But the money represented only a small part of the story. Every maxi-yacht owner is rich. What set Sayonara apart from its peers was the quality of the crew, the way its members had learned to work together, and Ellison’s ability to retain them race after race. To some extent it was self-perpetuating: everyone likes being on the winning team. But the real key to Sayonara’s success lay in the degree to which its crewmen specialized in their jobs. On many boats, decisions about tactics and the trim of a sail are second-guessed as a matter of course. Second-guessing on Sayonara was unusual. Ellison had come to appreciate the skill of his crew, and he rarely overruled them.
Dickson encouraged crewmen to develop sharply defined roles—and to take total responsibility for them. Joey Allen, the bowman, also selected the equipment he used. Whenever a change was made to the rigging, Allen was consulted. If he wanted to move a fitting or try a different kind of pulley, Bill Erkelens would arrange for it. If Allen later wanted to go back to the old one, that was fine, too.
Immediately after the start, T. A. McCann, who was responsible for raising and lowering the sails in front of the mast, began providing commentary on the wind. Looking for ripples on the water, he tried to divine the velocity and direction of the wind that would be encountered over the next sixty seconds. Seeing where the breeze or a gust disturbed the surface of the water is easy, but judging the strength and direction of the wind, which many sailors call “pressure,” is an acquired skill of great subtlety.
“Steady pressure for the next twenty, and then we’re going to get a big puff,” T.A. called out. “Ten seconds to the puff. Ten, nine, eight …”
The goal was to help Ellison and the sail trimmers anticipate what would come next so as to create a seamless operation in which every change was reacted to rapidly and optimally. There was intelligence at every level. Sayonara’s grinders, most of them built like linebackers, may have looked as if they were selected only for their brawn, but they were all talented yachtsmen. Though they listened to T.A. and the sail trimmers, they also watched the wind and sails themselves, so they would be better prepared to act.
Communicating on a maxi-yacht is difficult, so Dickson insisted that anyone who didn’t have vital information to convey keep quiet. T.A. was the only crewman who was expected to do much talking, and even he tried to be economical, occasionally asking, “Am I talking too much?” A few minutes after the start, when someone on the rail shouted about an approaching gust, T.A. quickly shut him down. “Hey, I’ll make that call. Let’s relax. We’ve done this millions of times. Let’s stick with the system.”
ON THE SWORD of Orion, Steve Kulmar was at the helm for the start, and Glyn Charles was at his side, suggesting tactics. Kulmar had already determined that he wanted to be on the southern end of the starting line, and he was heading in that direction.
Dags was at the bow, shouting warnings about yachts Kulmar couldn’t see. “Look out,” Dags yelled. “Nokia is coming at us again.”
The Racing Rules of Sailing, as specified by the International Sailing Federation, determine who has the right-of-way on a racecourse. A boat that is on a port tack—meaning that the wind is approaching the boat from its port, or left, side—must change course if it’s on a collision course with a boat on a starboard tack. The convention is based on the now archaic notion that the starboard side is inherently superior. In centuries past, senior shipwrights constructed that side, leaving the port side to apprentices. Captains made a point of boarding their vessels from the starboard side. Naval artillery salutes typically had an odd number of blasts because they were fired from alternate sides of the ship, with the first and last guns both coming from the starboard side. While some of those traditions have been forgotten, the supremacy of boats sailing on starboard tacks remains absolute.
The rules are more complicated when two yachts are both on the same tack: the windward boat, the one that’s closer to the source of the wind, must yield to the downwind vessel. The rules are clear, but inevitably they aren’t enough to prevent collisions or controversy.
Everywhere Sword went, Nokia, an eighty-three-foot maxi-yacht, the biggest boat in the race, appeared to follow. Kulmar thought it was deliberately shadowing him, hoping to get a better start by following his example. Kulmar may or may not have been flattering himself, but one thing was suddenly very clear: with less than a minute left before the start, Nokia was on a collision course with the Sword. Both yachts were on starboard tacks. Nokia was the windward yacht—but it wasn’t altering its course. “Go up! Go up!” Dags shouted at the big boat, trying to cause it to turn toward the wind. But Nokia did nothing to change direction. Its crewmen were also screaming, although no one on the Sword could understand what they were saying. By the time Nokia finally turned toward the wind, just a few yards away from the Sword, it was too late. Nokia’s sails, no longer filled with wind, began luffing, and the yacht drifted sideways toward the Sword. With twenty-five seconds left before the start, Nokia’s bow slammed into the Sword with a sickening crunch. The initial impact was on the Sword’s starboard side, near the back of the yacht. Then, since Nokia had more forward momentum than the Sword, the bigger boat scraped its way up the side of the Sword, doing so with the screeching sound of a train applying its brakes.
Exploding with anger, Kooky tried to push Nokia away from his boat, but by then Nokia had turned downwind again. Its sails had refilled, driving the yacht against the Sword.
“Take down your sail!” Nigel Russell, a Sword crewman, screamed at Nokia. Seeing no response, he reached into his pocket and brandished a knife. “Take your sails down—or I’ll fucking cut them down!”
When the two boats finally separated, Kooky raised a red protest flag and Dags rushed to assess the damage. Two years earlier he had been on a boat that abandoned the Hobart after it had been damaged near the starting line, and he was appalled by the idea that the same thing could happen again. First he leaned over the starboard side to see if the hull had been pierced. It hadn’t, at least above the waterline, but he saw gouges and residue from Nokia’s blue paint along a fifteen-foot-long section of the Sword’s hull, near where it met the deck. The most obvious damage was to two stanchions, the metal posts mounted around the perimeter of the deck to support the lifeline that was supposed to prevent crewmen from falling off the boat. Both stanchions had been bent toward the center of the yacht, and the base of the aftmost one had punched through the deck, creating a three-inch-wide hole.
Going below, Dags examined the inside of the hull. The damage to the deck near the two stanchions was obvious—he could see daylight through the hole—but it didn’t look like a major structural problem. Nevertheless, it had to be fixed. Though the stanchions had no impact on the structural integrity of the yacht or the way it sailed, the lifeline they held was a crucial safeguard for the crew. Also, since the base of the stanchions and a nearby fixture were sometimes used to secure equipment and safety harnesses, the strength of the deck they were attached to was important.
While the rest of the crew focused on racing, Dags removed the screws that held the stanchions to the deck and stood on them, attempting to bend them back into shape with his weight. He reattached the stanchion that had caused the hole in the deck a few inches forward from where it had stood, trying to avoid the most damaged section of the deck. He also placed a small piece of plywood under the deck as backing. By driving the screws through both the deck and the wood, he hoped the stanchion would