LIFE ON
T
he 1984 Big Boat Series brought some of the fastest, flashiest, most ex¬ pensive sailboats in the world to San Fran¬ cisco. And with the 80-ft maxis came the owners, captains and enough crew to con¬ sume more beer in a night than the bar at the host St. Francis Yacht Club usually serves in a month! While hanging around the harbor for the races, I had the opportunity to talk to some key crew members from Nirvana, Sorcery and the series winning maxi, Boomerang. In between boat work and crew meetings, they talked about their jobs, and their most memorable experiences of travel¬ ing the world circuit racing maxis. For Michael Key worth, the captain and manager of Marvin Green’s 81-ft Nir¬ vana, the operating word is “phenomenal”. Nirvana is sailing in excess of 250 days a year with Keyworth aboard an average of 200 days. “This year,” he says, “has been pretty extraordinary. We’ve done 50,000 miles so far.” Though Nirvana has captured her share of cups, Keyworth finds it more ex¬ citing to break records than win awards. Keyworth calls racing maxis “the single most exciting, demanding responsibility that one can assume in professional yachting. Any time one aproaches the limit — and the limit is rating 70.0 feet under the IOR rule — one challenges all the basic rules of life.”
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‘Nirvana’s’ Michael Keyworth. Right, a maxi power reach on Marvin Green’s 81-footer.
Keyworth is a professional sailor and that’s the way he views his crew. “They sail for a living.”
M
1 x anaging Nirvana and its crew of 28 is a challenge. “Manipulating people to do
what you want them to do and being consis¬ tent is difficult. In the end, a guy that’s been here for six years and a guy who’s only been here a couple of months have to be treated the same.” Keyworth arranges everything for the crew from lodging to rental cars, and his management responsibilities can be very elaborate, or “as petty as finding a restaurant for the guys to go to in a foreign country”. What is life like in foreign ports? “A lot of fun,” says Keyworth. “At the King Olaf Cup Series we took the King (Olaf) of Norway sailing. Not many people get to do that. That was an exciting series, which we won by less than a minute.” Racing the circuit takes Keyworth to some unique spots. The Middle Sea Race, which starts in Malta with the blast of a World War I cannon, runs through the Straits of Messina (between Sicily and Italy), around the active volcano of Stromboli, then
around the rest of Sicily to an island called Lampedusa off Africa, and finally back to Malta. But the big question? What are the parties like? “Well, there are always parties. Beers are cold, girls are hot. It’s the same old thing.” For Bruce Vasconcellos, the recently ap¬ pointed delivery skipper of Jake Wood’s 82-ft Sorcery, part of the lure are the ports and the people. “You make friends all over the world and see them again at the next series,” he says. Of course, as a professional sailor, he thrives on the challenge of racing maxjs while .confiding, “the money isn’t bad”, either. (None of the sailors I talked to wanted to reveal their salaries. They did offer estimates which ran between $400 a month for a deck hand to $1,000 a week for a skip¬ per or sailing captain.)
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