Driving Sports

Sailboats and the sport of sailboat racing are romantic. Sailboats look so wonderful - with all the ropes and canvas billowing over the sleek boat hulls. Plus, you see these great pictures of them slicing through the water in front of a majestic sunset, with just the right breeze sending them smoothly through the water. It's totally easy to understand why people sign up for a sailboat trip.

What I can't understand is why anyone would ever do it twice.

I signed up to be crew on the 2009 Puerto Vallarta race - two weeks on a 44-foot sailboat, racing from Los Angeles to Puerto Vallarta. I was one of five people on the boat, and it was my first time in a sailboat on the open ocean. But hey, I'm a rally co-driver - motion sickness is not one of my demons. How bad can it be?

Imagine your whole world rocking back and forth in almost, but not quite, regular rhythms. Not so bad, maybe, but it never stops. Not when you have to go pee, not when you try to dish up your dinner, not when you have to root through your bag to find a jacket. It never stops. After two weeks on the boat, and then 4 days off the boat, I still feel the damn thing rocking when I close my eyes.

On the boat, your days are divided up into watches, which meant that I could sleep between 8:30 and 11:30 PM and 2:00 to 6:30 AM.  And that was pretty much the best watch schedule of all of us on the boat. Call me a wimp, but when I hit the hay, I like to stay hit for at least 8 hours.

Another thing about life on a boat is that you've got the same 4 people within 20 feet of you at all times. That means 8 days where your universe is reduced to a space of 44x13 feet. Common courtesy is required. Uncommon courtesy is better. I'd rather chew my own left hand off than wake a teammate before his or her appointed hour.

After a couple weeks on a boat, you'll never take your bathroom for granted again. The toilet on the boat is a little bigger than a coffin, and it seems to rock even worse than any other place on board. Going to the can is a guaranteed bout of seasickness. You find yourself pondering each sip of water, knowing that for every bottle of water, you're going to have to make a trip to the head. Is this sip really worth it?

Oh yeah, you don't get to bathe until you reach port. Even then, the shower is likely to be cold.

And there's the seasickness. No matter how tough you are in a rally car, it's not like that on a boat on the ocean. Even if you are doing fine, eventually you have to go to the bathroom, and then it's all over. Or you have to dig out that jacket because it's cold at night, or it's your turn to reheat dinner.  Then you're seasick, and you can't get better. Because it never, ever, stops rocking.

Salty foods like ramen help with the seasick, as does the scopolamine patch, but the patch just keeps the seasickness from making you puke. Your stomach still feels like it's made of thin glass. And you trade that for a dry mouth, and then you get to live with a dry mouth, because remember - water means toilet, and toilet means seasick.

I know what you're thinking, but you're wrong. You can't pee over the side of the boat. Way Not Safe. You will fall overboard if you try. Because the boat never stops rocking.

I lost 10 pounds in two weeks on this trip. I gained back some in Puerto Vallarta before I came down with Turista.  Turns out that seasickness and dysentery is the first ever diet program that actually worked for me. By the time I got home, I looked like these guys on the right.

But I now  understand, viscerally, why they used to have to slip a mickey to get guys onto ships, and why the British Navy would send out press gangs to draft sailors. It'd take about 20 guys to drag me off for an ocean voyage on a sailing ship right now.

And yet, I and 4 others sailed a tiny boat 1200 miles to some great locations. Not many people get to say they did that. It wasn't easy to do, but we did it. And I never answered the Captain with anything except: "Yes sir, can do." I'm proud of that.

And when you get where you're going, San Jose Del Cabo is a beautiful town - like Carmel up in California. I love that place, and I'm definitely going back. On an airplane.

I walked dirt roads in the Baja countryside and met some neat people who make that part of the world their home. I drank their homemade tequila and ate their food. When I left, they liked me well enough to give me a bottle to take with me - no charge. It's an old plastic soda bottle, but the liquor's clean. It's coming back on the boat, because the TSA just wouldn't understand.

I did see many amazing sunsets and sunrises. I saw whales come up and breach about 50 feet from the boat, and more dolphins playing in our wake than we could count. I saw Sea Eagles take fish right out of the water. I saw the lights of tiny towns along the baja coast, and looked out at 360 degrees of open ocean all around me for days at a time.

Along the way, I caught and fought an intense Striped Bonito (see the photo above), and he was good as fresh sashimi over rice. We got bombarded by flying fish at night, and squid ended up on the deck, too.

I got good at changing sails at night, in a gale, working in concert with my teammates to keep us going. I know the difference between a jib sheet, a halyard, and a furling line. I can read a wind and trim sail to move a boat in the direction I choose. I can reef the mainsail. I can use a compass and read a chart. We didn't sink the boat, unlike the sad crew of the boat you can't see in this picture.

In sum, there are things I know I can do now that I couldn't do before I went on this trip. And I know I can survive being really uncomfortable and still get those things done when necessary. I'm a bigger person now than when I started.

Puerto Vallarta kinda sucks. The Wal-Mart is the geometrical, transportational, and commercial center of town. It's right next to the fancy stores in the Galleria Vallarta. The old town area has better stores, but it's still kinda contrived. That's all you need to know about Puerto Vallarta, except I had this funny interchange at the Tourist Information booth:

Jeff: "Can you tell me where I can find a coin laundry?"

Info guy: "Right down the street senor. But tonight, you should go to the hotel district. There are many nightclubs along the waterfront, and you can pick up girls!"

Jeff: "I'm really not interested in picking up girls."

Info Guy: "Oh, well, then (circles the old town area on the map) here is the gay district. We are very open-minded, amigo!"

Jeff: "Thanks, but my wife doesn't like it when I pick up girls, so I'm pretty sure she wouldn't be happy if I was picking up guys, either"

The guy just stared at me like I was from Pluto or something. I think I was the only tourist in town not trying to get laid.

Oh yeah, we lost the race - came in dead effin' last. So it goes.