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sailingworld.com, [email protected]be replaced before we leave. Harteck
gives it a quick inspection and
confirms the repair can wait another
day. Soon, Sarah and Heather, from
the U.C. Santa Barbara sailing team
arrive. Larry’s boat partner Bill and
their longtime crewmember Dave will
serve as the adults onboard.
On account of there being two
capable hitchhikers, Larry excuses
himself to the club’s second-floor
deck, from where the race committee
will conduct the evening contest.
It’s the second night of the Wet
Wednesday series. The races are “fun”
and don’t count toward the overall
season scores. Hitchhiking is encour-
aged as a way to find or break in new
crew—or simply recruit a few hands
for the night. This particular race will
start between two white, perma-
nent race marks, with a weather leg
to Mark A, a red navigational mark,
down through the starting line, which
is essentially a leeward gate, back
upwind and finish through the starting
line. Twenty-six boats show up, a frac-
tion of the summer fleet, and it’s a
mix of PHRF classics and one-designs.
Paul eventually asks us what we
could do on the boat, which is where
our whole ruse of being joe-schmo
hitchhikers is revealed. My cohort, the
Kiwi photographer often mistaken for
celebrity Guy Fiere, agrees to man the
mast. I’m happy to trim mainsail and
play tactician.
“OK! Let’s go!” he commands as he
bounds into the cockpit and starts
the engine, which rumbles and knocks
to life. Just as we slip docklines, a
drenching squall sweeps down the
emerald mountainside. Everyone
dashes below for foul weather gear
and we hoist the mainsail in the
pouring rain. Wet Wednesday, indeed.
To our south, however, there’s blue
skies, and by the time we’re cleating
the main halyard, a vibrant rainbow
stretches across the sky as the golden
afternoon sun illuminates the Santa
Barbara coastline in a golden veil.
There’s plenty of time to soak in the
scenery, because we’re the fifth of
eight starts. While we’re warming
up, Paul reminds our bowman, Alex,
to keep an eye out for wads of kelp
floating in the racecourse.
“The kelp is back,” Paul observes
aloud as he scans the course. “There’s
a lot of down-coast current, too.”
With strong current oshore, he
assures me the smart strategy will
be to start clean, get right ASAP, tack
in the shallow water and cover any ofthe competition. From there, it should
be straight-forward. Like the savvy
local, he has it figured out already.
Harteck nails the start with a
few feet to spare, reaches back to
pump the backstay a few times and
promptly gets in tune with the boat’s
heel angle. I ask him if he uses target
speeds. Nope. He doesn’t even bother
looking the mast displays.
“It’s all about feel,” he says. “I just
know when it feels slow.”
Our tack toward shoreline current
relief, as planned, is perfect and
the trailing J/105—our primary
competition—is to leeward, so we
wait for them to tack before doing
the same directly in front of them.
Game, set.
Leading around the weather mark,
the mainsheet gets stuck in the jaws
of the cam cleat, but Paul, who can’t
possibly weigh more than 130 pounds
wet, fights the forces of the aluminum
tiller and the big rudder that’s stalled
beneath the boat. Someone on the
crew yells to him to bear away.
“I am,” he responds in a cool,
hushed tone.
Once the spinnaker is set, we try
our first jibe of the night. It’s a thing
of beauty. So is the next, and we’re
still comfortably ahead of our rival,
struggling with its spinnaker.
The gate mark comes quick in
the 15-knot pus and swift current,
which makes our first douse a bit
rushed. In the chaos of the douse, the
jib sheets get wedged in the foredeck
hatch. It won’t roll out, and tension on
the boat is escalating.
Harteck doesn’t say a word,
allowing the team to sort out the
problem themselves. The kid is clearly
not a yeller like his pops. The spin-
naker disappears down the hatch, we
round the mark bareheaded, but the
exit angle is still perfect. The kid is a
natural. Once the jib sheet is cleared,
the grey sail unfurls and fills with a
snap, Dave grinds it home and we’re
headed to the shoreline again. The
boat is quiet, until Paul says to no
one in particular—or maybe it was to
himself—“Well, that wasn’t so good.”
He calls every move of the loose
cover and we win the night’s only race
with ease. We sail straight into the
harbor, douse our sails, and Harteck
glides the boat into its slip with the
precision of a professional boat
captain. We’ve arrived wet, but safe
and victorious, and there’s even cold
beer awaiting. Thanks for the ride, kid.
That was fun. QSAILING WORLD
WET NOTES