Published October, 2004
By Jonathan Wye
For Points East
Watching the five other faces peering intently over Bruce Schwab's shoulder as screen after screen full of isobars and pressure gradients click past, I flash on visions of tribal elders in a different society peering intently at a scattering of chicken bones as they try to divine the prospects for their voyage.
For me, a relative newcomer to this project, it is the biggest milestone yet achieved. If the bones align correctly, they will sever their ties to land, head east and take Bruce one giant step toward the holy grail, the culmination of thousands of volunteered hours of labor, sweat and effort — the start of the 2004 solo, non-stop, around-the-world race known as the Vendee Globe.
Looking around the boat to see what had transpired since my last trip to Maine, a two week sprint of 18-hour "short" days and the occasional all-night push to get the open 60 Ocean Planet ready for her scheduled launching party on July 14, 2004, my eyes settle on the deck-to-hull support knees in the sail locker.
Nine month's earlier, after following Bruce's adventures in the solo Around Alone race, I'd first walked into the shed at Portland Yacht Services in Portland, Maine, on a raw mid-January day and been handed a Sawzall, a vicious power tool used in land-based construction demolition.
It's a tool not usually associated with yacht work, but on that day my assignment was to cut away four 2-inch-thick mahogany knees that helped support the cross-cabin beams and hull-circling ribs which in turn support the unstayed carbon fiber rig.
I cut the knees away, and with that action joined the effort to remove 500 pounds from Ocean Planet as part of the extensive refit in preparation for the Vendee Globe. A week or two later, foam, carbon fiber and epoxy resin had been vacuum bagged into place to provide the necessary replacement strength, and approximately 24 pounds of material had been removed from the boat.
There was a certain unlikely symmetry to those knees being one of the first objects I worked on again when I joined the push for the relaunching in July. This time I was sanding the razor-sharp edges of the carbon fiber that had been left during molding of the wooden hull. In the general hierarchy of jobs to be done, that sort of finish work (protecting the crew from barbed, razor-like particles to be thrown against) had been left until after the exterior of the hull had again been made weather tight and painted.
Now, on this rainy September day, those knees are hardly visible, covered as they are with hanging sail bins, rolled up sails and the assorted foul-weather gear of the five-person crew that is now huddled around the computer screens waiting to begin the voyage that will deliver Ocean Planet to Les Sables d'Olonne, France.
The delivery crew is a fascinating cross section of the thousands of individuals who have helped Bruce get to this point.
John Eide is a talented local teacher of industrial arts who can seemingly fashion anything out of any material. He's worked with Bruce since shortly after Bruce arrived in Portland and among other triumphs has built a beautiful scale model of Ocean Planet, rigged and stepped the mast (the real, 85-foot one) and organized and packed much of the rigging "spares." And all this at the cost of his own long-term restoration project, a 39-foot Concordia yawl. At any time he is likely to be deep into the maintenance and repair of one of the ship's systems.
Ernie Reuter. a full-time canvas maker, has built a number of important pieces for Ocean Planet and was instrumental in getting Bruce out to the "west coast of New England" for his talk at the Lake Champlain Yacht Club in Burlington, Vt. last winter.
Bette Reuter's professional life is deep within the bowels of IBM. On board Ocean Planet her efforts at organization have given each crewmember an individual storage place for their "stuff" and made it possible to find edible food in a reasonably varied consumption pattern.
Mario Espin, shivering in the "terrible" 60 degree New England cold, is retired from a 30-year history in the telecom field and currently works for West Marine in Key West, Fla. As with the rest of the crew, he is an accomplished sailor.
As a group, these people are all bright, quick and good humored. No one seems to have brought an ego with them or is showing a need to prove themselves. A problem comes up, a few thoughts are shared, consensus is reached and action is taken.
Today, though, the problem isn't the heavy rain and 30- to 35-knot gusts now sweeping Portland Harbor. The problem is the predicted track of Hurricane Karl, which earlier TV station said was heading "safely out to sea."
The problem facing the crew on this day is divining the uncertain probabilities of a hurricane's actions and balancing them against the possibilities of ground covered in this fast sailing vessel.
Once again, Bruce runs through the scenarios. "If we leave now, we follow this trough along here and (click) this moves up here (he points to the screen) and then we can jibe over and carry this over to here (again pointing at the screen)".
"How far is that?" asks another voice. "Well," says Bruce, "if we figure 300 miles a day it puts us here, and if we figure 250 miles per day it puts us here." (Again, each here, is followed by a location on the screen.) "But," he says," we have to balance that against the computer model, which puts Karl here, also five days from now."
From the dock, someone knocks on the hull and announces the Coast Guard wants to know if Ocean Planet is leaving. The soaked crowd on the dock, surprisingly large at 75 people or so given the heavy rain, looks up expectantly.
No one viewing Bruce's computer can miss the fact that the locations of Karl and Ocean Planet projected five days away are virtually the same.
I am reminded of a game at Chuck E Cheese's I used to play with my young daughter. The game involved a four-lane highway, and what the operator had to do was to gauge the speed and spacing of each of the four lanes of traffic and try to get the frog to hop across without getting flattened by the cars.
The theatrics when the frog doesn't make it and goes "splat" are nothing to the potential imaginings of this crew. Everyone in this huddle has been through at least one serious storm at sea.
Eventually, thought is given to the ramifications of not leaving on this scheduled date, and the realization is made that if they go, and successfully dodge Hurricane Karl, they will arrive in France one week ahead of the shipping container and everything needed to complete the remaining work.
After clicking through the screens one last time, another voice sums it up: "We can sit here another couple of days, risking boredom, or we can try and out-race a hurricane." With that, Bruce announces, "We are staying here for a couple of days to monitor the weather in mid Atlantic." He thanks everyone for coming down in such miserable weather to wish them luck.
Each crew takes a small bag and heads back to the nearby home of a supporter. I hear muttering about having a chicken dinner in a day or two and saving the bones — perhaps to help the computer with its prognostications.
Bruce Schwab is the only American entering the 2004 Vendee Globe, a non-stop, solo, circumnavigation. He plans to be the first American to finish the Vendee Globe. Without a major corporate sponsor, Schwab and the Made in America Foundation, along with hundreds of volunteers who have donated cash and labor, have readied Ocean Planet to compete in the world's toughest race. Learn more about Ocean Planet and Bruce Schwab by going to www.bruceschwab.com or www.oceanplanet.org
