Autobiography - Sailing is my life

Mother, mother ocean, I have heard your call. Wanted to sail upon your waters since I was two feet tall. Sailing has been a major part of my life since from the beginning. I am the grandson and the son a sailor. And the son of a son of a pig farmer. However my father was a power boater and I do not think he ever set foot on a sailboat.

I built my own sailboat from a sailing pram when I was twelve. The tiller was a tree branch. It had oars so I always made it home. Sailing In college was the real trigger. I wanted to be successful racer. When I lived in New Jersey I bought a Jet 14 sailboat. This was a very popular racing class in New Jersey. Priscilla was my crew and we joined a racing fleet. It was a good program and we raced every Saturday. We even trailered our sailboat to her families cottage on Otis Reservoir in western Massachusetts. When we moved to Lake Bluff I made the mistake of taking the Jet 14 with us. There was no Jet 14 fleet in the Midwest. I did eventually sell it but not at the price I could have sold it for in New Jersey.

When we moved to Lake Bluff my friend Kyle Ahrberg bought a new boat in the Chicago Tarten Ten fleet. It was the up and coming racing fleet. This is a 33’ day sailing dingy. I raced with Kyle every Saturday for years aboard Sorcerer. I did my first race from Chicago to Mackinac on Kyle’s boat. It was like having six people living in a pup tent. All fun but the Tarten is spartan. Kyle invited a friend to be captain. He had done a Mac or two before. In order to get an invitation to race you needed to have someone with experience onboard. The captain was a bit intense but this was my first Mac race so I did my best to do my job and be on time for my watches. The captain never took a break. He stayed on deck 24/7. As we approached the Manitou Islands after two days we were in dense fog. Back in the day, 1980, we did not have GPS. We had paper charts, a compass and a radio direction finder. The radio direction finder never gave us a very accurate location. We were using our depth sounder to try to match depths on the charts with where we thought were. There were other boats crossing tacks with us. They would appear out of the fog, often near by. It was against the rules to ask them where we were because that would be accepting outside help. We had a lawyer (Kent Hietzinger) onboard and he was clever enough to call out “do you know where you are?” He would also ask “have you seen the great white whale?”

It was midnight on day two and our captain heard a freighter on the VHF radio call out to the fleet. He announced he was headed south through the Manitou Pass and his radar was target rich which meant he could see the fleet ahead of him. Our sleep deprived captain grabbed the VHF microphone and screamed “this is Sorcerer, this is Sorcerer don’t run us down. Two of the crew members physically restrained him and held him in his bunk until he passed out. He slept all the way to Mac and never woke up until we crossed the finish line.

A few years later Kyle and I were on a race from Galveston, Texas to Cancun, Mexico across the Gulf of Mexico and the captain threatened to throw Kyle overboard mid race. Sleep deprivation is bad.

Gerhart Wurzer was a friend of Kyle’s that owned art galleries in Chicago and in the Galleria in Houston. He had a name like the evil genius in the Die Hard movies. He owned a Wauquiez 38 sailboat in Galveston, Texas. Gerhard invited Kyle and his long time girlfriend Mary Beth to race to Mexico. Kyle invited me. We flew to Houston and drove to Galveston. Gerhard and his wife met us at the boat. Kyle also invite a friend who he introduced as an amazing blue water racing captain who would be in charge of the boat. All good except he seemed to be a bit intense even before the race. How bad could he be 24/7 for a week?

The weather started getting rough, our tiny ship was tossed. The USCG suggested the race committee postpone the start of the race because the waves were 4 - 6 with occasional 8 footers. The race started on time and off we went, totally over powered with too much sail. The boat was heeled over 30°. Mary Beth and I were on the rail on the high side. Kyle was on the low side manning the winch. Five minutes into the race Captain Ron grabbed a full gallon water bottle to take a drink. He was on the helm and lost his balance from the rolling of the waves and the heavy water bottle. He fell head first onto the winch bell and split his scalp. Blood was pouring out. He had a huge piece of scalp flapping in the breeze. We could clearly read the logo Lewmar on his forehead. Kyle took the helm and Mary Beth administered first aid. She used clips to hold the wound together. We continued on with Captain Ron below in his bunk. He kept crying out “keep going, I will be fine, don’t turn around for me.” Gerhart made a good decision to return to the dock and he called an ambulance. They took Captain Ron to the hospital. He had a severe concussion. If we had continued on the race I am sure Captain Ron would have perished. The good news is a few years later Ron married the doctor that attended to him in the Houston hospital. After we dropped off Captain Ron our crew was in disarray. We had taken a weeks vacation and flown to Texas. We asked Gerhart what were our options? He said our option was to get off the boat and go home. I suggested he contact the race committee and ask for permission to restart the race due to our medical emergency. The race committee agreed - race on. During our four hour misadventure the wind had shifted. Instead of wind on the nose we had wind on the starboard quarter. We crossed the starting line, popped the chute and had a seven day downwind sleigh ride across the Gulf of Mexico.

Gerhart was in charge and he did everything with the sail set and driving the boat. A few hours later the spinnaker halyard parted and the chute dropped. We pulled the spinnaker out of the water and hoisted it on the second spinnaker halyard. A few hours later the spinnaker fell again. We let Gerhard run the boat because it was his boat. Both times the spinnaker halyards were underneath the forestay and wore through. We only had the the jib halyard remaining for the next six days.

I had a lesson learned on that race that I remember to this day. One night I was off watch and headed to the head. The boat was on a slight heel. I was barefoot and my right foot slipped under the door to the head. The space under the door was just high enough for my toe but not for my toenail. My toenail was peeled straight up. Ouch! I still have a reminder on my toe to this day. Always wear shoes on a boat. Repeat always wear shoes on a boat.

Things settled down for a few days. We had four hour watches with Kyle, Mary Beth and me and the other watch was Gerhard and his wife. On the horizon we saw the first boat we had seen since the start of the race. The rest of the fleet was far to the west. The power boat approached and circled us. We were hundreds of miles from shore. Gerhard told us all to come up on deck so they could see there were more than two people on board. The power boat approached. It was filthy with diesel exhaust. The two Mexicans we could see aboard (how many were below and armed) called out in broken English and said their compass was broken and they were lost. They were trying to get to New Orleans. What was our compass course so they could figure out where they were. We made believe we didn’t understand. If they knew our course they could find us at night. We continued on for three nights with no navigation lights. We never saw the pirates again.

On the sixth night Gerhart came on deck during our watch. His bunk was below the helm and he kept his portholes open to listen on deck. He decided our watch was not trying as hard to win the race as he and his wife. He yelled at Kyle to get off the boat! Kyle pointed out we were still a long way from shore and he had no intention of getting off the boat. Gerhart did not speak to us again even after the end of the race.

The finish line was a Mexican gunboat off of Isla Mujeres that fired a cannon to mark our finish. We won the race. After seven days we were the first boat to finish. The fleet protested because we started four hours late and had more favorable winds. The race committee prevailed. Gerhart’s final clash with Kyle was to take away his hotel room in Cancun and give it to someone else. No big deal Kyle, Mary Beth and I spent one more night on the boat and flew out the next day. Kyle and Gerhart never spoke again. Sleep deprivation is bad.

Kyle was a good guy to know. In 1985 he invited us to see John Denver play in Chicago. Kyle had back stage passes after the show. Priscilla and I went back stage with Kyle and met John Denver. John Denver was very personable and chatty. At the end he thanked Priscilla by name for attending the concert and visiting him back stage. After all John is only human. It was a fun and memorable event.