You know the old sayings about sailboats: The best days are the day you buy and the day you sell. In between, it's like standing in a cold shower ripping up $100 bills. And then there's the oldest one of all, that having a woman on board angers the sea gods and brings bad luck, jealousies, and stormy weather. That one, at least, seems to be true.
****
My dad's boss had bought a fancy new 50-foot racer. He wanted me to crew on the race from Newport to Bermuda, a multi-day extravaganza of boredom, storms, and seasickness, even with no women on board. I was lukewarm at the prospect. The boss was an OK guy, until he got bossy; then he had all the interpersonal tact of a pirate. But I thought I should go, because Dad had volunteered me. What Dad didn't tell me, and perhaps didn't know, was that the boss's daughter, Courtney, was going, too.
Courtney was really clever. I liked that about her, but it got her promoted to the grade ahead of me in school. I still tried to flirt with her occasionally, but each encounter was another chance for her to ignore me, a lesser being. She wasn't actively mean, just dismissive. I wasn't alone; a lot of entitled jocks complained that she was a manipulative bitch for attracting them and promptly rejecting them. I figured the actual problem was that so many guys were hitting on her so hard that she was tired of fending them off gracefully.
Courtney had been blessed, or saddled, with exceptional looks -- an attractive face and a truly sensational figure. Her attitude didn't do her any favors, either - she was a wild child who didn't give a fuck what other people thought. She dressed however she liked and sported a tongue stud. It all created certain expectations, and rumors of sexual exploits followed her around like a cloud of pheromones. She'd probably found that if she was even slightly polite to a guy, he'd be all over her like kudzu.
I eventually made a point of being no more than civil to her (and not staring at her tits, of course). She was marginally civil back, which put me ahead of a lot of guys. But we ended up going to different colleges and eventually lost touch. Now we were going to be crewing together for a few days and living in tight, shared quarters. Maybe the real Courtney would be revealed.
Heh-heh.
****
I got to the boat early, to learn the layout. Boss was already there, supervising a scuba guy who was cleaning the hull. So were a couple of younger, hulking, heavily-muscled Swedish brothers who were going to do the grinding. They hardly spoke English. Maybe they were why Courtney had signed on, though, because she was there early, too, modeling a tank top, hot pants and some long, shapely legs. She looked outdoorsy, like I remembered her -- blond eyebrows, blond ponytail, tan with freckles. Unexpectedly large boobs, of course. She nodded at me vaguely while coiling some lines. To her father, the nod probably said, "Hi, I'm busy." I figured it meant, "Hands off, Dave." She hardly looked up.
In short order we were joined by a 40-ish guy who was going to do the navigating and weather. He was a wise-ass who seemed to have an affinity for the back of Courtney's hot pants, which in my opinion was perfectly reasonable. Boss noticed and said something corrective to him. He looked mortified, but Courtney just grinned, not offended in the slightest. Next came the Boss's sailmaker, an older guy who was along to get a good result (and good publicity) for his sails, and Tom and Jerry, two non-professionals from Boss's yacht club. It came to a crew of nine, living in a single sweaty, damp, rock-n-rollin' space for half a week.
I went below and looked around. This boat, like any serious racer, was equipped to save weight. It had a forecabin used mostly for sail storage, and a head. The rest of belowdecks was a single cavernous space holding a nav station, a mini-galley, and a table with benches. On each side aft, under the cockpit, were canvas cots attached to the side of the hull. There were three tiers of two on each side, so everyone could sleep on the windward side of the boat. Keeping crew weight to windward keeps the boat more upright, which is faster. As usual, each cot had a belt to tie you in so you wouldn't roll out when we heeled.
I dumped my overnight bag on a convenient upper berth to claim it.
By the time I got back on deck, a team meeting had started in the cockpit. Courtney was sitting between the Swedish meatballs, Lars and Erik. She had her elbows resting on the coaming behind her, which resulted in her arching her back and sticking her tits out. Truth be told, her tits didn't need much help standing out; either they were a lot perkier than I recalled, or they were enjoying some kind of extraordinarily uplifting experience. Whenever one of the meatballs said something to her in his pidgin English, she would rock back to look up at him adoringly, laugh, and lean against his muscular arm in a friendly manner. It was annoying. Her act got so obvious that Boss/Dad eventually ordered, "Courtney, for fuck's sake! Knock it off!" She pouted and pushed her boobs out further.
Boss was assigning jobs and watches. "We're only nine, so obviously you'll all have to pitch in while you're awake. But here are the shifts: I'll be on early, from 5 to 1 PM. Lars and Erik, you'd better be with me so you can get some peace and quiet," he said, glancing meaningfully at Courtney, who scowled at him, crossed her arms under her boobs and pouted some more. "You two...," he indicated the sailmaker and the nav guy, "are the pros, so you're on nights, 9 PM to 5 AM, with Jerry here." Apparently, he didn't want a hot-pants-loving 40-something to be alone with his daughter, either. "Tom - you, Courtney and Dave will take the afternoons. Don't worry, kids;" he added, "Tom is a good skipper."
So Courtney and I would be ballast, with no regular jobs other than sitting on the windward rail, "cheeks to the teak," to help keep the boat more upright. We had a week of boredom ahead unless something went wrong... which of course it would. They also call sailing "days of boredom punctuated by moments of terror."
****
The beginning of a race is the most interesting part. In a long race it counts for less, but everyone still wants a perfect start: at the favored end of the line, at full speed, right at the starting gun. That results in a lot of huge yachts scything around only feet apart, using the rules to duke each other out. There's lots of genteel screaming. You need people to keep track of other boats in every direction, the wind angle, your distance from the line, and the countdown, and of course, you need the same people to steer, tack, and trim. A computer can help, but a good skipper is better. Courtney spent the whole time telling Dad/Boss all the things he was doing wrong, and he spent most of the time telling her to shut up. He should have listened. We started late.
Underway, all of us without other jobs sat on the windward rail, feet over the side, hanging onto the lifeline. Being the youngest, I somehow qualified for the spot up front, the wettest one. Courtney took a spot about ten feet away to indicate her lack of interest in me. Sandwiches and beers were passed around, and everyone settled into the usual routine of strategizing, banter, and stories. Our navigation expert sat next to Courtney and commenced to hit on her.
The clouds ahead were dark and swirling. It was like driving into a tunnel. The forecast and radar said we were sailing into the remains of a tropical depression. The logical strategy was to aim West, where the winds would be strongest.
For a while, as we pounded along in the waves, I had fun sliding glances at Courtney's bouncing profile. Eventually, though, a giant meatball rolled up and sat between us, and Courtney started putting the make on him. She was batting her eyelashes and cooing over his giant muscles, laughing at his incomprehensible stories and slowly inching closer and closer. Then the wind came up and the waves started submerging our feet. Courtney simply got up and went below. The Swedish guy looked like he wanted to follow, but he outweighed her by 150 pounds and knew he was meant to stay on the rail.
As we got further into storm, spray from the bow started drenching me. Waves were bouncing us so hard I occasionally went airborne, resulting in a hard landing when the deck came rising back up to meet me. Even in full foul weather gear with the hood pulled down and my hands in my sleeves, I was sopping wet and hurting. This is, of course, part of the predictable fun of long-distance racing. By the time our watch was finally over, it was dark, I was totally frozen and all I could think about was the nice dry bunk down below. I stumbled numbly down the companionway and tried to orient myself.
