| September 1996 | Lake Champlain's Newspaper | Volume 5 Number 8 |
| Front-page | Sports | Features | News | Editorial |
Zoe's Great Adventure
Good-bye VT..Hell-o Newport!
by Zoe Kangas
’m just
back from the Nood in Newport and now I know exactly why everyone wants to go. Let me back
up. NOOD stands for National Offshore One-Design. Sailing World Magazine runs a series of
six regattas across the US offering big boats the opportunity for some really competitive
one-design racing. The clincher for Nood attendance however, is the absolute dedication of
the organizers to maximizing the socialbility/hospitality (fun) index, a job at which they
excel. From the moment I arrived in Newport on Thursday evening, until the exact second I
was dragged from the hospitality tent Sunday, it was just one boffo event after another.
I managed to snag a ride on “Stampede”, the J-44 that Paul Beaudin sails on out of New York. The scheduled bow guy is a no-show, so I now own the pointy end of a J-44. There was only one problem! I’d never run a bow that big before, heck I’d never even attempted a dip-pole jibe before. Luckily I had canvassed my local big-boat gurus before I blew town and the secret to success was reveled to me; do anything just don’t put the guy in backwards. Cake!
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| Real men don't dance....they "Stampede"! |
I met the rest of the crew and they were big and they were mouthy and it was pretty much a dead heat between whether they were more serious about going fast or having one heck of a good time. They laughed at sleep depravation. They got asked to leave bars. They danced on the rail to the really loud drum music of their fight song every time we left port. They yelled things at other racers that made them cry - from laughing so hard but when the warning gun went off you coulda’ heard a tell-tale drop, and I needed these guys to be right on. I was beginning to realize that a large part of staying alive was going to be surviving the rest of the crew.
It was a gorgeous sight to behold: J-44’s and 35’s, Frer 33’s, Mumm 30’s and Melges 24’s, all leaving the Newport Sailing Center and parading out to our respective race courses with brightly colored, quirky battle flags and pennants flying. We motored through the fleet of observation boats and well wishers, past the majestic QE2 at anchor off Goat Island full of passengers anticipating the Newport Jazz Festival which began that evening, past the carefully manicured endless expanses of lawn surrounding the seaside cottages of the descendants of robber-barrons and sea captains. It felt pretty darn cool. When we get out to the general vicinity of the course and I’m looking forward to a little bit of practice before racing: a hoist, a douse, a coupla’ jibes, just to get the kinks out. Nope! The afterguard is worrying about genoa shape and spends all the time before the prep signal adjusting leach lines and lead positions. So be it. The first race “Stampede" shows me the reason the crew’s so cocky—blazing boats speed. We’re smoking’ off the wind, first at the leeward mark, but our brain-trust is still unhappy with our sail shape and we have to duke it out back to weather for one more go ‘round. We got clipped at the upwind finish, a nose-hair out of first due to a questionable unfinished tack on the line by “Maxine”. Me, I was just happy to alive. Catchin’ a ga-zillion pounds of spinnaker pole coming at me at 90 miles an hour was “fun” enough without having to worry about slammin’ the new guy in the right way, popping the trigger and getting the whole rig back up in the air. By the end of race two our worst finish of the series in fourth due to ending up on the wrong side of a viscous shift, I was personally having a major blast. My pole trimmer and I had gotten our acts synchronized and we’d almost gotten to the point where I didn’t have to catch the pole at all, just slam the guy in on the way through. I was enjoying the heck out of the force, speed and the plain old vantage point of this big boat.
Friday, after racing it was time for refreshments and awards at the hospitality tent. I liked the hospitality tent a lot. Everywhere you turned there were new friends to make. There was plenty of hot tasty food, the music was jammin’. (Bacardi and Samuel Adams were regatta sponsors). Eventually, the thirteen of us rallied up at the crew house just off the main drag for showers and evening plans. Although there’s an awful lot to see and do in Newport, I was in bed every night by 2100, dreaming little sailor dreams. Really!
In Saturday’s two races we finished second and third in wildly variable conditions. All the J-44’s were invited to raft up for cocktails and hors’deouvers on a 50' version of a Mississippi river boat owned by one of the skippers . I won’t mention smoked salmon, pate or ubiquitous cold shrimp in case you haven’t eaten yet, but it was quite a treat. Sunday was navigation practice. Visibility was fine at the docks, and we tossed a line to a local Melges aficionado John Kimura, hoping to get him out on the course before the rest of his fleet so he could get a jump on the competition. The only problem was once we got him there you couldn’t see anything. Everybody followed the race committee around electronically in pea soup fog until 1300 when the days racing was finally canceled due to not being able to see two boat lengths in front of you (actually, a fairly common vision quirk among sailing types).
At the awards ceremony “Stampede” had to settle for a second place finish, but considering the first, second and third places were separated by only 1/2 point each I wasn’t ready to throw myself on my spinnaker pole just yet. I thought it was a wonderfully competitive and social regatta and recommend it. If you don’t believe me, just ask “Stampede’s” crew chief. He’s bringing some crew up to sail the J-24 Lake Championships in September because I told him how nice the boaters were in Vermont.
Zoe Kangas works at Performance Sailing in Burlington, Vermont.
