Yachting Offers TV Sports Fan a Very Timely Change of Pace

I don’t think January is one of my wife’s favorite months.

It starts, of course, with New Year’s Day and the glut of bowl games, which this year included the made-for-television Fiesta Bowl the following night.

And the pros get into the act with 14 hours of football the following Saturday and Sunday, and then seven hours last Sunday.

What she endures is an electronic form of widowhood.

“Well,” she said Monday night, “you have two weeks to wait for the Super Bowl . . . and then what?”

“I dunno,” I said.

“What about basketball?” she asked.

“Basketball, blah,” I said. “It is only six weeks until the Padres go to spring training. But . . . we do have the America’s Cup races. Let’s watch Stars & Stripes go after the Kiwis.”

“When?” she asked.

“Tonight,” I said. “Starts at 9 o’clock.”

“I’ll sleep,” she said. “You watch.”

Much of America will be sleeping while Dennis Conner and Co. are sailing in the Challenger Finals this week in Australia. Races begin at 9:15 p.m. here.

I mused that I would get a taste of what folks in the East have to endure to watch sporting events we are so accustomed to viewing at 5:30 or 6 p.m. It would be a matter of (a) staying awake and (b) dragging out of bed to get to work after squinting at the television until 12:30 or 1 a.m.

However, this would be worth it. I really wanted to watch these races, even though I know as much about yachting as I do about curling.

The language itself was beyond my comprehension. Terms such as sewermen, jibs, tailers, forestays, fouling air, covering and reaches would seem to have understandable definitions on land, but I wasn’t sure in what way they were applicable to racing.

One of the television commentators remarked that a grinder was probably related to a Philly cheese steak sandwich, and that sounded reasonable to me.

I was particularly interested in a maneuver called a slam dunk. I presumed this entailed ramming an opposing boat hard enough to knock the skipper into water.

And so I settled in front of the television.

For a second, I thought I had the wrong channel. A commentator was talking about how excited the Aussies were to be defending the Cup on their own soil. This confused me, since I thought the competition was to take place on water. I feared I had inadvertently tuned into a rugby match.

Alas, I had the right channel. This would be interesting, I thought. I was not sure if it would be much more exciting than watching kelp grow, but I knew it would be interesting.

This was an event I would watch as though in a time warp. I was weary and yawning deep in the dark of a Monday night and the people on the screen were energetically embracing the Tuesday afternoon sunshine. It was 1:15 off Fremantle when the gun sounded to start the race and Conner nosed Stars & Stripes over the starting line three seconds ahead of Chris Dickson and New Zealand.

Even though yachting is a sport alien to our normal viewing appetites, this was an appealing showdown. The Kiwis were the whippersnappers, a brash boatload of youngsters hoping to knock off the veteran Conner. New Zealand had won 28 straight races since a loss to Conner, naturally, in a preliminary round. If successful, the Kiwis would deprive Conner of an opportunity to retrieve the Cup he so ignominiously lost.

So many scenarios were in place. Youth vs. Experience. Enthusiasm vs. Technology. David vs. Goliath. Cockiness vs. Confidence. Pablum vs. Geritol. Tiny New Zealand (Pop. 3.5 million) vs. USA.

I would say Underdog vs. Favorite, except I really was not sure which was which.

What I didn’t realize as the race began was that I needed Dramamine to comfortably watch. ESPN had a camera on Stars & Stripes, presumably attached to the mast, and the on-board shots provided a startlingly real feel for surge through the waves . . . particularly the violent shift in horizon during tacks.

I was baffled for awhile because the commentators were pondering the arrival of a chap known as the Fremantle Doctor. It turned out that this was a friend of Conner’s. It wasn’t exactly a physician, but rather a nickname for a wind that comes up in the middle of the afternoon. Stars & Stripes, being a heavy-wind boat, thrives on the doctor’s ministrations.

As the race developed, it became apparent that someone forgot to tell Conner that this was the opening of the Challenger Finals. He took off as if oblivious to the fact that the Kiwis were also on the water.

I had heard about tacking duels and near-collisions, but Dickson could have stayed in New Zealand and been almost as close to Conner as he was through much of the race.

About an hour into the race, I would guess Conner grabbed tactician Tom Whidden and said: “Wait a minute. Weren’t we supposed to race those Kiwis today? You seen ‘em around. Is that Dickson back there? Or part of the spectator fleet?”

If there was anything in the way of drama, it had to be caused by apprehension rather than closeness. Stars & Stripes could only lose this race if its mast fell overboard or sails broke loose or the winged keel fell off, and the commentators kept reminding us that such things do happen.

None of the aforementioned mishaps occurred, and Stars & Stripes crossed the finish line at 12:25 a.m. . . . or 4:25 p.m. in Australia. It was one minute and 20 seconds later before Dickson and the Kiwis finished a race that seemed finished so soon after it began.

The Kiwis would get another chance, of course, and I surely wanted to watch and see if that clever Conner was as dominant as he seemed.

Indeed, I arrived home Tuesday night and advised my wife I was going to take a nap after dinner.

“OK,” she said. “What time should I wake you up?”

“In a couple of hours, if you would,” I said. “I want to watch Wednesday afternoon’s yacht race.”