Vintage Men and the Sea

The vessel Bubala gets underway Monday, and for its captain and crew, the start of the Transpacific yacht race can’t come soon enough.

After all, they’re not getting any younger.

With help from the wind, their 40-foot sailboat will be bounding atop the shimmering Pacific, pointed toward Hawaii, the sailors feeling a growing sense of satisfaction each day.

That is, if that feeling isn’t tempered by too many aches and pains.

The youngest is 65, the oldest 72. Few are experienced at offshore racing, and none have unrealistic ambitions as they prepare to embark on their first Transpac, a 2,225-nautical-mile journey from Los Angeles to Honolulu.

Their goal, skipper Lloyd Sellinger says, is to not finish last in class, and that’s both admirable, given the circumstances, and reasonable, judging from their cohesion during recent practice sessions in and beyond Long Beach Harbor.

But for the crew of Bubala, which means “little box” in Yiddish, the motive transcends competition. The Transpac, held every two years, is celebrating its centennial and these six sailors, watching the years blow by all too quickly, are going because they want to -- and because they can.

Crewman Gordon Livingston points out, “We’re not dead yet,” and adds, “It’s not only that we’re not dead. We can still do things and get better at things that we haven’t done before.”

That’s what makes the Transpac special. It attracts not only the wealthy skippers with their high-priced turbo-sleds and professional crews, but adventurous souls who have pinched pennies to make their voyages possible.

There have been crews of one and of many aboard boats small and large. There have been crews of women, of the disabled and of the infirm. The competition is basically open to anyone with the means and the desire.

Bubala, if all goes well, will glide past Diamond Head after 12 to 14 days at sea, its crew becoming the oldest to complete the race.

That wasn’t Sellinger’s initial ambition. The Newport Beach oil-exploration executive, finally with some free time, tried to sign on as a crewman aboard someone else’s Cal 40 during the last go-around in 2003 but was turned down because of his age.

“So I said I’d do it myself,” the 72-year-old skipper says, pointedly. “And I would get a whole crew and they’d all be over 65 and ... I’ll show you.”

He refurbished the keel of a Cal 40 he has owned since 1983. He bought a new mast and installed new instruments. He placed an ad in a sailing magazine, announcing tryouts. He felt bad because some of the people answering it were clearly unfit for such an arduous journey and “now here I am turning people down,” he says.

Sellinger is personable, tall and walks with the slightly bowed knees of a sailor. He tried to piece together a group with considerable sailing experience, one that would be reasonably fit and, most important, compatible.

“We’re going to have to live in this little spot here for at least 12 days so we’d better get along,” says Jim Doherty, 68, in reference to Bubala’s cramped cabin. “And then we have to come back [to the mainland] and that’s another three weeks because it’ll be against the wind.”

That brings about curious glances from the others, who seem to have given little thought to the return trip. Their sole focus is on getting to Oahu with all hands still on deck and breathing -- preferably without having to use the defibrillator they’ll stow aboard, just in case.

During a recent run out of Alamitos Bay, Doherty, who wears a hearing aid, shouts amid a gathering wind when asked why this appeals to him. He was born and raised in Hawaii, he replies, and came to the mainland years ago on a sailboat.

“Now I’d like to go back the same way, but in a race,” he says.

Mike Gass, 65, owns his own boat just a few dock spaces down from Bubala. He once sailed solo to Hawaii, so he’ll serve as navigator.

Andy Szaz, 67, a retired yacht broker from Newport Beach, is a former competitive sailor from Hungary, who came to the U.S. when he was 19. It’s the smallest of worlds, he says, explaining that he met another of Bubala’s crew, Herb Huber, for the first and only time when they were shipmates on a Transpac entry in 1967.

Each answered Sellinger’s ad and can hardly wait to realize a dream that was shattered days before the 1967 race was set to begin, when the boat they were to sail on became a late scratch.

“This is just another race with a bunch of guys that enjoy sailing, so age isn’t an issue,” maintains Huber, 68, who will serve as safety officer. “For us, this is just the culmination of 40 years of sailing experience.”

And slowly they begin to jell. A brisk southwesterly fills Bubala’s mainsail. The spinnaker is deployed with a flutter and pop. It grabs the wind and the vessel dips sharply to port, then lurches forward and begins a smooth gallop through a choppy green ocean.

The smiles on the sailors’ faces are those of satisfaction born of accomplishment. At nine knots, Bubala is blazing along and there’s finally time for its sailors to sit back and enjoy the caress of water against their keel. It’s also time to reflect on the challenge ahead.

Livingston, 66, considers himself fortunate to have been chosen. He lives in Baltimore and his only racing experience has been around inner-water buoys. But he’s a medical doctor and Sellinger smiles when he says that this worked both for and against his newest crew member.

The good-humored skipper reportedly informed his crew: “The good news is, we’ve taken on a doctor. The bad news is, he’s a psychiatrist. He’ll probably analyze everything we do.”

Livingston recently published a book, “Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need to Know,” gleaned from his 33 years in practice.

He is planning to write about the Transpac experience, but assures that his motivation is the experience itself.

“This is a chance to do something I’ve never done before,” he says, adding that spending retirement on Florida golf courses holds no appeal.

“As you get older, you get more conscious of the fact that your time is finite and one of the effects that’s had on my life is that I don’t do anything anymore that I don’t want to do. I don’t know what’s going to come after this, but I’m going to keep sailing.”

With that, the spinnaker is lowered and more tacks are made. Bubala pitches and groans with each change in direction, the temperamental old craft seeming to share in this sentiment.

Finally, the boat and the sailors settle anew and begin the short journey home, one step closer to Paradise.

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The facts

* What: Centennial Transpacific Yacht Race, a biennial event first held in 1906.

* Where: Los Angeles to Honolulu, 2,225 nautical miles.

* When: Staggered 1 p.m. starts from Palos Verdes Peninsula on Monday (small boats and larger Aloha Class boats), Friday (mid-size boats) and July 17 (large boats). Ceremonial 9:30 a.m. departures will take place each of those days at Transpac Village in Rainbow Harbor, Long Beach.

* Record: 7 days 11 hours 41 minutes 27 seconds by Roy Disney’s Pyewacket. Barn Door trophy is awarded to the monohull vessel with the fastest elapsed time.

* Best viewing: From private boats (spectator boats may be available at a small cost) or from the bluff near the intersection of Western Avenue and Palos Verdes Drive.