It’s a Wednesday night, and sailors are gathered round chatting about the good, the bad, and the ugly that occurred out in the racecourse. It’s no surprise that rum drinks are in hand. This must be June or July – a balmy breeze escorting the sun down below the horizon at 1930.If this is your logical assumption, you would be off the mark. In fact, the sailors are gathered around a roaring fire rather than a yacht club bar and on the other side of the glass it’s 28 degrees with a vigorous snowfall. This is the January meeting of the Duxbury Ocean Racing Club (if the name sounds pretentious, pronounce the acronym aloud and you will get the joke).
Our purpose is, in the cold winter of New England, to continue the memories of sunny days on the water the previous summer. Once or twice a month, we have a midweek get-together where the past season’s exploits are recounted and exaggerated, a little bit of rum is consumed and we forego the wholesome dinner offered by our respective spouses in favor of pizza, Chinese food or other guy food. Most importantly, however, we gather together to keep that wonderful sailor’s camaraderie alive year ‘round.
Why am I writing this piece? Principally to urge you to start your own “off season” sailing club. It’s easy to do, it’s a lot of fun, and it extends an otherwise painfully short New England sailing season and keeps you in contact with your “summer friends” all year long.
Most of our “membership” have at least three or four Bermuda Races or other significant ocean passages to their credit, so the “ocean racing” part of the club name isn’t that much of a stretch. I guarantee, however, if your band of merry men races Flying Scots on a tiny enclosed bay, you’ll have every bit as much fun as we do gathering by a roaring fire on a Wednesday night in January, adult beverage in hand, remembering “that Saturday afternoon when Joe wrapped his spinnaker around his rudder...”
During the “regular” season we all belong to a small variety of yacht clubs, but principally race/sail in Duxbury or Marion, MA. For the winter, however, we are a club without a clubhouse so members take turns hosting our get-togethers. While we probably have somewhere on the order of 25 “members,” busy work schedules and community commitments conspire against attendance of more than 12 to 15 people at each meeting. Accordingly, the “rotating clubhouse” model works well. BYOB and a small cash contribution to the evening’s succulent repast are the order of the day.
As most of us race around the cans on Wednesday nights during the summer, Wednesday is the logical night for our meetings. While the ladies are already used to us being out of the house for one midweek night, we are trying to convince one of our members that his wife simply won’t believe his claim that he is still racing in mid February. In any event, the midweek meetings are much less disruptive to the family social calendar.
The idea of our club sprang forth from two different and unrelated things. Back in 2004, one of us got the bright idea of combining forces to do our first ever Marion Bermuda Race. One among us stepped forward and volunteered his amazingly beautiful Cherubini 44 for the task at hand. As he was not then a member of a yacht club, the Duxbury Ocean Racing Club sprang into existence about halfway through his application process. The camaraderie that grew out of this event made us all realize that we wanted to have a vehicle by which we could celebrate the joys of sailing year-round. Just about this time, a local community men’s club (devoted to nothing more grand than a monthly get-together for drinks, dinner, and a guest speaker) was on life support, with the membership ready to pull the plug. It seemed a logical transition to start a club that would do pretty much the same as the community men’s club, but with a specific focus on sailing.
Our usual entertainment is nothing more than some good conversation. Being typical racing sailors, none of us is at a loss for conversation and sailing stories or chats about new boats, equipment, or other sailors not present to defend themselves usually makes for a fun night. Every once in a while, however, we will invite a guest speaker, or watch a sailing-related video or have a specific theme for the evening.
Boston Globe sailing journalist Tony Chamberlain joined us one night and recounted the “golden days” of the America’s Cup back when it was actually a sport rather than a method of corporations employing 3,000 square foot spinnakers as billboards. Another night, a local sailmaker told us about the newest dimensions in sailcloth. One night, a member with a wee dram too much Mount Gay in his belly became the selfappointed guest speaker. To our chagrin – and that of the diners in the next room at the restaurant in which we had gathered – his tales of his love life on the water became a bit bawdy.
We’ve had movies and slide shows. On what we think was opening night of Disney’s Morning Light (the documentary about young sailors racing the Transpac) we all trekked to the only theatre we could find where the film was showing. Dinner and a movie seemed the perfect occasion to have our first ever “Ladies’ Night”...a great success!
Then there was the night we all watched an hour-long movie devoted entirely to the thrilling topics of sea anchors and drogues. It was a new experience for me to witness 11 grown men fall asleep in unison.
As the days begin to lengthen, the topics of conversation shift to the coming season. Instead of reliving past glories, discussions shift to which regattas will be attended. Arguments about who will crew for whom and which is the best bottom paint ensue as we all look forward to the boats coming down off their jackstands.
This is truly a fun way to keep the spirit of sailing alive, even when the snow is piling up outside your door. It doesn’t take much effort and blue blazers most assuredly are frowned upon – the uniform of the day (evening) tends to be khakis and a flannel shirt. So as soon as you put down your copy of Wind- Check, compile your membership list, pull out your laptop and send an invitation to all of your sailing buddies to come to your house next Wednesday night for a special viewing of Captain Ron, a cold beer and some sailing war stories. As the famous skiing filmmaker Warren Miller observed, “If you don’t do it this year, you’ll be a year older when you do.” ✦
