![]() It was Hinckley, skylarking in the clipped accent of his native downeast Maine. We all looked forward at once, it seemed, and as we did a plaintive cry wafted back from the bow pulpit. When it was over, I looked to see if the mast was still up and if all my mates were still aboard. ![]() ![]() There was nothing to do then but hang on and wait for the hosing-down to pass. The hull shook with a resounding BOOOOM and seawater rolled down the deck in a solid, green torrent. But she came down fast on her leaden keel, and when she hit in the trough she met a towering sea of green water from the next wave. It was a weird sensation as the big, ballast-laden racer briefly lost contact with the sea and went airborne. Barry Hinckley scurried forward to set things up for the sail change, but before he finished, Dragonfire rode up on a particularly tall and powerful wave and shot right off the top of it. A collective groan went up from us rail birds. That meant sending the crew forward to put up a smaller headsail and get the larger one down and stowed. "We're overpowered!" he yelled through the din. The helmsman was a huge fellow called "Sky." I could see him whipsawing the wheel back and forth in the dim red light of the binnacle, a grim look in his eye. My belly was gnawingly empty, the last of what had passed for dinner having been lost over the side when the upwind roller-coaster ride began. I hadn't been to sleep yet and dawn was only an hour away. This was ocean racing at its finest, I told myself as I rode the bucking horse from my perch on the weather rail. The motion and noise below was staggering, the cold chaos on deck worse. With the wind barreling in at 30 to 40 knots, the boat slammed into wave after breaking wave, sending spray flying and shudders echoing through the hull as it crashed from roller to roller. The new course sent 42-foot Dragonfire into the teeth of the tempest and the experience was jarring. We rounded Buzzard's Bay Tower in a howler in the dead of night, hauled the spinnaker down and hung a sharp right toward Block Island, R.I. ![]()
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