I’ve been so cold a couple of times in my life, I thought I might die, I’ve been cold many times, but on two occasions I thought it might be curtains. I’ll start with one.

OCCASION #1:

Sailboat Race. We had about a 150 mile race, and the weather was not looking good. Hell, we didn’t think they’d start it, but they did with about an hour of daylight left. It was already raining pretty good, and the wind was blowing a steady 25-35 knots. Fucking miserable, it was. It was a downwind broad reaching start and as soon as we crossed the starting line we realized the reach was not as broad as we thought. It was becoming tighter, fast. We were crazy, balls to the wall fucking crazy. We were sailing a Wavelength 30 (VOODOO hull number 3)…a masthead head rig. In a nutshell, a masthead rig has more area for the foresails and the main is smaller. Anyway we had a nice start…clear air, and a huge tri-radial, full main, and we were flying. I was the fordeck monkey on this particular race, and I’ll tell you…in a good blow, the foredeck is the most dangerous place to be. You can get your ass killed up there. To noisy to here the skippers commands, so you’ve got to rely on hand signals. When you jibe in that kind of wind, the driver has to turn the boat to exactly to where you are standing (hanging on) so you can swap the guy. This was an end over end jibe. Dangerous business I’m telling you. Dangerous. I was wearing a harness, just so you know. I was levitating up there. I’ll admit, I was a tad bid worried. I made it back to the cockpit and told the Skipper…”we’ve got too much sail up”. He said, “time for the star cut”. A star cut is a spinnaker with much less sail area, cut tighter, but it will reach. I’m all like fuck, this is going to be a bitch. I did a shot of rum, and headed back to the danger zone. It was cold, real damn cold, and I was already soaked to the bone, even with top-of-the line foul weather gear. The trick is…you don’t want to lose sail area (speed), which means you want to hoist the star cut inside of the HUGE ass tri-radial. Hoisting on the inside is true with any sail change. No problem unless it’s blowing like it was. Also, sail packing is very important. Very important. You don’t want to raise a twisted sail. We were launching off the bow, and I secured everything I could think of. We started raising the star cut the same second we were going to pull the tri down. The star cut gets half way up, and the tri halyard jammed at the top of the mast. Fuck, we’ve got one sail half way up, filling up with air, and the other one stuck, full of air. This was a fucking disaster…the last thing you want to do is let the guy run. I’m telling you this boat was all over the place. Like riding a fucking bull. We had high dollar sails, mylar, and kevlar sheets. Just those two sails were about big grand. This was a nice boat, and the owner had the cash. As I mentioned, we had kevlar sheets, and they are almost impossible to cut…if we let the guy run, we’d probably broach and dip the mast, and break that fucker. It’s all over when that happens. But we had balls, and were going to do everything we could to salvage a bad situation. The other solution was to use another crew up the fucking mast in the bosuns chair. The problem was…I’m the smallest guy…I knew I was going up. Fuck, I swear to the Maker I was a little scared. I’d been up in the chair a million times, but never in a storm like this. I was in black-belt white crane fighting shape…good shape, but only 135 pounds. One good thing about being small, it makes your dick look bigger. That’s my fighting weight. 135 is good for me, and I was the most logical one to do it. Fuck, my genes. All this happened much faster than it’s taking me to type it. OK…I’m in, strapped into the chair with the pack of emergency tools. My boys Doug and Billy starting hoisting, and up up and away I go. I’m hanging on to the mast and trying not to get tangled up in the rigging. Man, I’ll admit, I was scared. I lost my grip a couple of times on the way up, and I was flying around…over the water…getting close. I guess you had to be there. Pretty cool when I think back on it, but while it was happening…I was in survival mode. The wind and rain had freshened, and I was in no place I’d ever been before. Plus, it was getting dark, and colder.

OK. I’m at the top of the mast getting slung around in arches that were damn near dangerous. If the wind is light, and you’re at the top of the mast, you can wrap your legs around the mast and stay pretty much stable. No way in this blow. No way, I had both arms and legs wrapped tight around the mast just to keep from getting blown off my perch. I still had my harness on with an extension, but I damn sure didn’t want to be free flying up there. I couldn’t hear anything but the wind and rain…no contact from the crew below, and I couldn’t use hand signals be cause I had to hang on. What a fucking nightmare. They had a all mast lights lit, all handheld lights pointing up…and I couldn’t see shit. I realized I was going to have to do this one handed. I need one arm and both legs to hang on. There were all types of tools in the tool pack, which was actually strapped around my waist and hanging off my ass a few feet. Just more lines to get hung-up on something. I had some heave duty halyard (wire) cutters, but you needed two arms to use ‘em, and I might not have been strong enough even if I had both arms and something I could brace myself against. That wasn’t going to happen, but I was also in charge of packing the bag, so I knew what was in there. I threw an in a old mid-sized crow bar, I got from my Grandfather, a couples of years ago. At least, I thought I knew which halyard was hung…there were three. Well there it was…jumped track and was hung on the star cut halyard we were trying to hoist. (in the same track). Please keep in mind, this was all happening fast, really fast. My fingers were bleeding, and as always I was wearing sailing gloves…you know, the ones missing the finger tips. My head hit the mast a couple of times…broke my sunglasses in half, and they were still hanging around my neck I had a little gash next to my eye where the glasses broke, and it was bleeding pretty good. Probably a two stitcher, but it was blowing and raining so hard no blood was getting into my left eye. But I could see it all over my clothes. I was dressed for bad weather. Layers, high dollar rain gear (top and bottom, florescent yellow) hat and hood, and knee high sailing boots. Damn, I wish you could have been there, then you’ understand. I’m frightened, I really am.

I’ll take a moment to describe how I felt. I’m at the top of the mast, pretty tall, although I don’t remember exactly. (I found some photos (internet) of her after she was sold, so I’ll put a few up.) Bad ass fast ride. Tall mast.

Anyway I’m at the top of the mast getting as slammed as I’d ever been. I stole a moment to look around, and said to my self…I can’t believe your doing this shit, and I’m going to need to get back down, and land on the deck. Most of the time I was over the water on either the port or starboard side. The damn boat was doing some MAJOR wobbling. There is no way you can practice for this shit. Think fast and wing it is all you can do.

I found the jam…it was an overlap, so I took my Grandfathers crowbar and started prying. Believe it or not the damn halyard popped out of the track, and back into its own, and that when things started happening fast. The crowbar snapped out of my hand and it now at the bottom. I’m telling you, Conan couldn’t have hung on to it. The tri started coming down, but it was still full of air. I was hanging on for dear life, and we almost dipped the mast…which means my head was damn near in the water. Actually, the crew said I was dipped, but I don’t remember. The crew let the guy run, which relieved the pressure, and up I go. The star cut wasn’t fully inflated, so when the mast was straight up, I lost my grip. I was free flying. The star-cut filled and my ass was slammed into the mainsail, about three quarters of the way up. The chair was attached to another halyard, and I was thinking, please God let this one not be hung. The crew got the star cut trimmed, the main trimmed, and my ass fell down the entire length of the mainsail and crashed into the boom. Knocked the breath out of me, but my buddies got me down and on the deck. I could barely move. Took all that shit I had attached to me off, and went below for a minute. they gave me another shot of rum, put some more rum on my eye cut, and a butterfly bandage…that stung like a motherfucker, and we’re ready to keep sailing. Couldn’t find the Med-kit, below looked like a fucking bomb had gone off. Turned upside down and given some shakes. As trashed as I’ve ever seen a boat below. The worst part was this idiot who brought his 15 year old kid with him, without the proper gear. He was cold, seasick, and had a pretty severe sheet burn on his neck. Bleeding fairly bad, and he was puking…bad. Couldn’t stand, and the stench was incredible. Mixed in with motor oil, gas, and no telling what else. The skipper, who was, and still is, a close friend of mine said. What the fuck is wrong with you…it ain’t time to start drinking, we’ve got boats to pass. Well, there was no way I could stay below with that stench, so up I went. It’s the only time I ever told him “fuck you”, you give it a shot. I also called him a pussy, but I never said anything about his wife. After all, we were friends.

The wind was now blowing a steady 40-45 knots, gusting to 60+, and it was raining buckets sideways. I’m telling you…60 knot wings are hard to handle…most people put ashore as soon as possible, but no, I’m sailing with the craziest motherfuckers I’ve ever known. Plus it was getting foggy. You couldn’t see the bow from the stern, and it was double damn cold. We could’ve quit, but I’m not certain that was the smart thing to do. No sails equals no steerage, and you don’t want to be there. So, I go back above, and the boat was trimmed out nicely, but we couldn’t see where we were going. We had the maps out, but not enough light to read ‘em clearly. The lights below were out, and we didn’t want to light anything because of all the oil and gas we could smell. We were hauling ass tight as tight could be with that star cut and a full main, but we need to change direction soon.

We were going to have to jibe the chute, or take it down. Hell, we weren’t even close to the first mark yet, but the weather was killing us. You can’t run from the weather. To put it into perspective, this was a 60-70 hour race. Long way to go, and we were only into it for 4 or 5 hours. I told ‘em, we’ve got too much sail up, way too much up. I said we’re going to break something or someone gonna get hurt bad. If you don’t believe me, try hoisting your ass to the top of the mast, and you’ll know what I mean. OK, we all decided…one more jibe, and we’ll try to get everything together to back off the power. Fuck, back to the foredeck for me. I told the skipper…I said motherfucker, you’re going to have to steer the boat to me, and I’ve got to get a clean “hook” first time, or we’re fucked. He said I can’t even see the front of the boat, much less hear you. I said, look we need two people for hand signals, but don’t turn it until you’re certain I have the poll off the mast. This is a one shot deal…we’ve got to do it the first time. If we fuck up this jibe, we’re gonna have a major problem. I did it, he did it, my buddies (the crew) did it. We jibed that fucker like we knew what we were doing. We got the boat trimmed out and settled down. It was, for all of us, a moment of truth.

Now we were beating…put 3 reefs in the main, ant threw up the storm jib for steerage. We had to beat for damn near 15 hours, and it was just getting colder. All of us were damn near frozen…no way to get out of the misery. Had to keep sailing…no choice. I was as cold as I’d ever been. the temperature, the wind, and the rain taught me a lesson. I swear to the maker it did. I was so cold (bone deep cold), I could badly function. Couldn’t go below because of the stench…had to ride it out…for hours and hours. If you are familiar with sailing, you know beating into the wind is a whole lot different that reaching with the wind on your back. Takes a whole lot longer, but you don’t have to worry about flying huge sails that are most probably only for crazy people. I am one of those crazy people.

We heard helicopters. Never saw ‘em, but heard ‘em. Saw some lights, maybe. Later we learned, the Coast Guard had air-flighted 5 people from three separate boats to the hospital.

We made it, but I was borderline hypothermia, so were a few more of the crew. I just couldn’t get warm. Once you get wet in those elements, you might be fucked.

I was so cold, I was thinking crazy stuff. There was no way to get out of the weather.

Weather will fuck you long, deep, and continuous.

Would I do it again?

Yes, in a heartbeat. I love the edge.

OCCASION #2: Later.