Catching Up With the Schooner MAYAN
Back in 2017 we gave up on Medium, headed out to find a different way to communicate, stumbled around a lot, and now we’re back. It turns out that most of those other places, like Facebook and Instagram, weren’t nearly as useful for what we’re trying to do as good ole Medium.
The brief version of MAYAN’s history since we last posted is that we did a lot of sailing from 2017 up to the pandemic putting a stop to all that in early 2020.
One of our best events is in the photo on the left. MAYAN lead the 2019 Classic Class home to the finish line in front of the St. Francis Yacht Club on the last day of the Rolex Big Boat Series. This was the culmination of years of hard work improving the performance of MAYAN and her crew. Hundreds of tiny improvements and a small number of big ones. All leading up to substantial gains in performance and to making her vastly easier to sail.
Let’s go back to the beginning. Over next brace of posts we’ll bring everyone up to date. After buying MAYAN from David Crosby in 2014 (yes, that Croz) we sailed her down to Wayne Ettel’s boat yard in Wilmington, CA and got to work on some overdue maintenance and improvements we wanted to make. With those completed, we sailed her home to Santa Cruz, CA in late fall of 2015 and started cruising and racing her.
MAYAN Goes Racing: One of our first serious races was the 2016 Otter Cup at the Elkhorn Yacht Club in Monterey Bay. While we had raced her in San Diego in early 2015, that was before we had new sails, before we’d tuned her up, and long before we knew what we were doing. Pleased with our mid-fleet finish in San Diego, we were resigned to our lovely schooner being an extremely comfortable but probably not a particularly swift boat. We were in for a surprise starting with our first serious race.
Arriving off of Mass Landing Harbor in the center of Monterey Bay on an overcast and gloomy morning we joined the other competitors for the race start in an extremely light westerly breeze. MAYAN, being heavily built for crossing oceans, isn’t at her best in winds below ten knots.
The race course was simple. Start, sail upwind for about 1.5 nautical miles, and turn left at a buoy. Sail 14 miles to a buoy just offshore from the Monterey Bay Aquarium, turn left again and sail back to roughly where were we started.
We are painfully slow in light wind: As MAYAN crawled away from the starting line it was clear that we were going to be last to the first racing mark. Even the smallest boats in the fleet were sailing away from us. With a crew that was entirely new to sailing a schooner and conditions that strongly favored the weatherly characteristics of sloops, we could only watch our compeitors get smaller and smaller ahead of us.
Arriving at the first mark well behind everyone we tacked and settled MAYAN down on a course to the mark far ahead in Monterey. The water was a dark steel gray, a reflection of the dark gray sky that hung low above us. But, a few wind driven ripples had started to appear. Our sails no longer hung limp. The bow wave started to chuckle just a bit as MAYAN gained a little speed.
Busy setting the large advance staysail and trimming the sails we were all surprised when our navigator, Lance Burc shouted up from the instrument station below decks that we were going five knots. Looks of disbelief were exchanged. It didn’t feel that fast. Checking the sailing ap on my iPhone I found Lance was right. Almost silently, MAYAN had started to move along nicely.
With everything well trimmed the crew started cycling through taking a break for lunch. They sat to leeward so that their body weight might help MAYAN heel over a bit and let gravity help to keep her sails full. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that their weight wouldn’t do a thing. She’s so heavy, they’d need ten more crew to make a difference.
As much of the crew chatted over their lunch I notice the wind had increased steadily. Still from the west, still giving us a beam reach, but now strong enough to start to make her lee side wake hiss as it rolled past the cockpit. With each increase in wind velocity the sheets would creak as they took the load and MAYAN would ponderously accelerate. She was starting to move along nicely now.
Lance stuck his head up from below decks to announce: “We’re going 7 knots now!”
The crew stopped munching and chattering, looked at the wake flowing along the lee side of the hull and said things like: “No way!” and “Lance, calibrate your instruments.” But there was plenty of evidence that our heavy girl had found her element. The first was when MAYAN rumbled past a few of the smaller competitors.
The ultimate speed of a heavy displacement hull like MAYAN’s can be roughly predicted in Knots (nautical miles per hour) by taking 1.34 times the square root of the length of the boat’s waterline in feet. MAYAN’s waterline was longer than the length of the boats were were passing now by more than 50%. So long as she had strong winds, she’d out sail them on a reach.
The picture above was taken by one of the first few competitors we passed. They waved and yelled, “Go get ‘em.” pointing at the larger sloops far ahead. Our helmsman at that moment, seen above in his white hat, was Bill Lee the famous yacht designer. “We’ll tell them you said hello.” he shouted back with a wave as we passed.
By the time we were half way to Monterey we’d passed all but three of the competitors, and by the time we rounded the mark off the Aquarium we’d passed all but two. MAYAN was really rumbling now. Still no uncomfortable motion, no spray on deck, no wind howling in the rigging. In 15 knots of wind she was sailing along nicely at 10 knots.
As we headed back towards Moss Landing and the finish line, the boat in second place took the picture to the left. The wind had filled in nicely, sky was a lighter shade of gray, and they waved their hats and shouted a “hello.”
by this point, the crew had stopped looking at each other in disbelief and started to realize we might just catch the first place boat!
Everyone was tending to the sail trim more carefully. Lance was giving us updates on the location of the leading boat. With five miles to go to the finish, they were only a little over a quarter of a mile ahead. “You can get ’em Beau!” shouted someone from up forward.
Without checking with anyone in the back of the boat, the crew started running lines for a spinnaker set. The wind had backed a bit and they throught it would work. They also believed we just might catch the leader. Working furiously, they got everything rigged and hauled up the MAYAN spinnaker for the first time in a race. Of course the sheet point was wrong, we’d never flown the sail. But the crew hauled it to the right place and we gained another knot of speed.
Now gaining ground rapidly on the leader we could see them all staring aft at the cloud of sail and large white beard of foam, our bow wave. The picture on the left isn’t from that race, the leaders weren’t in the mood to take a picture of us, but it shows what we must have looked like that day as we charge after them.
With a lead ground down to a hundred feet the leader got across the finish line to take the gun. A few minutes later MAYAN roared by rocking the Race Committee boat in her wake. It was over. We’d come second.
With the sails furled and stowed, we powered into the Elkhorn Yacht Club for the post race party. After a few drinks and some wonderful snacks the prizes were given. Despite our second place in the race boat-on-boat, the handicapping system showed that we’d won the race on corrected time. The folks who set the handicap thought were were even slower than we initially were. Our prize, a polo shirt that says “Otter Cup - 1st Place” on the breast now hangs aboard MAYAN in my closet. Pride of place as the first win for our lovely old girl.
We learned a lot that day. How to trim sails more accurately, how to work together as a crew, and most importantly to never give up on MAYAN.
