Yacht Club Time Machine

Yacht Club Time Machine

By Ryan O’Grady

The New York Yacht Club’s Annual Regatta is always as much spectacle as it is a regatta. Really, how many other weekend regattas have a Volvo 70 entered in IRC? This year the boat porn quotient of the event was raised even higher with the approaching starts of the Transatlantic Challenge and J Class Regattas. Walking the piers of Newport Shipyard, you’d be treated to the enormous, odd, yet strangely beautiful Maltese Falcon, the VO 70 on steroids Rambler 100, her archrival ICAP Leopard, the stunningly beautiful J Class Valsheda, Puma’s Mar Mastro, and a collection of the hottest racing boats on the east coast. (If you missed the spectacle, check out the US Sailing Roadshow blog at ussroadshow.blogspot.com for a video tour) Walk a little further down the pier, though, and you enter the yacht club time machine. Nestled amongst the carbon behemoths are the 12 meters, ghosts from the day when the Americas Cup was really Newport’s Cup. For over 50 years, the 12’s have graced the waters of Newport and they show no signs of going away anytime soon.

With a length of around 70 feet, and a whopping displacement of around 60,000 pounds, the 12 meters have been lovingly referred to as “The world’s most expensive way to sail at 8 knots.” Everything about these boats is big and heavy. If you need to do a headsail change, bring friends as the genoas weigh in at close to 85 pounds each. (Yes, that’s an aramid sail. I feel really bad for the traditional 12 meter crews who are stuck with Dacron cloth!) From my spot in the trimmer pit of the modern 12 meter Victory 83, I’m immune from hauling jibs around this week. I just need to worry about a jib sheet with 15,000 pounds of load wrapping around my waist and cutting me in half. With wind speeds hovering in the upper teens for racing, a misstep could lead to serious injury. I try to keep that thought out of my mind as I ask for the backstay to be tightened over 12,000 pounds….

12 meter yachts were used in the Americas Cup from 1958 to 1987. When the Cup came out of retirement after the wars, the 12 meter was seen as a cost sensitive alternative to the J class. Since it was also based on the internationally popular International Rule, global support for the class was also present. 12 meter yachts were built to Lloyd’s standards, a main reason why so many hulls are still sailing. (Does anyone really expect to see any IACC yachts sailing in 5 years, let alone 50 years from now?) Newport became home to the 12’s, and many of the historically significant yachts still sail regularly. Columbia was the first yacht to successfully defend the Cup twice. Intrepid also defended the Cup twice and was a critical component to 4 Cup campaigns. Ted Turner’s Courageous still patrols the waters off Newport, and is still very fast. Even New Zealand’s “plastic fantastics” from 1987 are here. Remember these, the first fiberglass 12 meters that caused Dennis Conner to say during a famous press conference “The last 20 12 meters have all been built from aluminum, why would you build one from fiberglass unless you want to cheat?” 12 meters even became movie stars in the movie Wind.

While the yachts are pieces of history, it’s the crews that make sailing on a 12 meter worthwhile. I remember watching the 1987 Americas Cup on TV as a kid. The guys who were crewing the 12’s then are still crewing the 12’s now. The stories and the camaraderie drive the yacht club time machine. Every time I sail, I feel like a kid living out his dream of waking up as a member of his favorite sports team. I’ve heard what it felt like to be part of the crew of Australia II when they finally defeated the New York Yacht Club in 83 so many times that I feel like I was there. Their stories have become our stories, and the good old days have never ended. Last fall, the 12 meter legends officially gathered in Newport for a reunion coinciding with the North Americans. There I was, sailing with and against the likes of Ted Turner, Dennis Conner, Russell Coutts and Gary Jobson to name but a few. It was 1983 again, just without the big hair and short shorts.

Back to reality, the weather mark is approaching, again. The Race Committee has given us two 6 leg short track races in a row on a windy day. Things are happening fast, even on a 12 meter. There’s a constant spray of water in my face as we pound through short Bay chop. We’ve managed to push Intrepid to the other side of the course and now there’s one final cross before the mark. Victory tacks with a series of creaks and groans as the sheets unload. Grinders toil to bring in the big genoa one last time. We round ahead of the fleet again and hoist the big symmetrical spinnaker for the final run to the finish. (No Wind fans, we don’t have a sail called a “whomper”) The pole gets squared back and Victory pushes away the sea at 8.5 knots. Assuming we don’t really screw up, the regatta is won. All too soon, the yacht club time machine will return me back to the present, but for now, I’m really enjoying living in the past.