During an Atlantic Gale, Sailor’s Thoughts Turn to Survival

Sailing a 75-foot catamaran alone at 25 knots in gale-force winds on the Atlantic Ocean with flying fish hitting him in the face, Cam Lewis’ thoughts turned to self-reliance.

“You’re up there by yourself with this huge machine and you wonder what you’d do if something broke,” he said.

Such idle thoughts were crossing Lewis’ mind during early stages of the third 3,207.6-mile, nonstop Multihull Challenge race from La Baule, France, to Dakar on the west coast of Africa, which finished last week. He thought about it more seriously when he learned that French rival Daniel Gilard, 38, was lost at sea off the Azores.

It struck Lewis that with the only other person on board, Bruno Peyron, sleeping, and their boat, Ericsson, on automatic pilot, if he fell overboard, Peyron might not know it for hours, as the boat sailed on.

Sailors are routinely urged to wear life vests and safety harnesses in risky conditions, especially when alone, but they pay as much attention to that as commercial airline passengers do to the flight attendant’s instructions about emergency exits and oxygen masks.

“But it really sets in when somebody gets lost,” Lewis said. “It really makes you wear your safety harness, like you’re supposed to.”

Gilard, Papa Daniel to his friends, was on the bow checking something when a wave knocked him overboard. Although known as a safe sailing advocate, he was wearing neither life vest nor safety harness.

His crew, Halvard Mabire, immediately launched two liferafts, turned the boat around and sounded a distress signal, but Gilard was never seen again. French and Portuguese forces conducted a sea-and-air search for 2 1/2 days but found only the empty liferafts.

Two sailors on another boat, Eric and Patrick Tabarly, had to be rescued after capsizing off the Madera Islands in a storm.

Lewis, on the phone from Dakar, reflected on the whole adventure.

“All I know is, I don’t have to get up and change the spinnaker anymore,” he said, wearily.

Lewis, 30, of Newport, R.I., was the only American in the event. He and Peyron finished second, behind Peyron’s brother, Loick, and Jacques Delorme, who set a record of 11 days 9 hours 19 minutes 25 seconds--an average of about 280 miles a day.

They almost caught the leaders on the next-to-last day, then lost 1 1/2 hours off the Canary Islands when a spinnaker pole fell and knocked a hole in one bow. They fixed it with their plywood cutout toilet seat, but then could only drift helplessly in dying winds.

The next finishers were 250 miles behind.

Lewis and Peyron alternated at the helm in shifts of 20 minutes to an hour, and for some stretches put it under the control of the German-designed automatic pilot they called Otto Von Helm. The off-watch sailor would curl up to nap in a small area between the hulls.

“Bruno was the navigator, and I was the cook,” Lewis said. “I believe in eating well, and you’re pushing yourself pretty hard, so I went to the health-food store and bought lots of pasta and 30 bottles of mineral water. We had fresh milk, eggs and bacon every morning, hot soup and pasta for lunch and lots of granola bars, trail mix and vitamins.”

They stopped drinking coffee two weeks before the race, so that when they were about four days from the finish, “the caffeine would kick in and give us a boost when we needed it.”

They also had fresh fish--2- to 8-inch flying fish so numerous that they were a hazard.

“On a monohull, they get out of your way,” Lewis said. “But on a catamaran, the one hull scares ‘em and they hit the other one or land on the boat. It was carnage. One hit me in the eye. I started wearing goggles, just in case. But they were pretty good eating.”

Lewis, who won a motorcycle for his efforts, is looking for sponsors for a Formula 40 campaign in Europe and the England-to-Newport single-handed Transatlantic race next June. He was second in the U.S. Olympic Trials in ‘84, crewing for Gary Knapp on a Flying Dutchman.

“I hate these second places,” he said. “I may do the (Olympic) Trials at Newport, R.I., next year, but this is really what I want to do.”

OLYMPICS--John Shadden, 24, of Long Beach and crew Charlie McKee of Seattle are the national 470 champions after the 35-boat event on Eagle Mountain Lake near Fort Worth, Tex. That, following their victory in the Canadian Olympic training regatta, boosts them high among the favorites for the U.S. Olympic berth, although they didn’t go to Pusan for the recent pre-Olympic regatta. Their series was 9-1-1-1-4-5 (with one throw-out) in a field that included all the top competitors. J.J. Isler of San Diego and crew Amy Wardell were the leading women, sixth overall. Shadden, with crew Mike Segerblom, was fifth in the 1984 Trials. The top two American skippers that year were silver medalist Steve Benjamin of Oyster Bay, N.Y., who was 10th at Fort Worth in his first, tentative comeback event, and three-time world champion Dave Ullman of Newport Beach. Ullman dropped his campaign to become the U.S. Olympic men’s and women’s coach this week. “(Crew) Kenny Watts and I decided we just didn’t have the time,” Ullman said. Ullman, who makes all the 470 sails sold in the U.S., said the men currently are not Olympic medal contenders with the rest of the world.

MATCH RACING--Australia’s Peter Gilmour, winner of the Liberty Cup in New York, added the Australia Cup to give him victories in the first two of the eight World Cup of Match Racing events. Winners automatically qualify for the main event at Long Beach next August, but so far Gilmour is the only qualifier. Gilmour was starting helmsman with Iain Murray on Kookaburra III in the America’s Cup. The latest event also was sailed off Fremantle. Coming up are the Nippon Cup next week and a non-series event at Hong Kong in December.

SHOWTIME--The 19th Long Beach Sailboat Show that became the Sail and Power Boat Show seems destined to remain a combined event. By the time the show closed last weekend, attendance had jumped 30% over last year.

PROFESSIONAL--French boat builder Beneteau was host to a panel of sailing experts during the Long Beach show to discuss the prospects of pro sailing. All agreed it was inevitable, with sponsorship and advertising growing. Chuck Kober, former United States Yacht Racing Union president, said that USYRU has formed a committee on professional sailing headed by Jack LeFort of Philadelphia to “run parallel to USYRU” and be responsible for sanctioning and promoting pro events--the main purpose being to maintain a degree of control by preventing duplication of events and conflicts in dates.

AMERICA’S CUP--New Zealand’s Michael Fay may have his monster 90-foot boat built before Judge Carmen Ciparick of the New York State Supreme Court renders a decision on his challenge for 1988. The mold for the fiberglass craft is well along, but a source said Ciparick has indicated that her decision is a long way off. Meanwhile, Fay didn’t file a challenge for ’91 before the Oct. 31 deadline and said, “It is unreasonable to demand that challengers meet deadlines and pay entry fees while the timing and class of yacht for the next Cup are undecided.” The deadline wasn’t set until after the Sept. 9 hearing. If the Cup competition is held in ‘88, the $25,000 entry fees for ’91 will be refunded. . . . The San Diego Port Authority gave approval this week for an America’s Cup Museum in an unused part of the B Street Pier cruise terminal warehouse. Stars & Stripes ’87 is already there. Dennis Conner Sports Inc. is promoting the nonprofit project, with Dana Smith, marketing vice president, in charge. They had hoped to open next Feb. 4 on the first anniversary of the victory at Fremantle but are realistically looking at April 1.

MULTIHULL--France’s Jean Le Cam won 7 of 10 races in the second Formula 40 Challenge, a series of 10 events for 40-foot boats running from March through October in seven European countries. Defending champion Randy Smyth of Huntington Beach, plagued by equipment breakdowns, was the only American among 19 entries and placed sixth, with three second places in the last four races. Smyth won’t return next year because of his Olympic Tornado campaign.