They Work in Darkness While Sailing in the Light

That crazed expression Jack Nicholson wore so well in “The Shining” leaves a powerful image, especially when it’s staring down at you from a poster in the sewer of an America’s Cup yacht.

It makes a statement about the men who spend a third of their working hours here.

Sailing brings to mind images of blue water spraying gently over the bow, of billowy white sails in the breeze. But in America’s Cup sailing, daylight seldom shines here. It is dark, drab and dreary below deck.

It is, “the dog house, and my nickname is Labby, because I’m faithful, man’s best friend, that type of thing,” John Spence said on a recent tour of Defiant, the America’s Cup yacht owned by Bill Koch and his America 3 syndicate.

Spence is an America’s Cup sewerman, the Ed Norton of yachting. His workplace is below.

When America 3 sails Saturday off Point Loma for the first race of the Cup finals against Il Moro di Venezia, even the most devoted fans will see little--and hear less--of Spence and Gabriele Bassetti, his Italian counterpart. Yet, their teammates, although few aspire to be sewermen, hold them in esteem.

“You have to thrive on a job like that,” said ESPN commentator Gary Jobson, who used to work for Koch and hired Spence. “One good thing about it is, there aren’t many that like the job, so everyone’s telling you, ‘Way to go! Be my guest! Good job!’ ”

The sewerman’s job centers on hauling in and out sails that weigh anywhere from 100 to 300 pounds. The area in which these sailors work is spacious when empty, but stick 12 to 15 sails in the hold, and there’s not a lot of room left.

Generally, sewermen are short enough to keep from knocking their heads on the underside of the deck, strong enough to move sails in an orderly and timely fashion.

“You spend a lot of time working on your own down there,” Jobson said. “You have to like damp, wet, dark, loud, close-quartered places. You have to think in an area with four feet of head room, with a hose running down it and with people running all over it, stuffing 300-pound sails on top of you and yelling at you that it has to be done in seven minutes.”

Not exactly the stuff you dream of when you’re a kid. So why do these men work here?

“The exciting thing is to be on board,” Bassetti said. “I’m a professional. It doesn’t bother me what I’m doing.”

Spence, at 5 feet 11, is a former football player--an offensive lineman.

Il Moro came up with Bassetti, 5-11 1/2, to work its sewer. To take the sting off the “get your head out of the gutter” jabs, the Italian press office has Bassetti, at 34 the oldest Il Moro crew member and a one-time Cup veteran, listed as a pitman assistant.

“It’s more than hard. It’s an (awful) job,” Bassetti said. “There’s nothing about it that’s fun or happy. You’re rushing because you are desperate to get out of the dark and the water and get back in the race.”

Depending on the number of sail changes or repairs a sewerman must make, he typically spends 35-40% of the race below deck. Bassetti likened the time to a period of blindness.

“Unfortunately, it’s like you lose a sense,” he said. “You can hear and you can feel, but you really can’t see what’s going on outside. I’ve never been blind, but I think it’s the same sensation. You want so badly to see.”

Yet the beauty of the sewer is a twist on that.

“More than anyone in the boat, the chance of failure is the biggest for this man,” Jobson said. “They can twist the halyards, put the wrong sail up or set the spinnaker upside down. But it’s hard to pin something on someone you don’t see.”

Because it’s a lonely place, sewerman have their own methods for combatting complacency. Some race themselves, trying to beat their own times on maneuvers, or they take their peers to task.

“Our philosophy is, the less time below, the better for the boat,” Bassetti said. “So, the challenge is with the watch.”

Like in all athletics, drills take on different degrees of difficulty. Most find the tacking, Z-legs of the race course to be the most challenging.

“You have about 15 minutes on the other legs, but on the Z-legs, you only get eight-10 minutes,” Steitz said.

The harder the task, though, the more Spence relishes it. That’s why he welcomes the challenge of packing the jibs on a jib change during an upwind leg.

“That’s probably the hardest thing you have to do as a sewerman,” he said. “You have to shove the old jib down below and repack it, get it in the bag and get another one out. They’re stiffer than a spinnaker, so they’re much harder to muscle in the bag.”

The game plan is different from boat to boat but, generally, when the sewermen aren’t below deck, they are on the foredeck, helping the grinders, hooking up rigging or retrieving sails.

Like any job, the sewerman’s looks easy when done right. It’s anything but, Jobson said.

“Just imagine a 300-pound sail stuffed on your head,” he said. “You’re tacking back and forth, and the sail crashes over to the other side of the boat. Then you have to say, change jibs, and it’s on the bottom of the pile, and you have 800 pounds of sails over the one you want to get.”

During a typical eight-leg, 20.3-nautical mile America’s Cup race, there are usually nine or 10 sail changes, depending on the weather. The sewer becomes a very busy place when the winds kick up to 14-17 knots, when a sail rips or when there are major wind shifts.

Spence lives for race days, in part because of his competitive nature, but also because race days are less taxing then training days.

Resilience is one of the attributes of a championship sewerman. And the man who set the standard for this position is American Conn Findlay.

“All sewermen should aspire to be as good as Conn,” Jobson said. “He’s the Paul Bunyan of sailors. Conn’s the kind of guy, when trouble’s on deck and everything’s loud, crazed and confused, he has the ability to come through the hatch, with a sandwich stuffed in his mouth, see the problem instantly and get it (solved) in the heat of battle. John Spence has those attributes.”

Spence, 27, is in the midst of his second America’s Cup campaign as a sewerman. He was with America 3 helmsman Buddy Melges on Heart of America in Australia.

Although he has made great strides since then, he made short work of the comparison to Findlay.

“The Conn man? Everyone knows him. He’s a legend,” said Spence.

At the World Championships last May in San Diego, Il Moro’s former sewerman made a now legendary sail change.

Bassetti said that Il Moro had just dropped its gennaker sail, and that the sewerman was trying to fold it.

“But it had a big puddle of water in it, maybe 200 pounds, and he couldn’t fold it,” he said.

Finally, the crewman became so flustered that he bit into the sail to make little holes to drain it.

“It looked like shark teeth marks,” Bassetti said. “Later, the sailmaker said, ‘Sorry, we cannot use that sail again.’ It’s really nice to remember.”

Spence stashes no personal items in the sewer, unlike in Fremantle. There, because of the tremendous wind, his job was so physically demanding that he had to constantly replenish his energy with snacks he carried aboard.

He has pasted a few pictures on a wall in the hole, just to add some flair to his work environment. He plans to call on his creative juices when he paints the floor of the sewer in America 3, but only if all his other work is done.

“Decorating is one of those things you do when you have nothing important to do,” he said. “And there are so many important things to do.”