Wind powered - sailing as a gutsy action sport

Men's Fitness, August, 1998 by Harry Munns

For an elite few, sailing transcends mellow and becomes a gutsy action sport

As is the case with so many things in sailing, the term "speed" is somewhat ironic.

Sailing looks slow - it is slow - until you're wrestling a boat that's heeling over 30 degrees. Waves rattle the hull with the percussive roar of a kettle drum beaten by a sadistic giant. The mast flexes and groans, the sail rigging stretches in the wind until it's impossibly tight - each wire could snap like an overtightened guitar string. Your pulse races up to 180 and your muscles tense because you know if you get just a little more wind, something's going to let go. And that could spell disaster, especially if you're all by your lonesome in a huge, angry ocean.

Here's the irony: Your boat is only moving 15 mph. Limp along at that speed during your morning commute and you'll become a classic road-rage case; do it in a sailboat, and you're pumped for days.

So forget the yacht club stereotypes; drop the jokes about the Sperry Top-Siders and stupid hats. With the excitement of speed on the open water comes adrenaline, testosterone and the inevitable need to compete. Make no mistake, there's a whole raft of sailors who are content to cruise calmly from one placid place to another. But another breed of sailor, the racer, won't sit back and cruise anywhere.

Racers are the athletes of the sailing world; their sport mixes endurance, technique and - yes - physical prowess like few others. And their sport is surprisingly accessible. You don't need to own a 30-foot cruiser or ocean-view mansion - just an intense love of competition.

High sea

Nearly every type of sailboat has the ability and opportunity to race on most bodies of water. This doesn't mean that you can enter a dinghy in the grueling Whitbread Round the World Race, just that handicapping systems, which add or subtract time from a boat's actual finish time around a race course, allow different types of boats to race one another. Another brand of sailboat racing, called fleet or one-design racing, lets boats of roughly the same type compete. It's considered a purer test of skill and performance - but, alas, it's also a larger test of money and commitment. Match racing pits only two boats and crews against each other. There are no excuses in match racing. You compete mast-to-mast, and may the best sailors win.

Beyond the amateur racing circuit, sailing boasts its share of elite events, though only a few premier regattas reach American TV. For this reason, professional sailing has a lot of catching up to do before the world's greatest sailors start earning money comparable to that of elite athletes in other sports. Paul Cayard and Chris Dickson - two of the world's premier speed seamen - may never become household names. But the sport has grown enough to create a tiny cadre of world-class professionals who make their living primarily or exclusively from sailboat racing.

Ship shape

At this world class level of competition, the physical conditioning of racing crews plays a crucial role. The America's Cup, perhaps the best known elite sailing event, takes match racing - and, by extension, the fitness of participating racing crews - to a pinnacle. The Cup series is a worldwide, high-stakes game; for that reason, crews begin training years before a shotgun blast announces the start of the first race. At this level, even minuscule mistakes lose races, national self-esteem and big bucks. For that reason, America's Cup crews must optimize their speed, strength and endurance.

Peter Isler, an America's Cup veteran, TV commentator and co-author of Sailing For Dummies (IDG, $20), cites the role conditioning played in 1987, when skipper Dennis Conner wrestled the America's Cup away from a fiercely resistant Australian team.

"The strength required just to handle sails on those big 60,000-pound sailboats in 20 to 25 knots of wind was tremendous," he says. "A race takes about 2 1/2 hours. There are times when you're performing a major maneuver every 30 seconds or less. Eleven guys on the boat have some sort of strength-related job. You find out in a hurry who ate their Wheaties and who didn't."

It's hard for sailors to imagine someone who couldn't find something to like about their favorite pastime. So how do you transform budding curiosity into material for the kind of balls-out sea stories that would give Hemingway and his old man a run for their money?

The first and most essential thing you need to become a sailor is a sailable body of water. We're not necessarily talking a vast ocean or bay. You can shed your landlubber label on a medium-size lake, river or harbor. Find a marina with masts swaying above the docks, and you've completed step one of your seafaring odyssey.

Next, you'll need access to a boat. That's easier than it sounds. Once you've decided to take the plunge, you can get sailboat access by "'hitchhiking" - exchanging work for sail time; joining a certified instruction program or sailing club at a local marina or university; or landing an internship on a training ship.