After a Chili Dip, Team DC Still On Schedule

By Rich Roberts
For YachtRacing.com

Stars & Stripes mid-bowman Robbie Myles clears USA 77's deck of loose lines and other gear before lifting process is completed.

TERMINAL ISLAND, Calif.---Dennis Conner's new challenge may not be finding sponsors, but finding sponsors who want to go sailing.

When Stars & Stripes USA 77 sank Tuesday, less than two months after its christening, it was only 1 1/2 miles off the beach.

Bill Trenkle, Team DC's general manager and portside sail trimmer, said, "About 99% of the time we're offshore in a couple thousand feet of water, which would have been a bad place to sink."

Especially for sponsors.

Like oneAustralia in '95, USA 77 today would be taking in tenants as the latest fish habitat if it had gone down in the middle of the San Pedro Channel. But on Tuesday it was well inshore in only 55 feet of water as it sailed toward a rendezvous with Conner and some sponsors who were scheduled to join Ken Read and his crew for a spin around the bay.

The plan was to transfer the VIPs in the relatively calm waters behind the Long Beach breakwater instead of the chop of 3 to 4 feet outside. When USA 77 sank, it was about a mile short of the sanctuary.

If USA 77 had to sink, it picked the right time and the right place.

That wasn't the only Force 5 sigh of relief emanating from the Conner camp. As the boat was raised near sundown, observers were alarmed to see an 18-inch-long crack on the starboard gunwale opposite the mast. Later, it was learned there was a similar wound on the port side.

Shades of oneAustralia and Young America? Trenkle says no.

"We heard some cracks when it went down, so we're kind of confused a little bit on whether it was the pressure of the water in the bow or whether it touched the bottom, so we're still trying to sort that out," he said.

"But those other failures happened back by the keel area, which is much more highly stressed, well aft of the mast where the keel is in a much more highly stressed part of the boat. That's where you don't want to have a failure. In the bow of the boat forward of the chainplates, the only structure is some centerline beams that hold the headstay tension. It's not really a critical part of the boat."

The boat was designed by the Reichel/Pugh team of San Diego, which had been on a roll for a week with Pyewacket's record in the Chicago-Mac race and Zephyrus V's first-place finish in the Pacific Cup from San Francisco to Hawaii. John Reichel inspected USA 77 the next day, while Jim Pugh expressed cautious optimism.

"We don't have a complete damage assessment," Pugh said. "What you can see doesn't always tell you how much damage there is, [but] it's very repairable. We're confident that it'll be sailing in September, probably better than it was."

Trenkle echoed Pugh's confidence.

"[USA 77 will] go down to New Zealand and be repaired and we'll be sailing by the end of August, as we planned," Trenkle said. "We have all the boat builders in-house that can do it in our shed. We're pretty sure it's not gonna make a big impact."

USA 66 even went sailing Wednesday, as it was expected to do Thursday, as the camp prepared to close. Read and a three-man crew will be in Newport, R.I. this weekend to compete, as scheduled, in the UBS match-racing challenge.

Then USA 77 will be placed on a container ship Wednesday across a narrow channel from the team's training base on Terminal Island in L.A. Harbor. USA 66 will follow a week later on Aug 6.

The boat was raised to its waterline just before sundown by a barge-mounted crane brought from the base about 10 miles away. The operation so near to shore attracted a couple of dozen spectator boats and a flock of local dinghy sailors.

"The guys with the 505s and A-class catamarans and the kayaks, we weren't too worried about them," Trenkle said, "but we had to move some of the power boats back."

The crowd dispersed after the sun dropped below the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Then USA 77 was lifted completely out of the water, stabilized with lines and toted back to the base suspended beside the Manson Co. barge, called the Valhalla.

"Lifting the boat up, pumping it out, all went smoothly," Trenkle said. "We got it up before the sun went down. We had the right equipment there with the Manson Valhalla."

Professional divers from the Blackledge Commercial Diving were on site an hour after the sinking.

"We needed them to go down with [video] cameras and show us what the situation was," Trenkle said, "how the boat was sitting, whether it was stuck in the mud, whether there was any kind of damage around the keel area that we had to be concerned about when we lifted it up.

"Then [operations manager] Mick [Harvey] and I could look at it on the video camera, and once we knew it was OK our guys---Harvey Davis and Gene Wright---went down and hooked up the lifting gear."

Earlier, observers thought it remarkable that the boat remained upright, as indicated by its roughly vertical mast, although sitting only on its keel.

"The boat actually sank into the mud so it had a nice cushioned landing," Trenkle said. "It was odd when we saw the boat go. [Judging from] the mast, it just slowly stopped moving and then stood up again. It went bow down and settled in the mud, and then because of the air bags in the bow it came upright like it was sitting in a cradle."

Firmly planted in the mud and enjoying the buoyancy of the air bags, USA 77 waited patiently to be rescued.

"We lifted it up to deck level, then pumped it out, took some of the full sail bags out and then lifted her up the rest of the way," Trenkle said.

They were back the base around 11 p.m.

"We just placed the boat in its cradle where it lives every night," Trenkle said.

The crew, especially mid-bowman Robbie Myles who spent a lot of time in the water clearing the deck when it was still awash, were delighted to find a hot meal awaiting them.

"Dennis had come back and made a big pot of chili for all the guys," Trenkle said. "They really appreciated it because some of them had been diving and hooking up the crane and pumping the mast forward to get it out of the way. There were plenty of cold puppies that appreciated the warm chili, and then everybody got home around midnight or 1 o'clock."

He didn't say if that included the sponsors.