WEST ISLAND
SECTION/REGATTA
STEPHANIE WHITTAKER
SPECIAL TO THE GAZETTE
Chutzpah: noun; Yiddish; 1) The state or quality of
being
brazen and arrogantly self-confident; gall, nerve, presumptuousness.
2) What you need when you participate in a regatta, knowing almost
nothing
about sailing, two weeks after failing a basic sailing course.
Chutzpah and a healthy ego. My friend, Anthony
Synnott, and I
needed both recently when we sailed in the Montreal One Design Regatta
at the
Pointe Claire Yacht Club. In fact, a strong ego comes in handy when you
place
dead last in every race. And chutzpah is essential when you¹re
sailing in the
company of seasoned, world-class sailors who complete their races in
the time
it takes you to say: ³Ahoy, ye maties, pass the rum. And by the
way, where¹s
the wind coming from?²
Our little exercise in humiliation began over
Christmas
dinner last year when Anthony and I made a pact to learn to sail
together at
the Pointe Claire Yacht Club. Neither of our spouses had the
inclination or
time to join us in this pursuit.
So eager were we to learn, in fact, that we were the
first of
the season to sign up for a 14-hour course that would teach us the
rudiments of
sailing dinghies, those little two-person boats that don¹t have
cabins. In a
perfect world, we would each have mastered the basics by now and been
granted a
so-called ³White Sail² certification, approved by the
Canadian Yachting
Association. Anthony, who has a history with boats owing to the fact
that he
spent his youth in Her Majesty¹s Royal Navy, passed the course.
Alas, I did not
because of a teeny, tiny, little mistake.
Anthony, whom I¹ll henceforth always think of as
the most
forgiving of my friends considering the awful thing I did to him, got
his
certification by demonstrating a strong grasp of the skills taught by
our
instructor, Robert Fradette, whom I¹ll henceforth always think of
as the most
patient of all teachers.
In the fourth and last of our lessons, Robert
announced that
we¹d practice a ³man overboard² exercise, in which
Anthony would jump into the
water and I would single-handedly maneuver the boat to save him. Clad
in a wet
suit and life-jacket, Anthony threw himself into the drink and spent
the next
20 minutes being anointed by Eau de Lac St. Louis while I swerved off
toward
Khanawake in an out-of-control boat. My efforts to save my sailing
partner saw
me circling him in an ever increasing radius until it was left to the
patient
Robert to fish him out of the lake, into the crash boat. Later, on
shore, I
grudgingly acknowledged that I was not ready to be certified as
competent.
Despite this inauspicious event, I was terrified and
thrilled
when Anthony suggested we enter the fifth annual Montreal One Design
Race, a
weekend-long regatta hosted by our club. Having joined Pointe Claire
Yacht Club
as non boat owners (or NBOs, as they¹re called), we have access to
the
club-owned fleet of dinghies; we would sail in one of the 420s in which
we¹d
taken lessons. Actually, only Anthony had access to the fleet because
he¹d been
certified. So it was agreed he¹d skipper and I¹d crew.
For the uninitiated, One Design refers to the fact
that each
fleet of boats sails in its own race against others of its kind. In
other
words, it¹s apples with apples and oranges with oranges rather
than the
apples-and-oranges-together approach that characterizes other sailing
races, in
which each class of boat gets a handicap. Nine 420s would compete
against each
other while two other dinghy classes, Fireballs and 29ers, would each
have
their own races.
In all, eight classes of boat (the others included
Sharks,
Mirage 24s, Etchells, Stars and 49ers) sailed in seven races on three
separate
race courses throughout the two days. The regatta attracted 75 boats
from yacht
clubs around Lake St. Louis and the Lake of Two Mountains.
Most of the competitors in the 420 fleet were
teenagers and
young adults from PCYC¹s junior squadron.
For Anthony and me, Saturday was a fascinating lesson
not
only in trying to assess where the wind was coming from but in
maneuvering our
boat as the breezes constantly oscillated. Just when we thought
we¹d nailed our
direction, the wind would either shift or disappear altogether and
we¹d be
stalled.
People who spend all their time on land usually
don¹t
give a damn about wind unless it¹s strong enough to blow the
shingles off their
roof or send a tree branch through the kitchen window. But on water,
sailors
literally live and die by it.
Anyway, it took us so long to reach the first mark
that the
race committee sent out regatta volunteer Stephanie Bauer in a crash
boat to
advise us to abandon the course immediately. We were to return to the
start
line because the next race was about to begin. This scenario would be
repeated
during each race we sailed. Frankly, I blame the wind.
After the first aborted race, two young women in
another 420,
apparently unaware that we stragglers had been granted dispensation,
sailed by
and announced: ³we¹ll have to protest you² to the race
committee. They¹d
observed our failure to round the leeward mark. We were reminded of
school,
when a prefect threatens to turn you in for some petty misdemeanour. If
our
sluggishness on the race course wasn¹t humiliating enough, that
was.
We sailed three of Saturday¹s five races and
when Anthony
left for vacation the next day, Malcolm Van Haeften, a seasoned
Fireball sailor
whom I will henceforth regard as the kindest, most gracious and
accommodating
of all sailors, invited me to crew for him, knowing full well I¹d
probably
cause him to lose the two Sunday races.
We did lose but I learned a lot in the process of
participating in the Montreal One Design Regatta. I learned more
nautical terms
to add to the others I¹ve been learning all season. Sailing has
its own
nomenclature that¹s like a foreign language. So here are two of
the terms I
learned at the MODR, which may be useful to you if, like me,
you¹re learning to
sail. They are:
Dead last: (adj.) 1) Being or remaining after all
others;
final; hindmost, lag, rearmost, end. 2) The position one occupies in a
sailing
race when one barely knows a gib sheet from a bow line and is hopeless
at
fishing a friend out of a lake.
Euphoria: (noun) - 1) A state
of
great happiness and well-being; exhilaration; elatedness. 2) The way
you feel
after coming dead last in every race of the Montreal One Design Regatta
because
just being there is its own reward.
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