A firsthand feel for power of yachting
Hang onto the red rope. Don’t touch anything else. If we capsize, don’t let go.
Russell Coutts, the America’s Cup skipper, was briefing me before I took an extended ride on his Oracle Team USA No. 5 boat last week.
I had hopped aboard the catamaran from a motorboat a few hundred yards off Fort Mason, expecting a relaxed version of what a real race will be like in the America’s Cup World Series, which starts Thursday.
Some relaxation. We pounded over the waves, often with the speedometer showing 23 knots in fairly moderate winds. Three days later, my bruises are fading.
A ride on this 45-foot catamaran is to your average Sunday sail in the bay what the Superman Ultimate Flight roller coaster is to a county-fair pony ride. It’s a full splash of salt water in the face, a torrent of strong winds and a serious rush of adrenaline.
Coutts, the helmsman, and his four-man crew methodically bounded around the trampoline, which is actually a sturdy net stretched between the hulls. Not once did anybody run into each other. Coutts gave instructions almost continuously, and the others did a
lot of talking, too, as they adjusted the sails and the large, fixed wing that really makes this vessel go.
I was positioned on the net in the rear, behind a cross beam. Occasionally, I would accidentally dip a sneaker in the water. In an earlier World Series in Italy, a guest fell into the drink but was able to hoist himself back on board; the crew was much too busy to help him.
We raced through an approximation of what the course will be like. Coutts used a fixed yellow steel buoy as one mark; another was a yellow buoy that the Oracle team positioned at the other end of the course. Coutts and company practiced turns around the marks, over and over.
Coutts frequently called for tacks — turning into the wind — or jibes — turning away from the wind. For the novice clinging to the red rope, each tack or jibe meant scurrying from one side of the boat to the other.
The crew members, in their rubberized shoes, easily jumped to the other side at Coutts’ command. The guest isn’t allowed to stand, so each time I had to scramble on my knees over the central TV camera mount.
On the first tack, I couldn’t budge, pinned down by the centrifugal force. “Just stay there,” somebody said. I eventually figured out how to, at least clumsily, get from one side to the other. My goal became beating Coutts to the other side after he called a tack; the helmsman is generally the last across. I didn’t come close.
Thankfully, I was given kneepads, along with a crash helmet, gloves and a waterproof suit that included a combination flak jacket and life preserver. I thought of Coutts falling through the carbon-fiber wing during a gusty capsize in the bay last year. I held on tighter to the red rope.
Onboard guests are usually wealthy sponsors. During races, guests are not only allowed; they are required — to even the playing field. If the guest doesn’t weigh enough, additional weights are required, like a handicap in horse racing or the weights an undersized coxswain has to pack in a crew race.
I wasn’t the only guest who got a ride from the Oracle bunch. Giants manager Bruce Bochy called his trip “exhilarating” and “intense.”
“You watch how the crew works, and you really appreciate the gifts and talents they have,” he said. “You can see how important teamwork is for them, too. They can’t make a mistake. That can determine a race. Really, I noticed how hard they work, how organized they were and how smart they were.”
He might have added how buff they were. Shannon Falcone, who’s from the Caribbean nation of Antigua, is 6-foot-4 and built like an NFL tight end.
There wasn’t much time for these men to enjoy the scenery — the sun peaking through the overcast on the Golden Gate Bridge, a couple of freighters steaming through, a ferryboat full of gawking tourists, a lonely windsurfer and several other World Series catamarans being put through their paces.
We headed toward Alcatraz, and it occurred to me that if escaped prisoners could have jumped on one of these babies, they could have been sipping cognac in North Beach before the first alarm sounded.
The ride, by the way, is not quiet. The wind and water rushing past a rudder on the side that’s being lifted out of the water produce a loud whistle. The waves at times batter the two hulls in what sounds like a car crash.
Following a brief timeout, Coutts says, “Let’s get going before we bust up.”
I ask him, “Can these hulls break?” “Oh, yeah.” Earlier, I was told that one of the boats of the Swedish Artemis team had capsized the previous day.
I felt a little nervous, just as I had in 1984 when I took a practice ride with the U.S. Olympic bobsled team in what was then Yugoslavia. An American team had crashed a few turns before mine; its helmets were all gashed in the same spots.
That thrill ride lasted 60 seconds. This one lasted 80 minutes and was just as breathtaking. This week’s races might not be quite as exciting for the spectators as they are for the participants, but they should be riveting entertainment.
As for the giant 72footers that will race in next year’s America’s Cup, I imagine what it will be like to be a guest sailor on one of them. And shudder.