhere to be seen which bothered me not in the slightest.
The next week sped by in a blur of picture perfect days and great parties in the evenings with lots of local delicacies to feast on, paired with copious amounts of booze supplied by the various race sponsors. When the final evening rolled around in Marsh Harbor, ¾ Time ended up in the third place overall in the J-24 class. Even A.J. joined us for one day’s racing, and took a turn sailing the boat. The two of them had a lot more confidence in their abilities now and were planning to make the return trip to Miami in company with the other J-24’s without our having to chaperone the fleet. It had been a welcome respite from Miami’s summer heat and humidity, but now our next move was going to have to be the agreed upon rendezvous at Little Stirrup Cay.
Birgit and I agreed on a six am departure to make Little Stirrup Cay by late afternoon. Clearing customs was not an issue as Bahamian Customs were not really strict except when you arrived by conventional methods like airlines or cruise ships. I don’t think any of the racing fleet had bothered to check in. In fact, when Birgit and I had made landfall at San Salvador last April returning from the USVI‘s, we went looking for a customs office to check in. and were told by the local constable. “Welcome to the Bahamas, Mon.” He did not even ask to see our passports, and just suggested that we check with Customs in Nassau if we stopped there.
