On New Year’s Day, 2010, a 77-year-old tradition will be celebrated at Manhasset Bay Yacht Club in Port Washington, NY. The Wassail Bowl will be filled with punch (bartender Alan’s secret recipe) and cups passed around by the youngest members of the Frostbite Yacht Club, ages 6 to 17. Many of the assembled are second and third generation frostbite sailors and this ceremony marks the opening of the Annual Meeting of the Frostbite Yacht Club*, the virtual organization of frostbite sailors from all over the East Coast who first assembled on Manhasset Bay on January 2, 1932.In front of a roaring fire in the club’s Grill Room, young and old, Junior and Master are assembled. They will have spent the day and every Sunday since November racing Interclub dinghies together on the bay that is recognized as the birthplace of frostbite sailing.
Few, if any, racing series draw such a cross-section of sailors as frostbiting, and none I can think of mix the generations as seamlessly. In the winter months, from November to April, when the options for racing winnow down to just a few, sailors from every summer fleet including big boat sailors accustomed to PHRF racing, Sonar and Manhasset Bay One-Design fleet members, cruising enthusiasts, and kids from the 420, Blue Jay, Laser, Pixel and Opti fleets all find their way on Sunday afternoons to the lawn in front of the Junior Clubhouse where we rig and launch our boats.
In the last few years, we’ve added an active Ideal 18 fleet to the starting sequence and this year a group of Laser sailors under the leadership of Dan Catanzaro have begun to appear on the line. But for many of us, the chosen vessel for winter racing is the Interclub Dinghy, an ungainly bathtub of a boat designed in the 1950s by Sparkman & Stephens that despite its extreme tippy-ness (at least in my hands) is a great deal of fun to sail: responsive, light, and a mean vehicle for roll-tacking.
A typical day on the water is much as it was 45 years ago when I crewed for the legendary Bob Mitchell, who participates still as the Honorary Treasurer of the Frostbite Yacht Club. Depending on their nature, sailors arrive early or late to rig their boats for a 1:30 bay start. Much jostling and chatting accompanies the shifting of boats down ramps to the carpeted floats and the sailors band together to lend a shoulder and keep the boats on dollies from hurtling off the steep incline at low tide. This is a family after all, with participants who have known each other for many years. Rigging issues are discussed and debated, tools and equipment passed around, borrowed or returned before the racers drift back to the club house to get dressed.
There are plenty of opinions about the proper attire for a day on the water in January. I favor a minimalist approach – spray top, spray pants and all the long underwear I can cram on. Other fleet members, such as John Browning, seem disappointed if severe weather (sleet, driving rain or snow) forces him to give up Bermuda shorts and a polo shirt. But most (and I insist on this for regular sailors under the age of 13) wear drysuits of the sort I could only have dreamt about in the days when I was crouched shivering in the front of Bob Mitchell’s boat. Maybe it’s global warming, but winter sailing doesn’t seem so cold anymore. Like most participants in the sport, I dress sensibly, take reasonable precautions against the cold, ALWAYS put my crew first, and at the end of a day’s sailing get off the water tired and happy, heated as you would be after a good long workout, and ready to join the others in the comfort of the bar (ahem) grill...but I’m ahead of myself.
The Race Committee precedes the sailors to our committee boat, Kraus’ Kastle. This is a hard and fast rule because it is a principle of our safety planning that an adequate number of crash boats are ready to circle the racing area and pull any sailor out of the drink for a quick run into shore and the warmth of the clubhouse. While I’m at it, I should point out that frostbiting fleets everywhere were well ahead of the New York State legislature in requiring Coast Guard approved PFDs for ALL on-the-water participants.
One of the joys of frostbiting is that no one wants to sit around and dawdle. The starting sequences roll off with a rapidity that makes summer sailors blink. The goal is to run as many quick windward/leewards in a day as humanly possible. Many races are no more than 20 minutes long and I remember once in perfect conditions, when former Commodore John Barry was snapping them off, we managed nine races in an afternoon – quite some feat when the sun begins to get low in the sky at 4:30. In fact, it was Arthur Knapp who once described the sheer number of races to be had in a frostbiting series as one of the most valuable schooling aspects of the sport.
While all this is going on, more ‘schooling’ is happening in the boats themselves. Parents sail with their children and try and impart what wisdom they can. In my years back in the fleet (I started again after a long hiatus when my son Nichols was 9 in 1997), I’ve sailed with each of my three children as their age and weight made them perfect candidates for the front of the boat. My daughters Johanna and Catryn may not have benefited much from my expert knowledge of racing tactics – unless to observe what NOT to do! – but on light air days the chance to have a good, long, unforced talk with my children about anything and everything under the sun has been one of the greatest boons a parent could have.
But if it’s finely honed racing tutelage that you are after, frostbiting still can’t be beat. In the course of every season I get to race against some of the best sailors in the world and, at least in our informal Manhasset Bay fleet, it’s common for season champions like Ted Toombs or Pedro Lorson to make rigging or tactical suggestions between races or do chalk talks when we gather after racing in the bar.
When we are out on the water, these boats really mix it up. No one gives an edge and no one flinches. Mark roundings are breathless melees, and on a good day with 12-15 knots and some chop there is some real excitement to be had in these little boats. But at the end of the day, what makes this such a special sport is that everyone is pulling for everyone else, sailors and committee alike. And if the wind dies down, the fleet drifts over to the Kastle where the RC has a barbecue fired up and Rita Syracuse and Commodore Sue Miller continue a tradition laid down by Herb Schmidt when many of us were younger than we are today, serving a hot, epicurean quality meal to the assembled crew.
The day ends, as already described, with a long reach (usually) to, the club, sailing through the empty bay where only yellow winter sticks mark the hubbub of the summer. Out here it is quiet and the crack of sails is the loudest sound on the water. Sometimes a soft snow drifts down as we sail home, and I think most would agree that these winter days on the water are among the most magical of all. ✦
*not to be confused with Frostbite Yacht Club in Essex, CT – Ed.
