He’s Seeing If ‘Sailing for Dollars’ Floats : New Series Tries Putting on Races for Spectators--and Prize Money

A few years ago, an entrepreneur tried to orchestrate a sailboat race around the world. Christopher Columbus had an easier time getting sponsorship from Queen Isabella.

“It just became a lot of hassles trying to get international clearances,” said Sid Morris, chuckling at the memory of his capsized project.

Morris, 48, a sports marketer and recreational sailor from North Carolina, now is trying to launch professional sailing in the United States. Saturday and today, 10 two-person teams are sailing 21-foot Hobie catamarans alongside Silver Strand State Beach. This weekend’s seven-heat event is the second race of a six-race series that offers a total of $500,000 in purses.

The idea of professional sailing, Morris explained, sprung from two places: Perth, Australia, and Cheyenne, Wyo.

It was in Perth five years ago that the Australians wrested the America’s Cup from the United States. Not long thereafter, Morris was in a bar in Cheyenne. Cheyenne likes rodeos. But sailing?

“People there didn’t know much about sailing, but they had watched the America’s Cup. There was a lot of interest,” Morris recalled. “That proved to me it was a marketable sport.”

Ironically, it was a native of Perth, Brett Dryland--yes, Dryland--who won two of Saturday’s five heats to gain a sizable lead entering today’s races.

Morris says his version of the sport is more spectator-oriented than amateur sailing.

In amateur sailing--those guys skippering multimillion-dollar vessels in the America’s Cup are considered amateurs--technology can play as big a role as the sailor. In Morris’ estimation, people would rather see the sailor, not the engineer, be the definitive reason for victory. Thus ProSail competitors sail essentially the same boat, though Dryland pointed out that each team can make slight alterations.

Other differences: Races are conducted closer to shore, judges assess time-consuming penalties such as 360- and 720-degree maneuvers during the race, and, of course, money is awarded.

A television contract, without which few spectator sports can live, is “going to happen,” Morris said, adding that pay-per-view cable would be the most likely route. ProSail did land R.J. Reynolds-Nabisco Inc. as a sponsor this weekend.

If the boats were the same Saturday, Dryland seemed by far the better sailor. He finished second in the first race to Capistrano Valley’s Hobie Alter Jr., who also won the first event in Tampa two months ago. Dryland won the next race, then finished second twice on the 6-mile rectangular course.

Then came a 9-mile race, which entailed two reaches--high-speed stretches in which the vessel’s direction is perpendicular to the wind’s direction--under the Coronado Bridge. Dryland won that by at least 800 yards. In fact, he led by about that much two miles into the race. That victory helped lessen his frustration from race three, in which Jeff Alter of Capistrano Valley slickly tacked his boat past Dryland’s for a 5-foot victory.

Dryland, 28, began sailing at age 14, when he would navigate 8-foot “snub-nosed” boats about the Sydney harbor.

Can he scotch his accounting and aquatic businesses in favor of sailing?

“These boats, unlike the other (shorter) Hobies, have kites (spinnakers),” he said. “The speed is incredible. It’s not going to be this year, but in two years, hopefully, we can make a living at sailing. The skipper’s got to lose out, sailing closer to shore, to get spectator interest. But I think it’s very eye-catching.”