Golden Girls

While I'm listing video links, there's one I've been meaning to post here for some time now.

I'm a relative newcomer to sailing. Various forms flight have been the truly dominating extracurricular focus of my life until lately (as earlier posted here). I should therefore give hang gliding a mention on this blog, particularly when such a great video as the one linked at the end of this blog is available on the web...and I'm in it!

This is a story about Corinna Schwiegershausen from Bremen, Germany, who has accrued three Women's Hang Gliding World Championships. For me, it's also about her father, Dieter.

I've known Corinna from her regular visits to hang gliding competitions in Florida each spring and her close friendships with close friends of mine. I first met her father Dieter, however, when I traveled to Greifenburg, Austria in June of '04 to crew for Norwegian-born Australian resident Tove Heaney at the biannual Women's World Championship held there that year.

Dieter is quite the distinguished gentleman that I'd think many Americans imagine to be found sprinkled around most European countries; gracious, kind, and charming. Cyndi traveled from London for a weekend to experience the madness at that hang gliding world championship in '04 and was utterly charmed, as well.

He is also quite a dedicated father, crewing for Corinna with such a fastidious attention to detail at every hang gliding competition in which she competes that he can reach from his home in Germany.

Dieter speaks good English (his daughter, a flight attendant for Lufthansa, is quadrilingual) but we usually converse in German. Corinna once told me that he had a special fondness for me since, of all her friends from outside of Germany, I was the only one who spoke German. I was eager to see him again when he came to crew for Corinna at the World Championships held in Florida in May '06.

At that competition, I'd planned to take my usual role of assistant (lackey) to the meet director for the morning's task committee meetings and pilot briefings. Afterwards I would be spending the day on standby to crew for whatever elite pilot needed to be picked up. Certain pilots are so good that the chance of them not making it to the goal are slim, so they don't really need a full time crew on the ground to extract them out of various farms, fields, swamps or forests when they land short of the task's goal. All of these elite fliers know Jamie (shown here giving me a sunset tandem ride a few years ago) ...and Jamie knows me. All winter leading up to the one spring competition I always attend, I'll get a calls from Jamie, "Uh...can you crew for Alex and Christian?" A few days later "...and Jonny?" A week later, "...and Nick?" Only yesterday I got the first such phone call for this spring's main competition in Florida (which I'll attend one day late after seeing Sir Robin off in Norfolk); "uh...can you crew for Primoz?" she asked.

(Bless you, Jamie. Happy to help)

If, on any given day, even one of the five or six pilots who have my phone number stuffed in a pocket actually needs a lift, it's unusual. I'm happy giving them the peace of mind to just fly the task without distraction. Through this process, as well, I get to associate with the elite of the world of free flight.

It is, I've come to realize, much of what has happened to me in the world of sailing; show up at the right place at the right time merely eager to help and learn...and the next thing you know you're rubbing shoulders and even drinking beers with people others only read about. How cool is that?

In the weeks leading up to the Hang gliding World Championships last spring, Corinna was concerned about the health of her father. Even though, as a senior flight attendant, she could ensure him a cozy first class 747 seat for the flight over, it was still questionable if he could endure not only the journey but Florida's heat and humidity.

Touched by their care for each other as well as identifying with the father/daughter bond through my own enviable relationship with my daughter Raine, I offered to give Dieter the bed in my rented air-conditioned trailer while I would sleep on couch (...in a trailer I rented for a few weeks because the trailer I actually own which Jamie rents already had Corinna encamped upon the couch on which I would normally sleep when visiting). I also thought I could help Dieter navigate the confusing Florida roads while he crewed for his daughter.

That was the plan until it became evident that Dieter could not come at all. My job rose, then, from Dieter's host and guide up to being the sole crew member for Corinna, two-time and defending world champion.

See how it works? You just show up, offer to help, and the next thing you know women like Corinna are leaping into your arms as you drive up to their hang gliders at goal because they're the only one who made the goal. Ah, but I'm ahead of myself.

(That happy scene was filmed but unfortunately didn't make the cut into the video linked below.)

Taking Dieter's place was, of course, impossible. I just did my best to offer all the enthusiasm I could. More than anything else, I think, my contribution was to enhance and support her state of mind; offering her the confidence that someone was there to take care of anything that would otherwise distract her. Even something as simple as helping her wheel her hangglider on it's cart out to the take off area saved her from being drenched in sweat right before launching and climbing up to the cold air at altitude.

One of the best things I had to offer, however, she could not use, despite her strong desire to do so. I have a good espresso machine I'll haul anywhere I travel by car, so I've been known to be the only source of the one true latté available anywhere within miles of a hang gliding competition, something Corinna would normally partake of with delight. Women, however, do not have the option of urinating from a hang gliding harness in the air as easily as a man can during what can often be a six or seven hour flight, so Corinna reluctantly declined a latté each morning. She did, however, eagerly partake of the tofu smoothies I would make for myself each morning (as I have been doing for generally the last nine years). She began calling them her secret weapon, for she claimed that such a breakfast and such a breakfast alone allowed her to take off on the morning's task feeling content but not overly full and energized as long as need be until she could land.

"You're not making these for anyone else, are you?" she once asked with half-serious intent.

Corinna won again, her third title of World Champion. It was a feat even more remarkable since her normal flying is in the Alps of Europe, something requiring a different technique and skill than the flatland swamp flying of Florida. The first morning after the award ceremony, she stopped by my trailer for breakfast. "And," she said, "this time I want a latté!"

The link below is to a 20 minute video produced by Charlie Jöst, an wonderfully affable German video producer I met in Austria in 2004 at the previous World Championships (below. Sorry, Charlie...it's the best picture I have of you at work). It's of a high enough quality that you can watch it full screen.

In this version it's been dubbed into English. The footage is excellent, truly giving one a good feel of what it's like to fly thousands of feet up out in the open air hanging prone beneath a wing.

You'll get two quick glimpses of me in it. That I'm in it at all and haven't been completely edited out is probably attributable to Charlie's appreciation of my help for Corinna.

You'll find me the first time about four minutes in, helping Corinna push her glider out to launch. About 20 minutes in near the conclusion, you'll get a second glimpse of me as the two of us chat with Steve Morse (guitarist for Deep Purple) after Corinna landed at his airport.

Charlie Jöst's "Golden Girls"

Good videos of the earlier Alex/Mike trial by sea

These three videos below were broadcast as headline events by BBC TV as the Alex/Mike story unfolded in November and December. I'm hesitant to reveal these to you, my friends, since parallels might be drawn to my own upcoming race in September. It might imply an equivalent risk for me.

There is no parallel. If you wanted an analogy, the Velux 5 Oceans race is the Baja 1000 ("the toughest road race on the planet") and my own Clipper Ventures race is a VW bus full of hippies touring Southern California wine country.

That said, if you've got a good broadband connection, the following three videos give you some great footage of the event described in detail here, recorded mostly by Alex and Mike's onboard cameras but edited and produced by APP Broadcast, the same guys I so resented when they were sticking their cameras in our dispirited faces 24 hours before the Fremantle race restart.

Having interacted with the personalities involved (Alex more than Mike), it's all rather gripping footage to my mind...but then there's so much more to the story that just can't be recorded. As hinted at in the videos, Mike wasn't even speaking to Alex before the race start for reasons too long to explain but Mike readily rose to the demands of the rescue when called upon. Now, to see them here in these videos and to have seen them wide-eyed, subdued, and locked at the hip in Fremantle at Robin's arrival, as I did, you'd think they were life long best friends.

Funny how issues of life, death, and a 1000 miles of icy water between you and the nearest land just puts all the pettiness we're inclined to cling to into such stark perspective.

Watch the videos in the order presented below.

23/11/2006: Keel failure! (4:20)
28/11/2006: A dramatic week in review (3:27)
02/12/2006: Land ahoy!(10:33)

Read all about it

A year or so ago I had a small picture published in the Smithsonian's Air and Space Magazine, allowing anyone in the States to walk up to any newstand in any city and find my name in print (very small and sideways along the photo but, hey, it was still in print).

I've just discovered my name has snuck into another major publication, Yachting Monthly, albeit only online. While Robin writes a monthly column for the print version of a competing sailing magazine, Yachting World, he's writing an online blog for Yachting Monthly. I got a mention in his two most recent submission (viewable online here (January 10) and here (January 16). Will it ever make to print? Probably not. Maybe I'll get in Yachting World some day.

I've just returned from a walk to a local magazine store for the latest issues of these two magazines. Yachting Monthly has all of page 1 dedicated to Robin and a word about the blog but nothing else inside. Robin's column in the February issue of Yachting World is about his icy swim early in December to remove a fishing net from his keel. I'd actually had expected a greater lag time in currency than just one month.

I was happy to discover that the February Yachting World issue also has a DVD attached that, in it's November and December chapters, gives nice overviews of the Velux 5 Oceans race with some great racing footage. If you knew where to look, you'd even see me now and then on dockside shots but the glimpses are slight and quickly pass.

I'm not sure if either of these publications are only available in Europe (we did find a Spanish version of Yachting World in Bilbao last October and were amused to see Robin's column in Spanish) or if they're available worldwide.

Godsend

The race restarted Sunday, January 14th at 3:00 p.m., with the sailors scheduled to be towed out of the harbor one by one with great ceremony at around 12:30. The previous day, Saturday, was the first chance we had to take the boat out for a sail to check the repaired sails, rigging, and various other items that had been modified, improved, or repaired.

Once under sail, it was a great feeling. Everything worked flawlessly and we felt we'd achieved our goal of giving Robin a better boat with which to depart Fremantle than he had when the race began back in Bilbao, Spain.

Then disaster struck. Someone (thank God it wasn't me) lost control of a sheet (the line tied to the sail by which it is controlled from the cockpit) as we were refurling a headsail and enough of it dropped over the side to get caught in the engine's prop, which we'd just started as we were preparing to return to the dock.

We brought the boat back under sail, headed out to a place where we could anchor to dive underneath the boat to see what we could do to untangle the mess.

In the process of trying to do so, the skeg holding the Z-drive broke.



The photo above was taken just before the race start in Bilbao when Robin's boat was tipped on it's side to test it's stability and self-righting properties. A tall crane is lifting the keel's bulb by a tether.

Any boat involved in an open ocean race must undergo such certification as it is far more likely that not these boats will be pushed to the level that will have them broached (laid flat sideways) more than once or twice in the duration of the race. Robin's boat has, in fact, been completely rolled 360 degrees twice so far.

The illustration inset in the upper right (click on it for a full screen version if you want to see the details clearly) shows how the Z-drive (dark blue) leaves the engine horizontally, drops through the boat's hull (light blue) through the skeg (orange) before turning horizontally again and ending in the prop (which folds into a streamlined shape when not under power). The skeg is designed for stress only in one direction; the prop pushing to the rear to propel the boat forward.

As the two on our team dove below the boat with a mask to try to untangle the prop, one breath at a time, by pulling on the line sideways, the skeg was overstressed and snapped, held only by the freely rotating vertical section of the (hopefully) still intact Z-drive.

As one of the divers came back up to the surface and reported the break, the full ramifications of this was instantly evident to all of us. Repairing the skeg would require that the boat be lifted out of the water. Because of Robin's unique rigging that uses a single boom on either side of the mast (photo) instead of the usual array of spreaders and shrouds, he would not fit on most boat hoists. To fit, we would have to drop and remove the entire combination of mast and booms. That alone was, in the best scenario, an intense 24 hour job that would invite numerous other problems to crop up through the intricate disassembly and reassembly required. Then there was the question of just how extensive the damage would be found to be. Was it limited to the skeg or was the Z-drive affected, and did it even affect the engine bearings...or worse.

At best, this looked like a minimum of an exhausting 72 hour repair job. The potential for it being worse was clear. Race start was less than 24 hours away, and we had already allocated much of that time for other final preparations.

As the devastation of our apparent reality set in amongst the crew, Robin (after a few choice words into the wind) was amazingly upbeat. I think everyone on board knew who'd been responsible for controlling the line that had slipped out of control and had started the entire ordeal but as it was a supposedly highly experienced guest and not one of us (thank God), he preempted any fingerpointing by stating right away, "What's done is done. Let's get on with solving it." His cheerful and upbeat attitude almost made it even harder to bear; it was his boat...his race...and now someone else had thrown a wrench into the works.

A British television production company, APP Broadcast, had been hired to manage the production of all television content for the race. On board that day were two cameramen and a producer, recording our preparations for the next days race. Up until that point, they had been primarily interested in photographing Robin in heroic postures but they suddenly leapt into action recording our utterly dejected expressions when the extent of the damage became known. For the first time in my life I had the urge to shove a hand in the lens of the camera brought within a foot of my face as I stood with another team member on the bow of the boat away from everyone else, staring heartbroken into the distance and reeling with disappointment.

A boat was radioed to tow us in and all phones on the boat were in use trying to find a marina nearby with a boat hoist large enough to lift Robin's boat without removing any of the rigging. A nearby submarine base did, in fact, have such a rig, but a classified submarine was in port so we were not granted permission to use it.

Back on land, as options ran out, it was decided that if we tipped the boat with a crane in the marina in the same manner as done for the Bilbao stability test depicted in the picture above, we could get the Z-drive out of the water enough to at least have a good look at the problem and possibly even repair it. A crane was called in and, just as it was growing dark, the hook up was made. As the crane operator started reeling in the strop attached to the base of the keel however, the boat leaned only a little bit to the side before the rear wheels of the crane lifted off the dock and the entire crane began to lean toward the boat.

Obviously we needed a bigger crane. More phone calls. An hour later, one was found. The only problem was that, as this was a Saturday night, the company couldn't find a sober operator to match it.

Another hour of phone calls finally found one and it was not until near midnight the that the photo below was taken as Robin, our crew chief, and our carbon fiber repairman paddled up to the damage in a small raft to decide what could be done. You can see the skeg of the Z-drive hanging vertically when it should have been horizontal and in line with the keel fin.



The good news was that we didn't have to take the mast and all the rigging off. The better news was that the repairman said it was fixable that night.

The Godsend was that, upon inspection, the skeg attachment was discovered to be in an already weakened state by various forms of corrosion. The repairman estimated that Robin had about 100 miles of running under power before it would have snapped like this on it's own.

The engines in these boats are used primarily to run generators to recharge the batteries that run vital systems such as the navigation computers, radar and, most importantly the autohelm; sailing equivalent of cruise control. Additionally, they are used to motor a few miles out of port to set the sails and a few miles back into port when the sails are dropped. In an emergency, there is enough fuel on board to motor perhaps 1000 miles but as these boats are often two or three thousand miles away from the nearest land, that's a small comfort. Perhaps the most important use of these motors would be to maneuver around another disabled boat in the event of a rescue at sea, as had happened only weeks before with Mike Golding and Alex Thomson (as I've earlier described in great detail here).

This devastating event, it turns out, was the best thing that could have happened. Here, in port (even if it was only 24 hours to race start), we had the facilities and the professionals to deal with it. At sea, Robin would have been at a decided disadvantage had he needed to rely on his ability to motor extensively to either rescue someone else or even himself.

Even with this both comforting and disconcerting realization, the shock (and both mental and physical exhaustion) of the previous six hours was still quite hard to get over. At midnight, as the repairs were under way, I and a few others who had nothing to contribute to the process were sent home to get some sleep to be fresh for the rush of activities required once the boat was upright again. I woke up at 5:30 a.m. and was back at the boat at 6:00 a.m., so happy to find it upright, floating, and empty of any activity. The crew, I later learned, had finished at 4:20 a.m. I began the process of repacking various items taken off when the boat was to be tipped over and, in a few minutes, Huw materialized out of the dawn to join in the reloading effort.

At 8:00 a.m., Robin appeared; happy, confident, thankful, and still in much better mental shape than any of us. We all had been taken through one hell of an emotional ringer but you'd have never known it by looking at Robin.

Clearly he is from a different cut than the rest of us. At 67, he's only 16 years older than I am yet I feel quite the child by comparison in experience, depth, and other fundamental aspects of life.

It would be nice to think we all have these kinds of abilities within us and it's up to us to bring them to the surface...to evolve into what we can be. That's my outlook. I'll be patient.

Goodbye, Fremantle

The roller coaster ride of emotions in the 24 hours preceding yesterday's race start in chronological order: peace, joy, elation, contentment, shock, surprise, despair, sorrow, resignment, determination, perseverance (okay so not all of these are emotions but, anyway...), fortitude, more determination, sleep deprivation, lots of coffee, amazement, relief, more coffee, supreme peace, contentment, more amazement, wonder, more relief, a few hours of final sweat...and, finally after the chase boat dropped us all back at the empty dock (photo above), a sense of both utter relief and aimlessness.

What now?

Pitchers and pitchers of beer, it turned out.

It's Monday morning, the day after, and even though I've gotten my first full night's sleep in a while, I'm too exhausted to tell the full tale yet of Sunday's disaster that, at first seemed destined to keep Robin from joining yesterday's race start but, in the end, proved to be a remarkable stroke of good fortune. Funny how life does that to us often enough (if we realize it).

Too tired to tell the story just yet. Moreover, I've got a plane to catch and bags to pack (one of them being the folding bike I bought here).

In short, Robin is off, I'm on my way back to Gosport, England and, no surprise to me, I've had quite the adventure here full of water, sun, surf, food, and of course a slew of good and admirable people, each of them remarkable in their own way, e.g., the amazing Huw. He's a 23 year old Englishman, innately skilled in anything mechanical and electrical, who aspires to one day skipper an Open 60 class boat like Robin's. Many times I would tell him with genuine admiration as he would so often come up with a far better idea than the one I had, "It's not that I'm stupid, it's just that you're a frickin' genius."




The photo above is a special one to me. As our support boat chased Robin for a few last minutes before heading back to Fremantle, I saw Robin watching me pointing my camera at him as I leaned over the boat's side. I raised my free hand in a wave and he responded with a wave to me, personally.

So many tales to tell, as always. I hope to have the chance in the next few days to write them down. For now, I've got to pack...and have another cup of coffee.

The New Year

After 15,000 miles and 68 alone days at sea, Robin arrived in Fremantle at sunset on December 28th. He survived, among other difficulties, twice being broached (laid flat on the sea) and even was completely rolled once in the severe storms he's sailed through both just off the coast of Spain only 15 hours after the race started and also further down in the Southern Ocean.

All of us involved with his campaign joined the press boat heading out at 7:00 p.m. on the 28th to intercept him. We found him just as he came around Rottnest Island. We turned around and followed him in underneath the deepening colors of the sky while he headed for the finish line buoy maybe still ten miles away.





Loitering there was a smaller rigid inflatable boat (RIB) carrying Simon and Pete, the two most skilled sailors of our team who would board his boat and help him de-power the sails and prepare to be towed into the port. Simon and Pete also carried a few beers and a packet of cigarettes, something Robin's been out of and severely missing for several weeks.

The first people to greet the weary but clearly happy Robin at the dock were Mike Golding and Alex Thompson, both no longer a part of the race (why explained here) but still happy to be here to greet this storied sailor.



The next morning, the press offered no respite from the blanket coverage of almost every move Robin made as we prepared to do what we could to refit his boat in the two weeks we had left before the race restarts on the 14th.





My job for this first week is working in the sail loft, doing what we can to repair, recondition, and modify his sails as required.





We've had several parties and receptions to attend as a team but the most enjoyable times for me are our group dinners, most often at Robin's rented house but also occasionally at a restaurant.





Rather than being merely a group of sailing enthusiasts with varying levels of skills (clearly I am the least skilled), the sense of being more like a close and mutually respecting family is very tangible and pleasing. Robin is so vibrantly healthy, content, and so clearly a remarkable human being that everyone amongst us seems to be as content to be part of this project as I am.

We all spent New Year's Eve at Alex Thomson's party but my camera's batteries were dead.

Happy New Year, friends. Life is good.