THE SEOUL GAMES / DAY 12 : TALES OF OLYMPIC YACHTING : In the Turbulent Waters Off Pusan, a Would-Be Yachtsman Discovers It Isn’t Always Smooth Sailing

The day before, the seas were so high that the little dinghies in the smaller classes were flipping over, masts in the water, sailors clinging to the sides. The waves were so high that many of the races, even those for the larger-class boats, were finally canceled.

In one of the races that was held, a Singapore sailor was swept overboard and a Canadian had to circle to save him. The Canadian, Lawrence Lemieux, dropped from second place in the Finn-Class race into 23rd. Lemieux said “there was not any decision to make.” The judges were impressed and awarded him his second-place points.

Anyway, that was how high the seas were Sunday.

On Monday, they were even higher.

Earlier that morning, I had flown over Pusan, a city 200 miles southeast of Seoul, looking for this turbulence, but the outlying sea looked disappointingly placid. Occasionally, there was white water where the swells collapsed onto one another. But it seemed smooth. One area of the bay was entirely quilted with fishing nets; white patches that covered the water. Small green islands, the Oryukdo, jutted through the apparent calm.

Still, these waters were said to hold a strange and unseen treachery for the sailor. In addition to the winds that swept over this corner of South Korea, 15 knots at least during September, there was the Tsushima Current, something like the Gulf Stream. It moves across the tip at about 3.5 knots, in the opposite direction to the wind, and when it reaches Suyong Bay, the confluence of several rivers, it creates a washing machine effect.

Then, too, there had been a storm over the weekend.

So it was that the site manager at the Pusan Yachting Center, the Olympic sailing venue, wondered if going out on the press boat was that good of an idea. “The soling, which is what you would want to see, is unfortunately the farthest out and in the choppiest water,” he said, discouraging the idea. “Unless you’re a sailor or have taken medication.”

The water beyond his office was mirror-still. Boats bobbed gently at their moorings. Of course, the yachting center was safely enclosed by breakwaters. But how bad could it be? What is the worst that could happen?

He thought for a second. “You could get sick,” he said.

By 11 a.m. all the yachts, sailboards and flying dutchmen and the 22-foot star boats, had skipped out of the bay on the way to their respective racing areas, marked triangles plotted well off the shore. The press boats--there were different ones for each area--were loading up with photographers. Many of the photographers were wearing slickers.

The only boat going to Racing Area D, the farthest out and in the choppiest water, carried a crew of four, plus two young SLOOC volunteers, two Japanese photographers and one press man, who looked faintly ridiculous in a pink sweater. Everyone but the press man, which is what anyone besides photographers is called at these Games, carried box lunches of sushi.

As for the press boat, it seemed much like the craft, in color and size and shape, depicted in the movie “PT 109.” Not an ocean liner by any means, but nothing that would get tossed around at sea.

Immediately beyond the breakwater there were these swells, later calculated at 13 feet, and lingering gusts that would peak at 25 knots. The big, heavy press boat crashed through the waves. Sometimes the water broke over the bow, just like in the war movies. The skipper addressed these conditions with no obvious navigational skills. He just floored it and the boat either skimmed over a swell or drove right into it.

The troughs of water that the boat passed through were surprising. Not just in height but in width. A boat 10 feet away could simply disappear from your sight, mast and all. And then you’d mount the swell and slide down to the bottom of the trough. These valleys were tremendous. The press boat was definitely being tossed around at sea.

The smaller boats, of course, were in a much worse way. Lynne Jewell, crew on the U.S. entry in the first-ever women’s 470, said later, “it’s like climbing a mountain and then sliding down a bobsled.”

Hal Haenel, crew of the two-man star, USA ‘88, said, “It’s a big washing machine out there.”

Yet neither seemed to think of the seas in terms of discomfort. “It just makes it harder to read the shifts and velocities when the waves get that big,” Haenel said. For them, the seas were a technical problem.

“Though I have heard of people getting sick,” Haenel added.

Aboard the press boat: The shores of Pusan were receding into a mist, the Hyatt and the Westin Chosun, the city’s principal architecture, now fading into the pine-fringed beaches. We were indeed far out, in choppy water, too. The water here was the color of petroleum.

The skipper had finally halted the craft and we bobbed in the swells. Sometimes he backed up, turned or surged ahead to get out of the way of the little dinghies, which were still sailing toward their race areas. The sailors, in dry suits, leaned over and waved; the way they skipped by they seemed like flying fish, or playful porpoises.

It is difficult for sailors to adequately prepare for conditions such as these. The money and time--Lynne Jewell estimated the campaign cost her 4 years and $150,000--simply get you in the water. But Jewell and skipper Allison Jolly also had to practice in waters as varied as the coast of Ft. Lauderdale and San Francisco Bay. The Florida waters, with its Gulf Stream, gave them a good idea of a ripping current. The San Francisco Bay mocked the Olympic wave and wind conditions.

Still, said Mark Reynolds, the star skipper, “This is the roughest I’ve ever sailed in.”

The nausea did not strike immediately. But as the boat bobbed, not so gently and not only on one axis, a queasiness became apparent. Under full speed there had been no problem. But the boat was tilting in all directions. And Pusan seemed so far away.

One of the SLOOC volunteers stopped by to say the race had been postponed. “Well, let’s bring her home then,” I said. But he meant the race had been postponed 40 minutes. However long the boat was supposed to be out, it now would be out 40 minutes longer.

The photographers, who had behaved like schoolchildren on the way out, whooping with every breaker, got out their boxes of sushi.

The kindness of strangers is surely man’s purest act. And ordinarily I would have been touched by the concern of the two young men from SLOOC. I sat apart from the others on a hatch, gulping for fresh air. The queasiness had gone into another dimension now. The waves were tremendous and I was among them, up and down, side to side, with a sickening regularity. “If you are seasick and want to go back,” said one volunteer in halting English, “tell me.”

“I am seasick and I want to go back,” I said.

He said, “Well, we can’t go back.”

That was that. The small craft were still zipping by, their sails snapping in the wind. The two photographers, their sushi happily consumed, now needed their pictures. Unlike me, they were out here for a good reason. It was still 40 minutes until the start of the race.

“I will give you a tablet,” said the second volunteer, younger than the first. The crew was watching with some amusement. I swallowed whatever he gave me. The volunteer sat back happily. “There, now you can endure,” he said.

Though the seas were higher, the water was somehow not as dangerous as the day before, when many of the races were held closer to the harbor. The sailors in their little craft appeared to be in no trouble whatsoever as they climbed and descended the swells. Still a half-hour before race time they seemed to be milling aimlessly about in the chop.

Didn’t sailors ever get sick? Haenel was asked about that later. His boat had been craned out of the water and he was washing it down with a bucket of suds. The question caused him to pause. “No, I guess because you get used to it and besides, you’re sailing. Those press boats are tough, though. Sucking those diesel fumes, the worst place to be.”

So it was the diesel fumes that did it.

It seemed as if the photographers had plenty of pictures and the boat could steam back to port. As far as the race not starting, how could you tell the difference in the pictures? You’ve got your boat, your water and, with the three-man soling crews, two men leaning way out in their colorful slickers. Let’s just head on back, boys.

“The Japanese photographers need pictures of their boat going to Mark Two,” the volunteer says. “They will take those pictures and then we will go back to harbor.”

This is lie No. 2.

Harbor is a distant memory now. You can barely make out the Chosun Hotel through the mist, and then only when you are on top of a wave. There are some people just lying on the beach. Lying still, the horizon fixed. The photographers, and this is incredible, have found yet more food.

This version of the PT 109, as heavy as it is, is still buoyant and it continues to bob in place. Cape Horn must look like bathwater compared to this. The SLOOC volunteers seem alarmed at my condition, although I have made no sudden moves but have simply gripped the rail. The tablet has made no contribution to my health; I suspect it’s the kind of medication you must take hours before departure.

One of the volunteers leads me below to a small cabin where there are four bunks. He asks me to take off my shoes on the way down. He’s worried about what shoes will do to the cabin.

Motion sickness is not a visual thing. That is, you don’t need to see another wave cresting to create the nausea. Just feeling the motion from below works, too. This is like a hangover, except with a hangover you know you will improve hour to hour. This has the possibility of getting worse. “Has the race started?”

“Soon,” the volunteer says.

He has a plan, though. “Move your fingers and toes,” he says. “Like this.” He flexes his fingers, as when you are counting 10, 20, 30. “Your toes, too.”

Nothing happens. “Do it,” he insists, “I majored in Oriental medicine.”

For people who have been seasick, they operate in a closed society, nodding at the incomparable nausea the sea has produced. Until it strikes, it’s difficult to understand. It’s said that the doctor aboard Captain Cook’s vessel had simply curled up in his bunk for the months it took to reach Australia. This had seemed curious to me before. Why not climb atop decks, stretch your arms and catch a deep breath.

Of course, that is not possible. I passed 2 1/2 hours lying in that bunk, my fists clenched to my chest. Vague hallucinations as I drifted in and out. You could hear the motor backing and filling as the skipper maneuvered closer to the race. Sometimes he raced ahead--home?--to another vantage point. Soon I was beyond caring.

Finally I recognized the violent slamming of the hull upon the water as our return. The skipper had floored it again. The photographers had gotten their pictures, the second-to-last leg of the races had been completed. It was time to go home, at last.

One of the volunteers peered down into the cabin. “Richard,” he said softly, “we are at harbor.”

I stumbled off the ship, slowly so as not to irritate my sense of balance any further, walked the dock to a patch of grass. I lay there for an hour. It occurred to me I had not seen 1 minute of the race I was here to cover.

The small craft came skipping back in. USA ’88 had dropped from second to fifth and Reynolds was plotting a protest, a routine move in a litigious sport. Sailors were always protesting, juries were always convening. The Jolly-Jewell combo had dropped to second but was still in good position. In fact, the next day they would come back for the gold medal. The Reynolds-Haenel team would finish second the next day, when finals were finally completed.

The small boats were all being prepared for the night’s storage, hauled out, washed down, and trailered to yachting’s version of gasoline alley where they were stored in small trailer sheds. It seemed that skippers up and down the rows of sheds were all plotting protests. While they agreed that the waves were something, it did not dominate their talk.

I dropped by the Yachting Center, and the site manager said that it had been kind of rough out there, though I had seen rougher. He said he had heard someone had gotten sick on one of the press boats. I said I had heard that, too.

We shook our heads, just thinking about the poor guy.