Doobie Speaks of Risk
T
he sailing world was, well, not shocked, but more or less, saddened, when two sailors, social friends with a tight bond, died in this summer’s Mackinac Race on Lake Michigan. Mark Morely, 51, and Suzanne Bickel, 40, of Saginaw, MI, were both drowned when the boat they were racing, a 1984 Kiwi-35, WingNuts, that had been sexed up some from its original configuration, flipped over in the race after being hit by a Great Lakes squall that had the same impact of Sonny Liston, at the height of his power, decking a high school bully. The boat had foldable wings that the crew could sit on, getting more crew weight farther out to keep the boat level. Thirty years back it was a novel idea. Both victims were trapped under the boat after it flipped. They may have gotten ensnared in their tethers, possibly hit by the boom under water, and they were, anyway, immersed in 66-degree water. It amounted to The Perfect Storm of real bad stuff and happened off Charlevoix, MI. Suzanne Bickel was no wallflower; she had foresight. She carried two titanium knives, one of which she wore on a lanyard around her neck while racing, the first time I have ever heard of that being done. When her body was recovered, the knife was gone. This whole tragedy was the subject of a widely ranging conversation at The Blue Moon Bar when I stopped in one evening. All the regulars were there and participants in the debate, of which Bubba Whartz, wearing a red baseball cap with a Peterbilt emblem on it, seemed to be the moderator. The discussion involved others in the bar, guys I did not know. It seemed that everyone had an opinion, a theory and often they crashed together in a California freeway pileup of conflicting sound bites. Bruno Velvetier’s fluttery voice was overridden by a VISIT US AT THE ST. PETERSBURG BOAT SHOW DEC. 1-4 BOOTH 131
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harsh comment from some stranger, and that was mixed in with Shorty’s interminable stuttering, while Tripwire tried to get his point across while sounding like a Marine DI chewing out some hapless recruit. This cacophony went on for some time until Doobie, apparently tired of the unreasonable noise, said, loudly, “The bar is closed.” Maybe it was the sound of a woman’s voice that cut through the testosterone-fuelled argument like an SR-71 going through the sound barrier the first time. Maybe it was what she said that got everyone’s attention. I am not entirely certain what it was, exactly. But The Blue Moon Bar became as quiet as a cathedral full of Trappist monks with laryngitis. “The ba-ba-ba-bar is wa-wa-wa-what?” Shorty intoned. “That’s simply ghastly,” said Bruno Velvetier, ASID, who had just finished his cream drink plus all the fruit in it and was hoping for a refill. What Tripwire said is not printable in a sailing magazine of this stature. But suffice it to say there were many words of four letters and one syllable that did not end in a vowel. Bubba Whartz, licensed Coast Guard Captain (sixpack), said nothing. “What’s this all about?” asked the stranger. “Reality,” Doobie announced. “You are all grown men. Some of you know something about sailing. Some of you are pretty macho about it. You’ve been in races. You’ve come back in here and bragged how tough it was out on Sarasota Bay or the Gulf of Mexico. This place reeked of testosterone for days, even after you left.” “I just adore that smell,” gushed Bruno Velvetier, interrupting. “And yet,” Doobie continued, “when some people are lost doing what it is that they like to do, you act like the Romans had just nailed Jesus Christ to the cross all over again.” “It wasn’t in the game plan,” Bubba piped up. “No one expected something like that to happen.” “Well, of course not,” Doobie replied. “If someone could have forecast that a radical boat with wings would flip over in a squall—it was a squall, wasn’t it?—on one of the Great Lakes and that two people would get drowned, then the boat wouldn’t have left the dock. But I know you guys, particularly you, Bubba. You go sailing partly because it’s fun. But you also go because there is an element of danger in it. I know and you know that the variables that sailors are faced with change by the second. That’s part of the fix you guys get, figuring out a puzzle as complicated as Rubik’s Cube that is constantly changing. If you are racing and you are smarter than the other guys in your class, you
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December 2011
SOUTHWINDS
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