Kooky didn’t know any other way. “I’m just an intensely competitive person,” he would say. “I don’t do anything by halves.”
The Hobart has two kinds of winners. Larry Ellison and George Snow hoped to make it to Hobart first to win “line honors”: to be the first to cross the finish line. Others, including Kooky, aspired to win the race based on “adjusted” or “corrected” time. As in golf, every yacht is given a handicap to make up for its different size, weight, and sails. Although Kooky brought an uneven set of skills to his campaign, he rated his chances at winning on corrected time at one in six.
After he finished checking the weather information on his computer, Kooky took a cab for the fifteen-minute ride to the CYC, where he arrived just after eight o’clock. The clubhouse and the docks behind it were already packed with sailors, spectators, and journalists. Kooky’s first objective was to find Dags, who in addition to preparing the boat was one of the core members of the crew. Dags could hardly have been more different from his boss. While Kooky was physically and socially awkward, Dags had the wiry body of a long-distance runner and was a gifted athlete who exuded easygoing personal warmth. Though he looked like an up-and-coming corporate attorney when he wore his wire-rimmed glasses, when he was drinking beer with his contemporaries, he was exuberantly playful and seemed, if anything, younger than his age. But Dags managed the Sword like a seasoned executive, systematically testing equipment and attending to his “to do” list. He was also uncommonly generous. After a long day of sailing during a weeklong regatta, he stayed on the boat much longer than anyone else, cleaning up and getting ready for the next day. By the time he arrived at the house where the crew were staying, he had missed dinner. No one had thought to save any lasagna for him; rather than complaining, he began washing the dishes.
Like Kooky, Dags had high ambitions for the Sword, but the nature of his aspirations was fundamentally different. Dags was less interested in glory than in becoming a great sailor for its own sake. He was a bowman, responsible for changing the sails in front of the mast. Because the bow is more affected by the motion of waves than any other part of the boat, the job requires acrobatic balance and enough dexterity to manipulate a complicated array of lines, sails, and equipment. Dags was a natural.
He hoped the Sword would be a stepping-stone to even more competitive yachts. It was not his first boat: he started racing to Hobart when he was just fourteen, and he had already competed in ten races. Now Dags wanted to find out whether he had the skills to sail at the very highest level—in the Whitbread or the America’s Cup or on a boat like Sayonara—and he was willing to sacrifice a lot to get there. A few months earlier, he had quit working at his father’s home-building company because it was getting in the way.
Dags sailed on the Sword almost in spite of its owner. There’s often an implicit bargain between owners and crewmen. Talented sailors want to be on high-performance yachts, which are necessarily expensive. By providing a first-class boat and covering the ongoing expense of acquiring new sails and the latest in performance-enhancing equipment, owners attract crewmen who can’t afford their own boats. The other part of the equation is that much of the recognition, as well as the trophies, goes to the owners.
“He’s just a glory hound—that’s all he wants,” Dags said of Kooky. But if the glory came from racing victories, Dags would also benefit. A few months before the Hobart, the Sword was the surprise winner of a major regatta. If it continued to do well, Dags would be invited to join an even better yacht.
Still, better than anyone, Dags understood that Kooky wasn’t a perfect skipper and that the owner’s lack of experience and follow-through were problematic. A couple of weeks earlier, Dags had asked every member of the crew to help provision the boat with food and drink and various other supplies. Kooky’s task had been to refill the propane tank that was used for cooking, but when the two met on the dock on the morning of the race, Dags wasn’t surprised to learn that the tank was still sitting in a locker, virtually empty. That’s typical, Dags said to himself. Here we are, with just a few hours before the start, and I have to run around trying to fill the propane tank instead of checking everything on the boat one last time.
Larry Ellison paid whatever it took to get the world’s best sailors on Sayonara. Kooky avoided making outright payments; Dags was paid to take care of the boat, but he sailed on his own time. Like many owners, however, Kooky used his buying power with marine suppliers to bolster his team. A sailmaker named Andrew Parkes started sailing on the Sword after Kooky told him, “I’m going to be buying a lot of sails, and I would like you to be part of my crew.”
A month before the Hobart, Kooky had met Glyn Charles, an Olympic sailor from Britain, and asked him to join the crew. A boyishly handsome thirty-three-year-old with a mop of curly dark hair, Glyn had been in Australia for several weeks working as a sailing coach. Since he hoped to represent Britain in the Sydney Olympics, he was also spending time sailing small boats back and forth across the harbor in order to develop an intimate understanding of local wind patterns. Small boats were Glyn’s passion. They were what attracted him to sailing, and unlike many sailors who move to bigger boats as their skills increase, Glyn reveled in the total control he could have over a small one. At the time, he was ranked fourth in the world for the Star Class, a twenty-two-and-a-half-foot two-man boat.
Although he had been planning to leave Australia on December 22 so he could spend Christmas in England with his family and girlfriend, he agreed to meet Kooky at the CYC bar ten days before the race. Kooky loved the idea of adding an Olympic-quality helmsman to his crew. Glyn didn’t like ocean racing, in part because he was prone to seasickness, but he was tempted: he could add the Hobart to his sailing résumé—and also make some money. He asked for one thousand pounds. Kooky started out saying that he couldn’t pay an outright fee. While it was permitted in the class in which Sayonara sailed, it wasn’t in the Sword’s. A little later, though, he offered to reimburse Glyn for various expenses, including his flight to England, and to pay about a thousand pounds for some “consulting work.”
Glyn was still torn. The Hobart sounded a lot like the Fastnet Race, Britain’s best-known ocean race, which starts from the Isle of Wight and goes to the southwest tip of Ireland and then back to England. Glyn had sailed in the Fastnet, and had hated it. On the other hand, he was having a hard time turning sailing into a profession, so he ultimately accepted Kooky’s offer.
But two days before the race, Glyn thought he had made a terrible mistake. He was hit by a stomach virus, and all he could think about was the misery of seasickness. Even though he hadn’t left land, he already felt seasick. When Kooky heard that Glyn was ill, he phoned and told him, “You’ve got to go to the doctor and get it fixed. If it’s a virus, it’s going to go right through the crew.”
Glyn replied, “It’s only food.”
“I hope you’re right. If it’s food, you’ll be all right—but you’ve got to see a doctor.” Afraid that Glyn wasn’t taking him seriously, Kooky added, “If by eight o’clock tonight you haven’t told me that you’ve gotten clearance from a doctor, you’re off the boat. Simple as that. I can’t risk it.”
Later that day, Glyn called Kooky and said he’d been to a doctor and that he was okay.
On the morning of the race, Kooky asked Glyn about the specifics of what the doctor had said. Glyn had a confession to make: he hadn’t actually seen a doctor. Instead, he had talked by phone to a friend who was a physician. Kooky was annoyed, but Glyn, in part because of his enthusiastic mood, convinced