Fabulous 'finisterre' Again

Once, after a sail down on Bolero, John Nicholas Brown called the Bermuda Race "the great Atlantic lottery." For some reason unknown even to meteorologists the 635-mile stretch of ocean between the American mainland and the tiny outcropping of coral can present some of the most varied, unpredictable and frustrating weather known to man. In this sense the 1958 event was typical or perhaps classic—a little bit of everything was thrown at the fleet, with some extra for the leaders.

It is difficult to convey to a non-sailor the feeling of being wholly dependent on such an unpredictable commodity as wind. In no other sport is the participant so at the mercy of a factor he cannot control by preparation, foresight or skill. When the wind dies so does the fastest yacht, and this to a large degree was the basic story of the race—an initial sleigh ride before a strong fair wind, streaks of calm and patches of breeze, almost constant shifts in direction and, finally, savage frontal squalls that produced a roaring drive to the finish.

Such a race means hard work for the contestants. Each yacht has aboard an assortment of sails for various conditions, exactly as a golfer carries specialized clubs for different shots. As the wind changes so must the sails. On Finisterre we have a basic tenet to keep moving at maximum speed in the wind of the moment. There must be either a trim or a shift in sails every time there is a variation. In no other race in my memory have so many strings been pulled or so many bits of cloth gone up and down the mast. Crew work and helmsmanship were never more important.

Along with the rule of moving at your best must go tactics and strategy—the former practiced against boats close by, the latter against the invisible fleet and the scurrying second hand of the committee's clock. With 111 competitors the ocean was well populated, so that rarely were other sails out of sight, keeping each crew keyed to even higher tension.

Aboard Finisterre we were Golliwogg-conscious, watching for her blue-yellow-blue spinnaker, as she was undoubtedly eying each redheaded chute showing over the horizon in the belief that it might be ours. Unfortunately, other boats in the fleet had identical sails, so between Sunday at dusk and Wednesday noon when we came close enough to again make a positive identification we both were probably racing other boats. The imaginary competition made us work even harder but after contact was again established we tactically covered her for the remaining few miles to the finish.

Strategy is a matter of individual belief on the part of skipper and crew based principally on the crystal ball of the weather forecasters. Sadly, the crystal ball is clouded more often than the sky. One safe rule is to apply a cynical 180� correction to all forecasts—in other words, to anticipate the opposite. Another good rule, if you have confidence in your boat, is to ignore forecasts entirely and play percentages. Thus, on Bermuda Races, it is impossible to improve the dictum of the veteran ocean racer and statistician, Alf Loomis: "The boat most likely to win is the one which keeps closest to the rhumb line [the direct compass course from Brenton Reef Lightship to Kitchen Shoals buoy] and which never stops in the calms or shortens down unduly in the gales."

To the best of our ability we on Finisterre did this in 1958, as we had in 1956.

The degree to which weather conditions were freak is best understood by an analysis of the finishing times of the fleet. Despite the complications of the measurement rule, speed through the water is basically a function of water-line length. Big boats go faster than small ones. In this particular race conditions seemed in the early stages to favor the larger vessels. During the fresh winds of the first two days they worked far ahead. The gradually dying wind meant that it would take the small classes an even longer time to cover the same distance. Tuesday afternoon from where we sat—barely moving through the water, bobbing around in a confused sea left over from the earlier breeze—we called it a big-boat race. But over the horizon, much nearer Bermuda, class A boats were sitting ducks, getting nowhere.

Without knowing it, all the small boats astern closed the gap. While Finisterre was painfully creeping along at from 2 to 4 knots and feeling sorry for herself, Windigo and other leaders were doing even less. In ocean racing it is standard procedure to imagine everyone else flying whenever you are standing still. Gradually the lead of the big fellows was whittled down. Then the long stagnant front, which had been sitting over Bermuda, began to move, and the fleet began to experience a gradually freshening wind, darker and darker skies, and finally a series of hard squalls and torrential rain. From bare steerageway boats everywhere jumped to maximum hull speed, which most held until the finish.

The first intimation the smaller fry had of the slowdown of class A came early Wednesday when radio newscasts from Hamilton estimated the finishing time of Good News as very near the time the closer class D boats expected to make it themselves. On Finisterre we at first simply couldn't believe it, any more than the race committee ashore on St. David's Head that night could believe it when we were reported as crossing the line less than four hours behind the first boat to finish.