life on o maxi

The 1984 Big Boat Series brought some of the fastest, flashiest, most ex¬ pensive sailboats in the worldto 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 Keyworth, 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.”

‘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.”

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 m here a couple of months have to be treated § the same.” Keyworth arranges everything for w 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.)

delivery time for leisurely cruising.

What are the long races like? “You’re working all the time,” he says. “Sleeping when you’re not. On some races like the Clipper Cup’s 775-mile Around the State Race you’re probably working 18 hours a day. You have fire drills where everyone has to be up on deck. Or you just get to sleep and you have to get up and change the sail. It gets grueling if you’re changing sails a lot. Maxis are killers for that.”

For Vasconcellos, racing maxis is a for¬ ward looking job. When a race is over, all the cruising gear gets loaded back on the boat and it’s, “off to the next song and dance”, as he puts it.

Managing the 81-ft Boomerang from a New York office and sailing the regattas isn’t easy for Jeff Neuberth, considering he also works full time at owner George Coumantaros’ shipping company. Neuberth arrives two to three days before each series begins and makes sure everything is in order with got $100 a week and all we could eat.” Neuberth also served as project director for

the 12 Meters Courageous and Indepen¬ dence in the 1977 America’s Cup defense. “I learned a lot from Ted (Turner), who was the first guy to sail really aggressively. He had good deck sense. He knew people’s lim-

‘Sorcery's’ Bruce Vasconcellos.

asconcellos is responsible for hiring the delivery crew of about seven people, get¬ ting the boat to the race location and making sure Sorcery is prepared to race once it’s there. His typical day is spent on boat work such as servicing winches and making new halyards and sheets, as well as on the phone hastening the delivery of spare and repaired parts scattered around the world. Though the schedule is often frantic and physically draining, it does, he says, “beat sitting in an office”. ,

Even though prestige and excitement abound, there are some drawbacks to the job. Sailing has cost Vasconcellos two rela¬ tionships. “Unless your wife or girlfriend sails with you, it’s difficult to maintain a relation¬ ship,” he admits. The races, especially the long ones, are hectic, leaving only the

‘Boomerang’s’ Jeff Neuberth.

the boat. During the races he usually helps steer when Coumantaros isn’t aboard.

Becausfe of his full-time job, Neuberth takes exception to being called a “profes¬ sional” sailor. “I’m not paid to sail,” he says. “None of us are. The crew is paid to work on the boat.” He was, however, a boat pro for America’s Cup winner and ocean racing star Ted Turner on and off for four years which he Says “was a good experience. We travel¬ ed a lot and it was pretty action packed. We itations and he pushed you. We called ourselves the ‘Nightfighters’, because we’d push hard all night long. The other guys .would sail hard during the day, but they’d back off at night.”

Other aspects of Turner’s influence can still be seen in Neuberth and the way

Boomerang is sailed. “He didn’t go for the rock stars,” says Jeff. “He had a good group of guys who were fiercely loyal to him. On

Boomerang, we pride ourselves on being pretty much a group of amateur sailors. We play together, sail together, ski together, and do a lot of other things together. We don’t have the kind of personality conflicts that can occur when you fly in a different group of « hotshots to crew for each race.”

What does managing Boomerang in¬ volve when the boat isn’t being delivered or racing? “A lot of evenings and weekends do¬ ing sail checks, tuning the rig, and other little projects. And reading up on computer stuff. We’ve got an IBM PC onboard.”

After I interviewed him on the final day of the series, I asked him if there was anything else he wanted to say. “Yeah. I hope we win today.” They did.