Transpac Tale: Alone Together on Swift Wood

ABOARD THE RACING YACHT RAGTIME, in the Eastern Pacific--The night is moonless, and under layers of clouds also starless. The night is black--up, down, behind and beyond.

Into this darkness we race. Surely on a night like this the cliche was born--about racing like the wind. For the wind shrieks in our rigging, fills the oversize billows of our sails and sweeps us across the ocean. What we cannot see we feel: the pressure of breeze on our necks, the epic and unstable power of sea underfoot, spray in our faces, the boiling rush of the boat’s wake. Over the turbulent Pacific we race like the wind.

Again and again, the classic 1963 sloop Ragtime points her snout and dives down the face of unseen waves, hesitating just a beat as the swell rises. Then her thin hull shivers and drops like a runaway elevator. Then we are racing faster than the wind.

We are surfing at 30 miles an hour into the night of the open ocean in a 65-foot sailboat, a single-masted wooden yacht with the profile of a carving knife and ghosts of legend in her past. Our pursuit is old and proud, and romanticized along waterfronts around the world. We are, of course, exuberant and as keenly alive as it is possible to be.

To the south, an ominous hurricane is blowing our way. Behind us is California and months of preparation. Ahead, if we make it, lies Hawaii and reunions with our families, strings of flower leis, iced jugs of Mai Tais and rounds of parties to celebrate one of America’s most venerable sporting endeavors: the biannual Transpacific Yacht Race from Los Angeles to Honolulu. No ocean race in the world is so long and so old. Few are as exquisite. None takes sailors this far from land.

Sometimes the smear of stereotype obscures the grace, subtlety and drama of ocean racing. Rich people at play with expensive toys, arcane rules and clubhouse protests. But up close, competitive blue-water sailing satisfies more than its offhand image. For one thing, not all of the wealthy who sail are spoiled as sportsmen. A boat, no matter how big, is too small to hide unearned arrogance.

In truth, most of the people who sail the Transpac are not wealthy. They hold down jobs. This is their vacation, or for a few, their avocation. As kids, they played in dinghies. As adults, well, they never entirely grew up, except to look longingly at the horizon, to sail more skillfully and come to understand that every well-heeled fellow headed to sea needs crew. No one sails Transpac alone.

Aboard Ragtime, we sail with nine. All are volunteers and everyone works for a living: the boat’s new owner; seven accomplished racing sailors, some of them greatly accomplished, and me, an eager coastal cruiser whose only potential asset is as storyteller. Nearly all of the 2,223-mile event occurs over the horizon and out of sight. Thus the great race is hardly fathomed inland of the wharves. It is an adventure recounted mostly at the salty bars of yacht clubs and in the pages of specialty magazines, with only stray news accounts here and there.

With degrees of pity and condescension these sailors regard those who do not appreciate the experience: this blend of graceful mechanism, human competition and the immutable forces of nature?

“Out here life boils down to its simplest,” says Ragtime navigator John Jourdane, 53, a Pasadena schoolteacher who has twice raced around the world and made 32 previous Pacific crossings. “Out here you have only two things to worry about: making the boat go fast and what’s for dinner.

“It’s a simple life. It’s peaceful. It’s exciting. It’s you, the ocean and your mates. All the other stuff, you leave behind. And one other thing. Out here is one of the last great unspoiled wildernesses on the planet. Here, it’s us and nature. Nobody can help us.”

Pushing the Boat With Unceasing Effort

To drive a sailboat to its limits is unceasing effort. This is not a cruise. There is no cocktail hour, not a single chair in which to sit, no table around which to gather. The cabin below is smaller than a camping trailer, wide open and piled deep with bags of sails. It is sodden and rank like a gym locker. There is no shower. Duty watches pass, four hours on and five hours off, around the clock.

On deck, everything is sharp or hard, or both. The boat rolls and pitches spasmodically. One does not walk so much as climb from place to place. Anybody’s stationary neck, shoulder, waist or knee is regarded as a communal hand-hold. There is no shade from the sun, no light against the dark save the faintest glow of instruments.

So how can we make the boat go fast?

We can pick the right course. Which in Transpac is matter of understanding, and more important anticipating, ocean weather--that is, the variable breezes that whirl clockwise around the Eastern Pacific’s summer high-pressure zone. In long-distance sailing, the fastest line between two points is seldom straight.

We can pick the right combination of sails according to the wind. Ragtime carries 16 for this race, including six giant, balloon-like spinnakers of various dimensions and weights, some for heavy air and others for light zephyrs.

We can leave behind unnecessary cargo. We bring only one tube of toothpaste to share, one can of deodorant. We daub our cuts and scrapes from the same little bottle of peroxide. We are limited to four T-shirts, two pairs of shorts, a sweater and foul-weather gear.

Each of us is permitted a personal toothbrush. But someone seems to have forgotten, and right now I see mine in the mouth of an off-watch colleague. Oh well, I am wearing another’s jacket, which looked a lot like mine in the dark.

As is custom, the boat’s owner has provided us with identical crew T-shirts, nylon jackets and ball caps. Some aboard mark theirs with initials. Others regard this as possessiveness and wear whatever is closest at hand.

To balance the boat, we keep our weight on the high side--the side from which the wind is coming, the weather side. We sleep in our clothes, ready to be summoned on deck. The entire trip, I never remove my contact lenses. We share pillows, soggy sheets and bunks still warm from the last body.

Inside, Ragtime is a noisy echo chamber for the roil of the sea, the humming of the rigging, the thud of footsteps on deck and screech of mechanical winches. No matter, we sleep, exhausted--if sometimes only for minutes before the call “All Hands!” to change a sail or course.

On deck, each standing watch of four people will bring us an average 46 to 51 miles closer to Hawaii. How much closer depends on the wind. But by no means the wind alone. No amount of advance reading or dockside conversation had prepared me for the physical effort and coordinated artistry necessary to gain the most from the breeze.

Seasickness Fells the Storyteller

Preparing for this voyage dockside, I had hoisted our enthusiastic 34-year-old bowman, Mike Burch, a Long Beach steamship agent, up Ragtime’s spindly 70-foot mast, using rope and winch. Suddenly a falling piece of rigging bounced off my head. I wavered and saw an explosion of stars.

“Lucky that was titanium and not stainless steel,” someone remarked.

So considering this standard of sympathy, I am not surprised to find myself being deployed as a floor mat 30 hours into the race.

You see, I am seasick.

Ghastly so. Curled up over the bilge, on wet bags of sails, inert, morose and full of self-doubt. I awaken, my stomach greasy and adrift from its moorings. Down here, I see a forest of hairy legs. The off watch is eating dinner. They are sitting on bunks. I am lying at their feet. Grinning mouths leer down. Crumbs or drips or something rain on me. The boat is pitching horribly.

Hey, what about some pity?

“OK,” mutters Mike Burch. “We’ll bake you a cake just as soon as the sea smooths out a little.” Someone else reminds me that no one dies of seasickness.

We exchange profanities. I resume my position as floor mat.

During the six months I worked to earn a spot on the crew, I raced twice in Ragtime. Once to Mexico and once locally. I felt no queasiness and put the matter out of mind. But in the final 10 days before Transpac, it seemed that everyone I met asked how sick I become in the big swells offshore. I began to dwell on the subject.

Two days before the start, I took Meclizine tablets as suggested by a doctor. I stopped drinking alcohol and I ate nothing with grease or fat. Still, I could not shake the dread.

On race day, Saturday, July 5, we have a dockside goodbye party with family and friends. Ragtime’s small diesel engine propels us two hours from Long Beach to the starting buoy off Point Fermin.

Long ago, natural disaster fixed this place as our starting line. King Kalakaua of the independent monarchy of Hawaii got yachtsmen thinking in 1886 when he proposed a cross-Pacific sailboat race. In 1905, two boat owners, one from Honolulu and one from Los Angeles, agreed to race the following year. They decided the race should begin from San Francisco.

Hawaiian Clarence MacFarland arrived with his yacht La Paloma in May 1906 to find the city in ruins from the great earthquake and fire. The commodore of what is now the Los Angeles Yacht Club proposed moving the race south. It has been run from Southern California every other year except during world wars, and once during the Depression, the race was put off for a year. Among ocean races, only the Newport, R.I.-to-Bermuda regatta is equally as old, but barely one-third the distance.

Before the starting gun, our last order of business is a crew meeting. John Jourdane, who has sailed 200,000 ocean miles, says this: “Any little scraps between us we left at the dock. We’ve got to be a family. This is our little world. There will be tension in the days ahead. Work it out.”

We assign ourselves emergency duties. If the boat sinks I am to grab our “abandon ship” bag, which contains a satellite SOS transmitter. Two men are assigned life raft duties. Another is to gather our emergency jugs of water.

“What’s out there can be pretty scary,” says Kevin McCarthy, a 36-year-old former professional sailor from Signal Hill. He adds: “But we’ve all been around the block. We can handle it.”

Wait, I think to myself, I’ve never been around this block.

We have a spectacular start. From our vantage, we lead the fleet. Under broken skies, the breeze is light and we ghost along toward the only marker on the course, the west end of Catalina.

To stare out at the sea is as mesmerizing as looking into a campfire. I feel I am embarking on a timeless human ritual--an ocean passage in a small boat. For a change, I am on the other side of the press barrier. There is a helicopter overhead, and a couple of launches with photographers. A small fleet of spectator boats surrounds us.

As we round Catalina, the breeze is fitful. We change sails now and again. Small headsails when the wind puffs up. Larger sails when it dies down. We have dropped to last place among the seven boats in our class. It’s early yet and Ragtime is never fast in these coastal conditions.

The spectator fleet is long gone. Our fellow racers are dispersing, picking their own courses, shrinking to little specks and vanishing over the horizon.

I wolf down a dinner of lasagna. Our boat has been provisioned by an outside professional. Each night’s meal is packaged and designed to be heated on our small, gimbaled propane range and stove. The food is delicious, and prodigious.

Even 100 miles offshore, we can detect the glow from the lights of Los Angeles. To the south, unseen, passes San Clemente Island, the last land for 2,100 miles.

Before my first night watch, I rest in a cramped single bunk deep in the stern of the boat. The breeze is growing stronger and the crash-bang of waves against the hull and the rush-gurgle of water inches from my ear are a lullaby.

I wake sweaty, claustrophobic. Sick. For the next 32 hours I am immobilized, humiliated.

I am letting down the crew. They are doing my work, standing my watches. They took a chance on me, and I’ve spoiled things. I see the headline: Writer bites off more than he can chew and throws up. Then, in anger I think to hell with this boat and everyone on it. How can I endure another week of this? What doesn’t kill you will make you stronger. Someone clever once said that. I spit in that person’s eye.

Then the curse vanishes. I emerge from a sleep to find myself reborn at sea.

I thank my mates for tolerating me. Which they regard as bizarre as my yearning for sympathy. The best single characteristic of sailors, at least these sailors, is the straight-ahead willingness to cope with whatever happens, without fretting about what might have been. The only thing sailors cannot abide is the absence of wind. Seasickness is part of sailing. I am to learn that more than half of first-time Transpac sailors get ill. And two others on our crew have also been queasy, unknown to me.

Before our voyage is over, I will celebrate and let the crew hoist me halfway up the great swaying mast while underway, just for the sheer joy of it.

Seeking Out the Trade Winds

Like most races, Transpac follows something of an established course. It is marked by the isobars of barometric pressure on the weather map. That’s because a vast bubble of high pressure roves around the Eastern Pacific each summer. At the center of the bubble, the sea is typically flat and the air calm. The direct route from Los Angeles to Honolulu risks leading into this windless abyss, and certain defeat.

However, around the bubble, in a vast circle 2,000 miles in diameter, winds travel clockwise. They brush the West Coast of the U.S. with a prevailing northerly breeze and then bend and aim west--the fabled Trade Winds of the tropics. These breezes are fastest wherever pressure gradients are greatest, where the isobars squeeze close together. The job of navigator is to anticipate these winds and the swells that track them. This sends our fleet edging southward after Catalina. We turn more southerly than others.

Despite a slow start, the 1997 Transpac will turn out to be the windiest in decades. The fastest in history. Casualties in terms of broken boats and ruined dreams will be the greatest in a generation. Thirty-eight boats will start in various classes. Eight will retire, three of them dismasted, and one because of acute seasickness among the crew.

Because of weather patterns, Transpac is really two contests back to back.

Leaving California, racers first sail into the wind and against the seas. Sailboats are pressed, or heeled, onto their sides. They bounce and slam into waves. This may make for exciting sailing for an afternoon off the coast, but sustained at sea, it becomes cold, wet, disorienting and uncomfortable. For hours on end, the off-watch crew sits on the high-side rail, legs dangling over the side, acting as counterbalance. Many sailors sew foam pads into the seats of their shorts for this duty.

Then hour by hour, day by day, the winds clock around to the stern. When they reach far enough behind, the ordinary jib or headsail is dropped and a giant spinnaker hoisted. The boat stands up straight. We are sailing downwind. The seas come from over our shoulder, and we can surf. Meanwhile, with each day the water and weather get warmer, more pleasant. It is this portion of the race that delights the sailors. It is the pattern of bad to good to great that makes the Transpac a standout in ocean racing.

Gentlemen, they say, prefer to sail downwind.

Not only is this more comfortable, but it is finesse sailing. Because we are now surfing and the giant spinnaker is an almighty challenge to fly under these conditions.

Traveling downwind, sails are no longer airfoils driving the boat forward like the wings of an airplane. They are wind-catchers, pulling us along. So that means the bigger sails the better--right up to the breaking point. Our primary spinnaker, made of a plastic-coated nylon as thin as tissue paper, is 66 feet tall and 44 feet wide, and balloons out larger than the floor plan of an average house.

I mentioned the artistry of ocean racing. And it is this: keeping ourselves moving at maximum speed toward Hawaii in a boat that wallows and slides over heaving seas in front of shifting winds, always right on the edge of a disastrous wreck. From above, our minute-by-minute course would appear as a zigzag. We veer to the left a little to surf the face of wave, then back to the right so we do not stall in the trough. Then we nudge back to the middle to set up for the next swell. Then the wind shifts a little and the whole ballet must shift with it. When the breeze lightens, catching waves is harder. When the wind kicks in, surfing is more dangerous.

Essential to speed, of course, is technology--the ultra-expensive components and futuristic laboratory designs of modern sailing craft. However, as we will prove in this boat built when John F. Kennedy was president and Sonny Liston heavyweight boxing champion, the skill of the sailor remains decisive.

At the top of the wave, the spinnaker rides far forward and is taut with wind. But Ragtime outraces the wind when surfing. With no pressure on the spinnaker, the sail begins to collapse. The crew responds by reeling in one corner, tightening it again. Then it is released slowly as it fills. From above, the spinnaker would appear to breathe in and out.

Down in the cockpit, one person is directing the “trim” of the spinnaker and looking behind for the endless shifts and puffs in the ocean breeze. Another, the grinder, is bent over a two-handed winch, reeling in the spinnaker and then resting a moment before reeling in again. Another person is adjusting the winged-out mainsail for maximum drive, and perhaps also an optional sail flying between the forward spinnaker and the mast, called a staysail. The final member of the watch is at the helm, driving. This, I quickly understand, is not like steering a cruising boat.

Sitting at a traffic light in your car, imagine a 20-mph breeze coming from behind. That is the “actual” wind over the ground. As soon as you drive forward, however, the wind touching the car changes in velocity. When you are going 20 mph, you feel no breeze at all because you are traveling with it. When you reach 30 mph, you are driving into a 10-mph head wind. This is called “apparent” wind. This is what hits us when we accelerate down the face of a wave.

Helmsman and sail trimmers feel every shift on the hairs of their necks, verified by instruments on the mast. By that and the undulations of an agitated sea, the 25,000-pound boat is alternately sailed and surfed.

“If you are feeling old, come out here sailing. This will bring you to life,” says Bruce McPherson, 40, a Seattle yacht broker and native New Zealander who spent 17 years as a professional sailor on the world’s maxi boat series.

The price of speed is danger. If the boat veers even slightly out of this groove, the wind will catch us sideways and we are likely to be knocked down. Ragtime will “crash” or broach--perhaps plunging the rigging into a wave and breaking the mast. A driver lasts only an hour at a time before his concentration begins to go. At night or in high winds, the challenge is far greater. At these moments, the eyes behind the helm narrow and hands twirl the four-foot spoked wheel at a blurring pace. It is a fierce and unforgiving experience--and for those who can accomplish it, sublime.

Hurricane Headed Toward Ragtime

It is afternoon now, our third day at sea. John Jourdane comes on deck after studying the latest of our twice-a-day weather faxes.

“There’s a full-blown hurricane 800 miles away coming right for us,” he announces. “We’ll watch it, but usually these things dissipate when they reach cooler water up here.”

Usually?

Our contact with the outside world is through these broadcast faxes, and a once-a-morning sideband radio check-in with the Transpac race committee which is traveling the course with us in a communications sailboat. We have not seen another vessel since Catalina Island, and these position check-ins allow us to learn how the race is progressing. This radio call and dinner are the only two distractions from routine.

We are still seventh of seven boats in our class, and 20th of 23 racing boats in the fleet. The remaining vessels are slower and are competing in a new “cruising” class.

“Don’t be discouraged,” Jourdane says. “Ragtime hasn’t seen her stuff yet.”

Her “stuff” will come in the downwind portion of the race where the 34-year-old boat remains as fast as any its size.

All of the large race boats in Transpac, in fact, owe a debt to Ragtime. When she arrived in California from New Zealand, the low-slung streamliner was an oddity. Oceangoing racers were supposed to be big, sturdy craft. Ragtime was an eggshell by comparison. She was designed light--to surf downwind and nothing else. Yacht club regulars barred her from racing because she was so fragile.

Finally, in 1973, Ragtime premiered in the Transpac. In the last 50 miles, she edged out a larger, heavier boat that was the odds-on favorite. A headline in The Times recorded it as, “The Time a ‘Rowboat’ Beat the ‘Queen Mary.’ ” West Coast racing was changed forever. Ragtime signaled the era of the Ultra-Light Displacement Boat, ULDB, which subsequently gave rise to a series of boats designed specifically for Transpac--craft three feet longer than Ragtime, and much wider than her needle-sized, 9 1/2-foot beam. But all had the similar ability to surf. These boats are called “sleds” and it is against this new generation that Ragtime now races.

A handful of these craft were modified to add more height to their masts and more lead to their keels for 1997 to establish a separate and still faster class, known as the “turbo sleds.” They will gain 20 to 30 miles a day on us and shatter all race records. Until then Ragtime could claim three of the fastest 25 crossings in race history.

The Transpac now underway is Ragtime’s 11th, and she’s hardly slowing down. At the finish, we will have shaved four minutes and 43 seconds off her previous best.

One Log Can Ruin Your Whole Voyage

“Holy cow! Look at that! Gosh!”

Actually, crewman Ty Prine, 39, a Honolulu sailboat rigger, put it slightly differently. Sailors, you see, tend to leave their manners ashore. In this case, Prine is pointing to a large log drifting 75 feet off our beam. We whisk past the ominous tree floating out here hundreds of miles from land, and other crewmen voice their version of “Holy Cow!”

One of the ocean racer’s gravest fears is colliding with a heavy, half-submerged object and tearing a fatal hole in the thin plywood hull. Worse than logs are sleeping whales and sodden shipping containers that have washed off freighters and float only inches above the surface. These could easily peel away Ragtime’s stabilizing keel and much of her bottom, sending us down almost instantly.

Even in daylight, it is difficult to see such objects, particularly because everyone’s concentration is fixed on the wind behind us and the sails overhead. At night, seeing anything smaller than a well-lit freighter is impossible.

For this reason, we sleep with our feet forward in the bunks. Shock absorbers in a collision. Nothing else to do, except tell ourselves that it is a big ocean and stray obstacles and dozing whales are comparatively few. But whenever I lie down, I visualize in my mind how many steps in the dark it is to the “abandon-ship” bag, which is my emergency responsibility. I try to push out of mind the stories of sailors swimming through battery acid in an upturned boat, groping for a way out. I try to forget reading that the average depth of the Pacific is 13,215 feet.

In 1975, a small Transpac boat sunk suddenly in the middle of the race. Its crew of six was rescued by another competitor.

More absorbing, certainly for me, is the fear of being washed overboard and lost. Not a matter of chance, like hitting a container, but a personal screw-up, a momentary loss of concentration, a single missed handhold. I imagine the shocking sensation of wetness, the choking in my throat, so I cannot even try to yell at the pyramid of sail vanishing over the swells. Then the aloneness.

The velocity at which we are traveling, and more to the point, the sensation of velocity aboard such a boat, is a steady reminder of this hazard. It is also the source of excitement, for isn’t exhilaration the blood offspring of fear? Our bow sometimes raises a thundering wake eight feet high, knifing through swells, and our stern kicks up a rooster tail worthy of a ski boat. Even after I become accustomed to everything else aboard--the rituals of the work, the cramped quarters, the open toilet an arm’s length from someone’s sleeping bunk--after all that becomes familiar, the impression of speed, the rushing watery howling noise of speed, is still breathtaking.

Repeatedly, I find myself transfixed watching bits of foam from our bow wake race past the hull and disappear behind us, over the swells in just seconds. A student of Zen once told me about Tokyo businessmen who stand at the edge of the platform just as the commuter train screeches into the station. By realizing that only a fraction of an inch separates them from tumbling to a crushing death, they face the day with a freshly aroused passion for life. I watch the foam vanish, and my heart rate rises.

I calculate that if it took the crew just five minutes to recognize that one of us is missing and drop giant spinnaker and bring Ragtime to a halt, 1.5 miles may separate swimmer from boat: surely an impossible distance to see a tiny bobbing head or waving hand in heavy seas, even if the sun is out.

In 1951, a Transpac boat suffered just such a calamity. The search was called off after 29 hours. Only then did a returning rescue boat chance upon the swimming crewman, who was brought aboard terrified but otherwise all right.

Howling Winds, a Ripple of Panic

By Day 4, we have moved up to sixth out of seven among the sleds. For dinner, enchiladas.

On Day 5, we break a magic barrier in ocean racing: we have traveled 307 miles in the last 24 hours. Hurricane Delores, downgraded to a tropical storm, has moved into the neighborhood, 300 miles away, and still coming our way. We can detect nothing of it, but no one is joking or telling ghost stories about storms at sea. Dinner: turkey and dressing.

At night, the winds howl. A ripple of panic disrupts my watch. Scott Zimmer, the imposing 6-foot-5, 37-year-old owner of Ragtime, is a coastal racer with most of his experience in small boats. This is his inaugural ocean passage, and his first night at the helm under these conditions. He lasts only moments.

“Take this. Here, take it!” He steps back from the wheel like a man whose hands have been scorched.

It takes awhile for another helmsman to restore something approaching confidence in the watch. None of the more experienced racers think anything less of Zimmer, and some admire his moxie for trying. This is one of sailing’s greatest challenges, and Zimmer is as surprised as I am by the dexterity necessary to keep us from calamity. He won’t smile about it for a couple of days.

On Day 6, we advance to fourth place in our class, and seventh in the fleet. Our mood soars because we expect winds for the remainder of the race to favor Ragtime. And more important, we are in a southerly position where we can best capitalize on the weather for our approach to the islands. We begin to dream of a miracle.

At midday we see a dot on the horizon. It is a spinnaker headed our way. The sled Grand Illusion has shifted course and is bearing down. She will cross behind us after falling back in a brief mid-ocean duel. She is heading farther south still, a fact we disregard.

That may have been our downfall. Our weather fax has been acting up, so we’re 12 hours behind the latest forecast. It appears that Grand Illusion could see on the map that remnants of Delores had altered the prevailing position of the strongest winds.

None of us pay any mind. I am trying to put to words the feeling of space on the open ocean. What I anticipated was an overwhelming sensation of vastness. I find just the opposite. I am astounded how small our world has become. Only in the abstract are we part of that great expansive arc from horizon to horizon and the empty leagues beyond. Our world is bounded by wood and sailcloth. I go aloft into the rigging and Ragtime seems even more preposterously dwarfish.

In this shrunken space, we are acutely aware of being alone. We know that other racers are on our flanks beyond the curve of the earth but otherwise, this part of the ocean is as vacant as it’s been since the advent of the steamship. That is to say, almost no one hunts for the wind here now, except occasional sailboats like us. Freighters follow more direct lanes. Airline routes go elsewhere. We have seen not a single plane.

Twice, porpoise give chase and then drift away. Occasionally pelagic birds pay a visit, including one lanky albatross. At night, flying fish sometimes mistakenly land on our decks with a thud and rattle. Once in a while, squid break the surface to escape predators.

The ocean is a richer, viscous blue now. We are in the Trade Winds. The horizon is darkened by rainsqualls. We try to use these mini-storms to our advantage--seeking out their winds, but bearing away to avoid the large calms that follow in their wake. Their drizzle and rain is refreshing, and washes off the itch of salt scum.

In the heat of day, we strip one by one and scrub ourselves in salt water on the fantail of the boat. We are allotted a quart of precious fresh water each for a sponge rinse. We hang laundry from the lifelines and graceful Ragtime takes on the air of a scow.

A couple of the old hands surprise us by baking chocolate chip cookies. We have 800 miles to go. We dare to contemplate our finish. There is no liquor allowed on board, although I suspect that someone is bending the rule. The best the rest of us can do is dream of the Mai Tais that our hosts in Hawaii will have waiting for us. Tubs of them. No, make it barrels full.

For dinner, swordfish.

Later, nightfall. The stars are marvelous. Not just bright, but three-dimensional in their profusion. We can see depth in the Milky Way. Starlight shimmers off the water. A sliver of moon appears and lights a direct path to Hawaii.

The Chemistry of a Crew

What’s on your mind, Bruce?

Bruce McPherson, the onetime professional racer, is the most colorful of our cast--with a rap sheet of ribald sailing antics known on several continents. He is also enough of a serious sailor to have worked on New Zealand’s most recent America’s Cup challenge and many of the great “maxi boats” of the day. Now he is quiet, and staring at me.

“I’m just thinking how different we are,” he replies. “I was born into this. For you it’s all so strange.”

Yes, surely.

We are a small group confined in an even smaller space. Until this race, we have not sailed together. Yet, camaraderie is always high on the sailors’ list of reasons for going to sea--a chance for the boys, or the girls, or sometimes the boys and girls, to escape social constraints and act and talk with freedom. That is, to carry on like sailors in ways that might not be acceptable, or comfortable, around the office water cooler.

A similar dynamic of interdependence and social release draws people together for all variety of adventures. At sea the difference is that escape is impossible. Even the 65-foot length of the boat is deceiving since the forward half is often awash in water.

McPherson has given up the full-time sailor’s life for a family in the Pacific Northwest. He named his daughter Jennica after a sail known as the gennaker, and admits that his wife has quieted his wildness. After a few days at sea, he realizes that he misses this life deeply. His sailing is the most stylish of anyone’s on the crew.

Our bowman, Mike Burch, is still rising in the ranks of West Coast sailors. During months of preparation, he shows himself a doting father. In a chase boat, Burch’s family follows Ragtime for nearly an hour at the start of the race, waving and yelling encouragement the whole time. They will be the first voices we hear from the dock in Honolulu.

A couple of times a day, no matter what conditions, he is hoisted aloft to check the rigging. His body is deeply bruised from the beating he takes aloft. But he insists on standing extra watches because he cannot sleep from excitement.

Kevin McCarthy also was a professional racing yachtsman with an impressive resume. He, too, has gone ashore to build a more normal life as a manager for a mechanical engineering firm. He is steady, unflappable, a patient teacher and can rally the crew. He’s our best man in the galley, and as a sailor he is that rare combination of being both gifted and rock solid.

John Jourdane is our leader, a proud, unassuming, nonconfrontational master of this craft. We all gaze up to him. If another helmsman can push us up to 12 knots (a nautical mile being 15% greater than a statute mile), Jourdane draws his lips into a scowl and advances us to 12.5. He is the author of the book “Icebergs Port and Starboard,” about his 33,000-mile Whitbread race around the world in 1989-90. He could command a berth on most of the boats in the Transpac. He chose Ragtime because “it’s a legend. It’s like being part of the Hall of Fame. Sailors all over Hawaii and California think of it as their boat. It’s sailing history.” Because of him, many of these other good sailors have joined this crew.

Another ex-professional sailor with us is John Norman--yes, there are three Johns on our crew, a source of endless confusion. We try to distinguish by using last names, initials, mothers’ maiden names. Nothing seems to catch on. Finally we give up. If an order goes out for “John” to do something, we find that it gets done.

Norman is a 42-year-old construction development manager in Long Beach, a precise sailor with military bearing. He, more than anyone, inspires me to prove myself. He regards sailing as a high calling. He keeps the boat orderly and his watch mates focused.

Ty Prine, the Hawaii rigger, is exuberant. This is his second Transpac race in Ragtime. Six years ago, he oversaw the last refit of the yacht and hardly anyone knows it better. Our watches overlap and I have never known anyone more at ease on the water. He is so deft you hardly notice him work.

Buddy Richley, 40, is a Newport Beach investment counselor and captain of his own 48-foot race boat. He is an athletic, disciplined sailor with a keen desire to win. This is his third Transpac and he jumped at the chance: “I’ll be able to tell my kids I went to Hawaii on Ragtime.”

The most complicated character aboard is Scott Zimmer, who bought Ragtime last autumn for pennies on the dollar after the previous owner invested $1.5 million in overhauling the vessel. Zimmer manufactures advertising blimps in Huntington Beach, the kind tethered over automobile dealerships. He throws himself at every kind of competitive endeavor, from rowing to polo. He surfs, skis, flies and owes most of his sailing to the ultra-competitive 22-foot Star class.

He got the Transpac bug in 1991 and set himself a 10-year goal to make the race. It is a big leap, not only by the size of the boat but the dynamics of teamwork. He does not assume the role of skipper; his crew has 100 combined years of blue-water experience more than he does. But he is responsible, and he is the owner and the owner is owed deference.

In turns, Zimmer is open, charming and brims with enthusiasm, then becomes self-absorbed, testy and withdrawn. He sometimes works the ordinary rotation of jobs on watch, then asserts himself and practices his driving when it pleases him--forget the order of watches.

John Jourdane warned of tensions. They emerge between Zimmer and his crew. Small things, mostly, sparks from the colliding egos of the financier, who is sometimes referred to in his absence as “The Wallet,” and sailors who feel they are being asked to both win and allow the owner his indulgences.

In the end, Zimmer and the bulk of his crew feel equally underappreciated. As navies found out centuries ago, leadership at sea is a unique burden. Some of the crew complain that Zimmer is spending too much time at the wheel chasing the biggest waves to surf without regard to maintaining our optimum course. Zimmer bristles and insists he is driving as well as anyone.

“You want to drive, you write the check,” he snaps.

Money is at the root of some of the friction. Zimmer worries often about the expense of the race, and deservedly so. One afternoon during preparations, I watch as he is presented with an accounting of $27,000 for sails, rigging, supplies and logistics. Some of the crew demands he spend still more even though several sponsorship leads evaporate in the months before the race. Only in the final weeks, a partnership of Santa Clara-based 3Com, a computer hardware manufacturer, and Ingram Micro, the large computer distributor based in Santa Ana, come forth enthusiastically.

All of us enjoy the irony of this: a classic craft flying the logos of 21st century technology companies. Ragtime again the futurist, and never mind the bickering.

In 5th Place but at Bad Wind Angle

Day 7. “Well, we took a punch. Now we go on and do the best we can. We didn’t get the wind shift we planned on last night.” John Jourdane has just finished the morning radio call-in. We are in fifth place, as measured by a straight line. But we no longer command the most favorable wind angle for our final turn toward Hawaii.

Our course has carried us first south of the direct rhumb line, and now north, following the flow of high-pressure winds. Now we are preparing to turn left and run directly to Oahu. But our weather fax did not pick up the forecast yesterday, so we are late in learning that remnants of Tropical Storm Delores now favor those boats that moved sooner.

All we can do is sail like maniacs. The sun is glaring hot. We sweat and concentrate and bite our lips. The trouble is, we know that nobody else is doing less. Dinner: spaghetti.

Day 8. We have lost our steady breeze. I check the electronic GPS, or global positioning system. This little satellite receiver tells me where I’m at within 30 feet or so anywhere on the planet. As happens, I am 195 miles west-northwest from the red buoy off Waikiki’s Diamond Head, where the Transpac ends in one of the most picturesque settings in all of yachting.

My notebook says tempers are a bit raw, although it does not remind me why. Perhaps because we have run short of drinking water. We are down to a couple of small plastic bottles apiece. So naturally our thirst is unquenchable.

The horizon is empty still, but the morning radio-check confirms that the fleet of sleds, once spread over more than 100 miles of ocean, is converging in a bottleneck for the final run to the finish. As we could have predicted, we have fallen back to sixth place.

We gather for a pep talk, and vow to sail even harder than yesterday. We move everything that is not bolted down to the very center of the boat to balance it perfectly.

From our freezer, kept cold by running the engine two hours a day as we charge batteries, we thaw our final dinner of steak and lobster. Nature serves up dessert: a colossal tropical orange sunset behind a lineup of towering Trade Wind clouds. There is almost no chatter on watch, just anticipation.

Because we see no other boats, we are tempted one final time to dream. Race rules require boats to check in by radio when they are 100 miles from the finish. Then again at 25 miles. As we come closer to 100, we listen in for the calls of those ahead of us. The silence urges us on.

Then the calls come, and we know there will be no miracle finish. There are several boats ahead. Not far, but still ahead.

Then the first twinkle of lights on land, the island of Molokai. The dash down the famous Molokai channel. Then Koko Head. And Diamond Head. The red buoy. The white explosion of television lights. The wind is almost completely dead when we drop sails and start the engine. It is nearly 4 o’clock Monday morning. We scurry to straighten up the boat and change into the clean shirt each of us has been saving.

Events become a blur. We approach the marina. The booming PA system at the Honolulu Yacht Club welcomes us with an “Aloha,” and congratulates each crewman by name. We congratulate each other with slaps on the back and hugs and watery eyes.

Then there is an opening at the dock. My wife is waving. Mike Burch’s kids are yelling. Photographers. A sea of strangers. The Chart House restaurant, which has long been the host committee for Ragtime, has raised a tent in the parking lot. Here we find those coveted jugs of Mai Tais, which are hereafter named “Guy Tais” after bartender Guy Maynard.

Leis are piling around on my neck. No smell is more astonishing than tropical flowers after a stint at sea. Strange women keep kissing me. Men grab my hand. My legs feel spongy on the solid ground. Someone has put a cigar in my mouth. I have to turn away from the crowd and take a breath to keep from being overwhelmed. Hawaiians have always treated an ocean passage as an achievement.

I remember the soft break of dawn. And the first shafts of yellowish light on Ragtime’s black hull, now quiet and harnessed to pilings. I remember we finished sixth out of seven. Our time: eight days, 17 hours, 46 minutes, 54 seconds--only two hours and 19 minutes behind the leader. I remember walking Waikiki with my mates, and the rounds of parties in the days that followed. And that childish food fight in a crowded restaurant. I remember being given a finisher’s paperweight at the trophy dinner. I remember cleaning Ragtime one last time and taking supporters day sailing in the fresh Trade Winds off of Diamond Head.

I remember the handshakes and goodbyes. I remember the awkward, self-conscious farewell to old fleet-footed, sure-footed Ragtime, which now passes to other crews for new adventures. Best, I remember my mates calling me “jig.” That’s the lowest form of sailor. But a sailor still. Fair winds.