Overpowered Sailboats Are the Ultimate in Yacht Racing

Richard Faulkner has seen a lot in his sailing career, but he won’t soon forget the moment the mast came crashing down on Flyer, 50 yards from the finish of the Ultimate Yacht Race off Corpus Christi, Tex.

“That’s me right there,” said Faulkner, pointing to the middle of a towering wave engulfing the little red boat in a photo of the disaster.

Above the wave the mast is crumpling like straw--sheared clean in three places--and a huge cloud of sail is tumbling down around the place where Faulkner knows he would have been.

It was a stunning, sickening moment, said skipper Mike Hobson, who supervised Flyer from conception to her moment of triumph and was watching glory get snatched away. “We stopped when we hit the wave, but the mast kept going,” he said. “We were still so far ahead, we managed to drift across the finish in third place. It was so close . . . “

Yet, as spectacular as the dismasting was, it wasn’t Flyer’s ultimate disaster in the disaster-plagued Ultimate regatta last May. That came two days later, after Hobson & Co. worked all night patching and welding the shattered mast so their Annapolis entry could compete in the last race of the weeklong series, a race worth $43,000 to the winner, about as rich as it gets in sailboat racing.

This time the Flyer people cheered when their key rival, America’s Cup skipper John Kolius, flipped his boat, Whale, near the last turning mark. Flyer suddenly had a shot to win the big prize with just two miles to go.

She drew even as Whale was righted in 20-plus knots of howling, Gulf Coast wind and the two frail craft went skittering down the last leg together, Flyer leaping into a lead.

But a tactical error forced Hobson to douse his spinnaker prematurely and Flyer’s crew watched in horror as Whale sprinted into the lead again and crossed the finish 3 1/2 seconds ahead.

It was winner-take-all, no prize for second, and a matter of a few feet decided it. Which is how it goes in the Ultimate, perhaps the most exciting sailboat racing concept.

With that week of breakages, capsizes, groundings and shattering disappointments behind them, what do you suppose the Flyer crew is up to now? Getting ready for the next round, of course, training daily in the Chesapeake here.

The Ultimate Yacht Race springs to fractured life again Oct. 9-16 off New London, Conn. The format will be the same, only this time the top prize for the final race is expected to be about $60,000 and there will be five entries in Flyer’s “Ultimate 30” class, instead of the four that made it to Texas.

The newest addition is the invention of Texan Cameron Ogg, who is bringing a one-man, wing-sailed, hydrofoil-assisted 30-footer he steers with a joy stick. The contraption is said to have a top speed of 50 knots, after which, said Hobson, “We hope it self-destructs.”

So all you sailing fans who fell asleep watching the embarrassment of an America’s Cup on TV, wake up!

The Ultimate Yacht Race is a stepchild of the real America’s Cup, the one in 1987 that won world attention when Dennis Conner kept Stars & Stripes in one fast piece to win the prize in big winds off West Australia.

“Ultimate” organizers figured that regatta proved people would watch sailboat racing if you just made it exciting. The Ultimate 30s’ wide-open design parameters, a big cash prize to the winner plus the heavy winds of places like the Gulf of Mexico, San Francisco Bay and Long Island Sound seemed the ticket.

The initial plan was for a $1,000,000 prize to the winner, which doesn’t sound a lot like $43,000 or even $60,000. But the plan also was to get an hourlong show on network TV, and NBC now has shown its hour tape of the first regatta twice, Hobson said, and will cover the Connecticut regatta the same way, by tape delay.

What makes the Ultimate interesting? “I like the collision possibilities,” said a spectator at the Texas races. The self-destruction possibilities are even better.

The Ultimate 30 class puts few limits on design. Boats must be no longer than 30 feet, no wider than 14 feet and no lighter than 2,000 pounds. All else is open, and the result is sailboats the average person wouldn’t feel safe even stepping aboard at the dock.

The 30-foot-long, carbon-fiber hull of Flyer weighed less than 300 pounds when it came off the mold last spring, for example. Its rear end is wide open to the sea, the reasoning being it goes so fast, it simply leaves water behind.

Atop this fragile hull, Hobson mounted a rig with more square feet of sail than the average 50-foot racing keelboat carries. The only way to keep the grossly overpowered affair upright is for the crew of eight stout sailors to scramble precariously up and down wide frames mounted off the sides. When the wind gets puffy, they scamper like monkeys and the boat bobs like a cork in a hurricane.

“It’s a challenge,” said Bill Steitz, whose construction business sponsors Flyer. “We look at it like climbing K2. Every time something breaks, we say, ‘Whoops, K2 just got higher.’ ”

For Hobson, a softspoken Englishman who moved here four years ago to test American professional sailing waters, the Ultimate is just what he hoped for: the ultimate sailing challenge.

His goal this time? “Sail conservatively,” said Hobson after a day of practicing on the Bay last weekend, “and try to keep the boat in one piece.”