Sailing toward a dream
By NATHAN BARON
Kingstonian getting ready for gruelling trans-Atlantic race
In September, I plan to race my sailboat, Boys and Girls Club of Canada, in the highly competitive single-handed Mini-transat 6.50 competition, from New Rochelle, France to Salvador el Bahia, Brazil. Designed for sailors who love extreme conditions and are not millionaires, the 7,000-kilometre race with a fleet of 72 yachts offers one of the most arduous challenges on Earth to "do-it-yourself " sailors. Representing Kingston, I will be the only Canadian in the race.
The journey began when I was a child. I loved to sit on a hill near the Canadian Coast Guard ship Alexander Henry and watch sailboats race off Kingston. I eventually worked up the courage to go to the Kingston Yacht Club and ask a skipper to let me look around his boat. I immediately fell in love with sailboats: the intricate rigging, shiny metal fittings and the large amount of sailcloth needed to power the boat. Everything was just so big, powerful and amazing.
Twenty years later, last November, I found myself driving a 6.5-metre high-tech, high-performance sailboat as it screamed its way into Kingston harbour. It was the fastest boat I had ever sailed on, and it was mine. Testing my boat and myself against the elements, I hadn't slept in over 12 hours, nor could I go to the cabin below to eat. Despite my good foul-weather clothes, I was soaked through because of the wet weather, and the temperature was close to freezing.
What I experienced in Kingston that day was just a small sample of the conditions I'll face during the trans-Atlantic race. Of course, my wife Alison won't be there with a car to meet me and provide me with a hot meal and a warm bed.
After years of crewing on Kingstonowned sailboats, studying them inside and out and learning the nautical language and the basic skills of a racing sailor, I felt ready to tackle this major sailing challenge.
My big break came in June 2007. A Mini-transat-class racing boat, designed and built in Spain, would become available for sale in Newport, Rhode Island at the end of a round-trip race to Bermuda. A Kingston sailing friend and I went down to Newport to watch the start of the race and to have a good look at the boat. That small racing machine was perfect.
My friend offered me a loan to help buy the boat. A deal was struck.
We then initiated the Minimus Sailing Team with myself as skipper. To meet the organizational requirements of the Mini-transat race committee in New Rochelle, France, I had to be responsible for my own racing campaign, directing fundraising, preparing and provisioning the boat and arranging transportation. Well-known Kingston sailors George Jackson, Paul Davis, John Curtis and Lindsey and Marr Fair are key players on that team.
Since then, I've sailed my 6.5-metre sailing machine by myself for more than 2,000 miles on Lake Ontario. Last summer, I raced 750 miles in the Annapolis to Bermuda classic, finishing 16th in a fleet of 36 boats. I headed back on my own to Annapolis, Maryland. For 24 hours, in big seas, I had to steer by hand because my automated steering system had failed.
At the beginning of this month, my boat was transported to Miami, Florida, from where I was to embark on a 1,000-mile solo circumnavigation of the Bahamas without touching land. I would be reporting my position from specified marking points and buoys along the way. This is part of the stringent qualifying requirements the race committee set for me for acceptance as a competitor in the September 2009 Mini-transat race from France to Brazil.
Along the way, I've had the good fortune to meet Kingston's James Brown. He asked me to talk with Boys and Girls Club of Kingston members. From that start, an inspiring kinship has developed that has extended to the Boys and Girls Club of Canada headquarters in Toronto and the naming of my boat after the club.
Racing across the Atlantic Ocean is way bigger than me. To run a campaign like ours takes a large team of supporters, and it takes dollars to make it all happen. I am so happy that I come from a city of sailors who understand that.
I have often felt myself defined by being a sailor, and there is no way I would be a sailor without having grown up in a city with such a rich marine history and active marine community as Kingston.
Kingston has allowed me to dream of ships. So as I head into the biggest challenge of my life, I am happy to look to those who have gone before me in Kingston and to inspire our kids to dream of sailing ships in the future.
I look forward to reporting to Whig Standard readers on my circumnavigation of the Bahamas when I return sometime this month. Then my boat will be shipped to Europe and our team will begin the countdown to September and a place on the starting line for the Mini-transat race to Brazil.
- Nathan Baron lives in Kingston.
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