by Ted Turner
After a rough night, the storm passed in the morning and we dislodged from the sandbar. The boat was okay but our psyches were damaged. Everyone was exhausted because it had been impossible to sleep that night. If you went belowdecks, there was a constant BAM, BAM, BAM that was so loud there was no way you could relax, let alone sleep. At first light we could see where we had made our wrong turn. It was back just a quarter mile and so we were able to make a quick correction. Regardless, the crew’s confidence was shaken. I think Mazo and Jimmy Brown may have been the only guys on board with any real experience at sea. It was like I had pressed a bunch of old men into military service, gave them shovels, pointed them to the front lines, and asked them to take Berlin from the Germans!
Mazo wanted to make an unscheduled stop in Morehead City to get the radio fixed. This made obvious sense but given my crew’s low morale I suspected that if I pulled up to the dock they would desert. I held on to the tiller and said, “We are not stopping at Morehead City.” They asked if we couldn’t just go there to get the radio fixed and check the condition of the hull and I said, “No!” Morehead was a big fishing port and when we passed the inlet on our way out to sea, it looked like the entire fishing fleet was coming in. Without a working radio, I should have taken this as a sign that the weather at sea might be getting rough. I think that Mazo was even considering jumping overboard and swimming ashore.
I was determined to keep moving and sure enough, less than a hundred miles from Morehead City we ran into the worst storm I had ever experienced. Winds were over 50 mph and it was a struggle just to keep the boat from going around in circles. The trip to Charleston was only two hundred miles but it took us two brutal days to get there. Mazo spent almost the entire trip under a blanket belowdecks and when we put in at Charleston, he came on deck looking like someone just released from a concentration camp. The entire crew of three left me except for Jimmy Brown (and if he didn’t work for me I’m not sure that even he would have stayed).
The next week’s race was scheduled to start in St. Petersburg, on Florida’s west coast, and to sail there from Charleston we had to go all the way around the Florida Keys. I managed to assemble an entirely new crew (in addition to Jimmy) in time to start this trip and while the weather was pleasant as we headed out, we ran into another storm in the Gulf of Mexico. As soon as conditions turned rough, the crew folded up their tents and left all the work to Jimmy and me. I remember one guy who got so sick that he wouldn’t leave his bunk. He just lay there on his back and when he started throwing up it shot up into the air and back down on top of him.
I couldn’t get anyone but Jimmy to work up on deck, so I decided to take advantage of the Gulf’s shallow waters by pulling down our sails, dropping anchor, and riding out the storm. I was so exhausted from all that work that I managed to sleep that night but it proved to be a mixed blessing. I awoke the next morning to find that the anchor line had parted and we were adrift. We had no way of knowing how long the line had been broken. We were out of sight of land and I was so inexperienced that I didn’t yet know how to operate the radio direction finder. The only thing I was sure of was that the wind had been blowing in a southerly direction and since we dropped anchor in the Gulf of Mexico I figured that if we sailed due east we’d have to bump into Florida. We did that, and as the weather started to moderate we came into sight of land. We ran alongside a fishing boat and the skipper let us know we were off the coast of Naples. We then managed to sail north to St. Petersburg and got there just in time for the race.
I learned a great deal about ocean racing in that first year. I sailed over a thousand miles and I felt like I was becoming experienced. In addition to my own firsthand knowledge I also learned a lot from Jimmy Brown. He had been around a lot of boats in his years, and he helped us learn about racing by getting information from our competitors. Jimmy would sit down at a bar next to a veteran racer and before you knew it, the guy would tell him some secrets. Jimmy was a great conversationalist, and given the makeup of the sport, which was very elite and very white, I’m sure these other sailors couldn’t see how this black man they were drinking with could ever be a threat. It was amazing how many valuable insights they passed along to him. For example, Jimmy came back one night to say that one successful skipper explained to him that most people focus on what happens during daylight hours and fail to understand that races can be won and lost at night. I used this information to my advantage the rest of my sailing career.
We did poorly in our first couple of races but we managed to win a few trophies before the series was over: a second place finish in one race and a third in another. In the process, I fell in love with ocean racing. I liked everything about it—being out on the open ocean, the teamwork, the preparation, the challenges—everything. It really was a lot like running a business. You had to recruit a good crew and you had to be able to motivate them. From my early misadventures I realized that when conditions were good, you couldn’t tell how strong your crew was. Heading out and singing chanteys everyone looked great, but once the going got tough, the weaker guys would fold.
Early on, I figured out that in both business and sailing, it’s important to assemble a strong team with talents that are complementary. In many ways, a good sailing crew is like a good football team. In football you need some guys with brawn, some who are agile and quick, and you have to have a good quarterback calling the shots. In sailing, the quarterback is the skipper or helmsman. He has to be able to look out ahead and make the right calls and strategic decisions. You need the stronger, quicker crewmembers to grind winches and pull in the sails. You also need an experienced navigator. Today, technology has made navigation much easier but back then you had to rely on a sextant and dead reckoning and the job required a lot of skill.
Sailing around the clock, crews are split into two watches. While one watch sleeps, the other takes over and keeps the boat on course at top speed. Watches are normally four hours long and two teams shift out six times a day. I tried to be flexible with my own schedule to make sure I could be on deck when the sailing was the most difficult and the decisions most critical. For example, sailing into the wind requires the greatest skill so I would try to stay on deck when we were going upwind. I’d try to rest when things were at their easiest but given the fickle nature of weather at sea, I often had to get by on very little sleep.
While I had been successful on smaller boats I found that my skills were better suited for ocean racing. Not only did this sport reward leadership, recruiting, and motivating a team, it also required a lot of hard work—often around the clock—and numerous split-second decisions. The more I raced, the more I got the feeling that this was a sport in which I might compete successfully at the very highest level.
I decided it was time to buy my own ocean racer. Sizing up other vessels during my first SORC season I decided to order a new Cal 40, a thirty-nine-foot sloop made of fiberglass. We took delivery in the fall of 1966 and named her Vamp X (after the “Vamp from Savannah”). With a new boat and a season’s worth of experience I was able to attract a stronger crew. Everything came together that year and we took the overall SORC championship. It was the biggest series I’d ever won and I let the success go to my head a little. (Privately, I used to tell people I wanted to become the world’s greatest sailor, businessman, and lover all at the same time.) In public, for the first time in my life I had reporters interviewing me. The sailing culture was very conservative in those days and when I was quoted saying things like, “Man, we blew those other boats away,” I rubbed some people the wrong way. My crew and I were green, brash, and from the South; and that combination didn’t always go over well in places like the New York Yacht Club. But we loved to win and challenging the establishment was all part of the fun.
I also had a great time with our crew. In those earlier years, I’d sometimes cover for my lack of experience with an oversized sense of bravado, but the guys I sailed with knew how to put up with it, and occasionally they were able to put m
e in my place. One of my favorite stories along those lines was a time when we were out on Vamp X, not racing but bringing her back home from one of the SORC events. We ran into some bad weather, and after breaking our mast we had to ride out the storm using the motor. As we made this change, Jimmy Brown began hooking up a radio antenna and I said, “What are you doing?”
He said, “I’m putting up the antenna in case we need to use the radio.”
I barked, “Well knock it off. Columbus made it through waters worse than this, and if Columbus didn’t need a radio, I don’t need one, either!”
“Okay, then,” replied Jimmy, and he went right on rigging the antenna. An hour later, the engine ran out of gas. Jimmy looked at me and said, “Okay, Columbus, time for you to take over!” Thank God the radio worked. We called the Coast Guard and they came and towed us to port.
I learned a lot of lessons the hard way, but no matter how skilled a sailor anyone becomes, if you spend enough time at sea, you’re going to run into trouble. One of my worst experiences came in January of 1968. By December of 1967 it became clear that the next boat I was having built would not be ready for the 1968 SORC and I needed an alternative. I had a good boat broker and while it was late in the year to be looking for a replacement, he was able to find an older boat called Bolero in Oyster Bay, Long Island, that was available for charter. By this time, most new ocean racers were constructed out of fiberglass but she was built in the 1940s out of wood. She was also big, running seventy-three feet long and weighing about fifty tons, far bigger than anything I had ever sailed. My broker said she had already been decommissioned and placed in winter storage but the owner was willing to make her available. Given her age and condition, and since I already had a new boat in the works, I had no desire to buy her. I told my broker to let the owner know that while I wasn’t interested in purchasing the boat, having a champion crew race it would enhance its market value. The pitch worked and the owner agreed to let us take her south, but if we were to make it on time we’d have to move quickly.
Bolero was in the water and ready to go by the end of December and I got to New York just after New Year’s. Our first race would be at the end of January so we only had a couple of weeks to get her down to Florida. Complicating matters was a record cold snap that had gripped the Northeast for weeks. Oyster Bay was covered with nearly six inches of ice. The night before we were supposed to leave, two of our crew slept on board with electric heaters and one of the guys forgot to pump out the water after using the head. Stepping out of their bunks the next morning, their feet slipped on the ice. A pipe had frozen and burst, and while they slept water filled the bottom of the boat and froze. While this went on, the boat began to sink. Fortunately, this all took place at a shallow dock and with just three feet of water beneath Bolero’s keel she only sank that far. Water from the pipe covered the engine and the battery as well, so once they pumped out the boat and fixed the piping they also had to change the battery and tear down the engine to get all the saltwater out. This cost us another couple of days and as we waited, the cold spell persisted. By the time we were ready to head out, the ice was frozen for about a mile and we had to hire an ocean tug to break the ice and lead us out. We made it down Long Island Sound and into the East River, but around the Battery in lower Manhattan, the pack ice was so thick we became stuck and had to wait for an incoming freighter to help us break free.
It was a struggle getting Bolero out to the open ocean, but once we did, it was a thrill. It was cold but sunny and the wind was blowing out of the north at about 15 to 20 knots. To race a boat of this size would require a crew of about eighteen but to get her down to Florida I only had six on board in addition to myself. Bolero was a yawl, meaning she had two masts. To race at full speed we’d want to put up full sail but with a tailwind and a small crew, I started out with just the mainsail up. As we cleared Sandy Hook, New Jersey, and headed due south we were going about 10 knots. We were making real progress. The air temperature was still cold but when you sail downwind like that, the boat sits upright and doesn’t throw waves.
In addition to staying dry, when you sail with the wind at your back, you don’t feel its full force. For example, if you’re running at 11 knots in a 25-knot tailwind, you only feel 14 knots of wind, but if you’re going into the wind at 11 knots with a 25-knot wind, you feel 36 knots of wind and you have waves and spray on top of it. It’s not to say conditions on board were good, but they could have been worse. For those first two days we had about a quarter-inch layer of ice all over the deck so it was really hard to walk around. When I leased Bolero I assumed that a boat of that size would have steam heat on board but in fact she didn’t have any. Our water tanks froze, so for drinking water we were forced to warm ice on the stove. (Jimmy Brown later would say that on that trip the warmest place on the boat was in the refrigerator.)
On trips like this one, Cape Hatteras is the turning point. Conditions are generally much better on the southern side, but getting around can be rough. South of Cape Hatteras the Gulf Stream warms the water significantly and this differential often contributes to very windy conditions. When we passed the Cape the wind was swirling in a clockwise direction and once we were to its south, we faced very strong headwinds. This is when things got really bad. I had been fighting the flu and another one of our stronger guys had hurt his hand. A third crewmember turned out to be a real loser and was no help at all. We were reduced to just three able men and we had a difficult time trying to get our sails down as conditions worsened. When waves started crashing over the boat we discovered that during the two months when Bolero was decommissioned, her wooden deck and sides had dried up and opened up slightly and now she was taking on water.
The bilge started to fill and as it did we found out that the electric pump was broken. Our next option was a set of hand pumps but the rubber diaphragms inside them were rotten and they proved worthless. The water wasn’t rising so quickly that we were in danger of sinking but we knew that if it got much higher it would flood our batteries and we’d lose electric power, and once that happened we wouldn’t be able to start the engine or operate our radio. Our only remaining option was to start a bucket brigade. As the winds continued to build (we’d later learn they blew upwards of 70 mph), the three able guys on the off watch used buckets to bail the boat. That process worked but it was never-ending—if we took a break, the bilge would start to fill up again.
Despite the heavy seas and wind we did manage to get all our sails down but sediment buildup in our engine caused it to stall and we couldn’t restart it. At this point, darkness was setting in and we had all been working flat-out for about twenty-four hours straight. Between fatigue and the cold (it was still below freezing on the boat) we finally decided it was time to give a Mayday call to the Coast Guard. We radioed their station at Cape Hatteras where they had one of their most durable all-weather boats. They were only about forty miles away to our north and made an attempt to come get us, but they turned back after deciding the seas were too rough. The Coast Guard called and told me that a two-hundred-foot oceangoing tugboat had been dispatched from Morehead City, but since that was more than a hundred miles to our south, it would take them all night to get to us. As we considered hunkering down for the night, the wind continued to roar in from the southeast and we were afraid it was pushing us right back into Cape Hatteras, which was now only about twenty miles away. One of the most dangerous features of Cape Hatteras, in addition to its frequently bad weather, is a shallow sand bank called Diamond Shoals. Jutting out about ten miles, this area has been called the “Graveyard of the Atlantic,” since so many ships have wrecked there in conditions just like the ones we were facing.
As the rest of the crew tried to sleep, I could see the light from the Cape Hatteras lighthouse and I figured we only had about three hours before we had to start worrying about the shoals. I decided that I should let everybody sleep and gather some strength, then when we got a little closer I would wake them up and try to raise at lea
st one small sail to steer her out of the way. Fortunately, we didn’t get that close. As the night went on the wind shifted around to the south, so instead of blowing us toward the shoals it moved us slightly farther away. Through the night a freighter had been keeping an eye on us from about a quarter mile away. They had heard our distress call and decided to stay close until the tug got there. I’m not sure we’d have ever been able to transfer ourselves onto that ship in that weather but regardless, they were great to keep a lookout for us, just in case.
First thing the following morning, with a bit of sleep and the storm finally letting up, we decided to give the motor another try. The engine started but it turned out that the ropes that had been tying our sails was dragging overboard and had wrapped around and choked our propeller, so that was the end of that. Fortunately, the tug made it to us about an hour later. They shot us a line that we tied to our mast for a five-hour tow to Morehead City. It was a relief when we were finally safe on dry land. With the weather now calm, we had a scuba diver remove the rope from our propeller and we left the next afternoon to motor our way down to Charleston. We made it there safely and the following week, with an entirely different crew, Jimmy Brown and I reached St. Petersburg in time for the first race.
I will never forget that night near Cape Hatteras. I really thought there was a decent chance that I wouldn’t see the sunrise the next morning. I remember taking a picture of my wife and kids out of my wallet and just sitting there in my bunk looking at it. I kissed it several times and hoped that I’d have a chance to see them again. It was the most harrowing time I had ever had at sea, but it couldn’t diminish my enthusiasm. I was determined to learn from the experience and to continue racing. I had found my sport and nothing was going to stop me now.
