Around Long Island Race
July 31st to Aug. 2nd 2003
By Arielle Jamil

Navigator, J/39 “Fast Lane”

What woman wouldn't say 48 hours on a boat with nine men is a grueling experience? With the weather shifting from one extreme to another, contending with strewn underclothing, wet gear and one head for ten people, it wasn’t a weekend at the spa.

This chick sailor woke early and caught a cab to North Cove Marina in front of the World Financial Center. Docked there were the well-known racers Harrier and Carrera. We were a second late for the ferry, but just in time for another pulling in. Our excitement built as we crossed through the swells of New York harbor.

Captain Bob Andrew’s J39 “Fast Lane” was easy to spot with, as usual, its raked mast. I always tease him that someone fell asleep with the backstay on. Good thing they did it again because Liberty Marina was crowded with pre-race transients, all gearing up and washing down their topsides, as was Bob was when we arrived.

The crew musters aboard; we discuss positions, watch details, meal times, etc. Bob’s watch includes: “little” Billy Fike, a sail maker and aspiring pirate, on foredeck; Justin Bonar, Bob’s former partner and a fine skipper himself; Lloyd Lineman, a funny and talented seaman; and Chris Cranos, an experienced sailor and handsome “playboy” who seems to spend more time behind a helm than an office desk.

My watch captain is Pat Croke. Pat races his own Soverel 33. He is quiet, with a leadership and integrity vibe about him which is very cool for a seaman. Rounding out Pat's watch is: Terry Smith, an excellent helmsman and sailor whom I had met on Fast Lane on a previous day race; Shawn Mullane, also skipper of his own vessel and foredeck for this race; Larry Mead, a professor of politics at NYU, an excellent sailor with a remarkable knowledge of knots; and me. I'm the “sailing chick,” out to prove I had nothing to prove, except that I wasn’t just Justin’s tag-along girlfriend. “I’m the nagivator,” I joke, a name Justin reserves for me when I back-seat drive. Maybe "Naviguesser" is more appropriate.

After our last race, Captain Bob assigned me the Navigator position for ALIR. I’m glad to have the option to wake Justin, in case the instruments decide to tell me something erroneous. The weather was forecasting an easy ten knots out of the east, but at the start it got cloudy with gusts up to 18-20 knots from the east with swells that were probably around five feet high. I could tell we were in for one serious blow and shuddered at the thought of taking knockdowns.

After greasy burgers at the Lightship Grill, we board Fast Lane and depart Liberty Landing Marina at noon, leaving an active metropolis and the shadows of skyscrapers in the gathering storm clouds. The main sail went up sometime after the Verrazano Bridge; we raised our headsail while passing the Rockaway Beach inlet.

Fast Lane, like me, was ready to take it. She was outfitted with a Kevlar main, carbon fiber jib and a new asymmetrical kite. I was outfitted in my Helly Hanson foulies, Yankee baseball cap and over-geared as usual with polypropylene socks and gloves and climber’s headlamp. I’m a girl: I have to have my stuff. There were no wind instruments. The Ockam and several important nav instrument lights had a short. I had brought along some red glow sticks which were put to good use later, replacing the faulty binnacle compass light.

After banging around in sequence for a half an hour, our fleet's flag was raised at 1530hr. Our start was clean; we were set to go with the #3 jib and the full main. The pound was so hard that first few miles that a few of the men got sick – I struggled to hold down the earlier day’s greasy burger which I felt in the back of my throat. I didn’t want anyone thinking the girl couldn’t take it, so I stole downstairs to take a prescription anti-nausea pill I had from a previous food poisoning bout. It worked like a charm.

About a quarter of our starting fleet tack SE. Perhaps they knew it wouldn't be so rough out there. Later I learned that a few held that tack all the way out and then only had to tack back once to round Montauk. That seemed like the right idea to me, but not knowing the course line very well I chose to keep quiet and suffer through the pound of the beach wind and currents. Every few waves there was one that made my soul shudder as I felt pity for the boat’s hull and the pressure she was enduring. The man-overboard pole fouled itself in the runners, so we fixed it to deck on the port side.

Although I like to consider myself a tried-and-true, tough-as-nails sailor, the woman inside me was completely repulsed at the condition of the main cabin, which was consumed with personal gear bags, wet foul-weather gear and a massive and heavy pile of damp sails. There were also remnants of our spilt beef stew dinner. From the overhead rails hung more foulies, harnesses, and lines that swung back and forth in harmony with the boat. It might have been a seaman’s paradise. But this galley wench, playing pirates all weekend with Billy Fike, roared in her best pirate's drawl, "Yaaar… pass me my grog,” because she really needed a drink.

Our watch was to get the first rest so that we would be strong for the 11PM to 3AM shift. I may have slept two hours, dreaming I was inside a washing machine, only to wake to my own body being tossed in the rinse cycle. Good thing I was able to dress and go topside quickly because I was nauseous at this point. Justin and Bob took one look at my green face and warmly invited me to join them on their watch.

The shifts change and we sit, huddled on the rail “experiencing” the joys of sailing, i.e., the supernatural force that is pounding us into the sea, rain drops like pin pricks and howling wind. I particularly appreciated that large wave that soaked my ear, eardrum and entire face. Although I have been in worse, I hold my breath for a catastrophe when every six-seconds brings large wave, .

Surprisingly, I slept quite soundly from 3 to 6AM and joined the other watch for their last hour, adding to my six hours of work ahead. They had the new asymmetrical spinnaker up because (I think Captain Bob wanted to play with his new sail) the wind had swung southeast as we had reached the final hours to Montauk. Around 1400hrs, a very “fogged in” sound of what had to be Montauk light was heard by all and I darted below to obsess on the laptop about skirting us around any visible and not-so-visible obstructions that I knew lay in our path.

I stayed up with the other watch to help round Montauk, because it was so beautiful and I don’t sleep during the daytime, no matter how tired I am. I worked for some time to calculate the appropriate course to Plum Gut, but even with Bob behind the helm and me at the nav desk, Fast Lane gropes high and low of the course line.

The line from Montauk to Plum Gut was tenuous at best; the winds shifted for at least two hours and Bob was doing his best trying to position us on the best side of the gut to make our cross through. Finally giving up on the reacher, we put the #1 back up and slowly made our way through the cold depths of the Plum Gut, depths that can pull you through at accelerated speeds. We hugged the west end of Plum Island Beach while reading the restricted government island signs with binoculars. It's illegal to land on this infamous island that many say is used for experiments involving animals and anthrax.

The ALIR is really three races in one. The first race is the race to round Montauk. The second is getting through Plum Gut. The race that made all the difference this time was the race to get home – down to Hempstead Harbor via Long Island Sound. Here we averaged 7-8 knots down the final course of the race for many hours, all guns pointing at Stratford Shoal. The other watch passes the shoal but I decide to join them half way throughtheir watch. Not surprisingly, as soon as my watch was up the wind dropped to a desperate nothing; we sat watching the fog rolling in and our time running out.

At Eaton’s Neck we were totally becalmed. We watched the same lights and listened to the same foghorn coming from the Eaton’s Neck light for what could have been an eternity, but in reality was probably around four hours. We were forced to anchor for about an hour because the tide turned against us and we started to drift backwards. This lasted until breakfast, and then happened again right after breakfast, this time for about 4 hours. We even managed to come within spitting distance of the G15 buoy off Eaton’s Neck, because the ebbing tide had placed us right in its path.

At this point, I was so hot, frustrated and overtired, I decided I smelled just as bad as the men did so I took a cold-water shower in the head. I emerge refreshed; not forgetting I was one woman on a vessel; I decided not to use any fragrant lotion lest I have a mutiny of hungry-eyed sailors forgetting I was also crew.

The wind, as it does, playfully teased us until its creeping return from all sides. We watched a pathway of wind closer to the land push along a long parade of racers, a parade that we were sorely not a part of. We finally catch it after what seemed to be an entire morning set adrift; we return to our course line set for Hempstead Harbor, which we reached around 1:30.

The finish lies just off the Sea Cliff breakwater between the breakwaters edge and the race committee boat. It is now clear that several boats, not only in our class but from classes above and below had finished before us, most likely missing the two maddening calms we had just suffered through, allowing both larger and smaller boats to slip through, which accounts for such a strange result board.

We end up sixth out of ten in our class and 30th out of 78 in the fleet. Our class was won by Vamp, a J44, by nearly six hours on corrected time. I later heard they had been one of few in fleet to tack out once and then tack back once around Montauk, timing the southeasterly correctly, which had come in quicker then expected. They missed the fight between current and wind, (which was responsible for much of our pound), and received better winds that pushed them a full tide cycle ahead of us, allowing them to hit the becalming at the flood (propelling them still forward), instead of the ebb, which pushed us backwards.

I was happy and sad to leave the journey. Part of me even felt I could've just kept sailing, from race to race, and to far off ports.

Arielle Jamil