Just in time for New York Classic Week, this month’s WindCheck has published an excerpt of the following article written by Margot DeFrance and Danielle Gallo about their experience racing Dennis Conner’s Classic Yacht, Cotton Blossom II in the second leg of the Panerai Classic Yacht Regatta this year. Note that a few weeks ago, CB II won it’s class in Monaco Classic week as well as the leg from Monaco to Cannes. The Panerai series concludes in St. Tropez mid-October.

Sailing with Mr. America's Cup

Dennis Conner doesn’t have to sail. He could with all due satisfaction, stuff his accolades neatly in a warehouse and walk away from the sport that made him a household name. He has nothing left to prove. But that is not what he does.

President Kennedy once said that each of us has the same percent of salt in our blood as the ocean, which is why we are drawn to it. Somehow, DC got more. His soul needs the sea and the wind and the sheer pleasure of riding both. His passion for sailing is infectious and like the Pied Piper, we can’t help but follow where he leads.  This time, he leads us into the world of classic yacht racing in the Med on his current labor of love, a 16 meter Q class sloop named Cotton Blossom II.

The Q class originated in 1904 but became “hot” twenty years later when JP Morgan bought one. CB II was designed and built by renowned shipbuilder and two-time Olympic sailing gold medalist Johan Anker in Norway in 1925. Her history includes wins in the 1932 Block Island Race and the ’38 Astor Cup. She had several owners before arriving at her “lucky port” of San Diego, where she won boat of the year in 1963 at the San Diego YC and met Dennis Conner for the first time.

Forty years later, he would spend eighteen months and over $1 million on a massive restoration project that would culminate when CBII received the highly coveted Trophe de Elegance for two consecutive years in Antibes.

Caption 2: Interior  Cabin of CBII Before Renovation : Photo by Doug Cole

Thanks go to Johnny Smullen (project manager), Bill Clark (spars, woodwork), Steve Harrison (custom bronze fittings and custom machinery), Doug Jones (chief shipright), Wilson McDonald and Dave Henderson (cabin house), and Patrick Langley (brightwork) for an amazing transformation.  Originality was retained, the exception being a 75 foot spruce mast (10 feet higher than the original) and a boom 12 feet longer. The before and after restoration photos are testament to the labors of this team.  She now resides at the Yacht Club de Monaco and participates in classic yacht racing in the Med.

Caption 3: Cabin After Renovations : Photo by Doug Cole

We met Cotton Blossom II for leg two of the 2007 Panerai Classic Yacht Regatta in Porto Santo Stefano. This is a sleepy little seaside village about 100km northwest of Rome. The town may be tiny, but it is huge in the yachting world. The Cantiere Navale dell’ Argentario (the shipyard) is renowned for yacht restoration.  They restored Tamara IX (owned by Prada yacht designer Doug Peterson), The Blue Peter (34 m Bermuda cutter), Bona Fide (14 m Gaff Cutter which won the Paris Olympics in 1900), and Stormy Weather (16 m Bermuda Yawl, winner of the ’35 Transatlantic and the Fastnet). They are all here, docked along the quay with the blue Panerai banners waving in bright relief from mast after mast.

The old quote “ships are the nearest things to dreams that hands have ever made” couldn’t be more fitting. These yachts ARE dreamy, each one its own testament to time, having ridden a million waves, ripped a thousand sheets, borne a thousand crew, and battled countless storms. They float, lightly tethered, waiting for another dawn, another breeze, another wave, tomorrow’s race.

Our crew, met on the docks at 7:30 every morning to find the TV crews clamoring for DC’s thoughts on who would win the 32nd Americas Cup: “For sure it will be a kiwi, we just don’t know which one”.

The fans seemed to have no boundaries, stepping uninvited onto CBII, plopping down at our dinner table, converging upon our crew at the portside cafes. Although Dennis graciously held court on land, he roared behind the helm. The first race was a prime example.

On the way to the second mark, Lucia slides up to leeward, one meter off our starboard side. DC commands everyone to the high side except the jib trimmer.  Pat Langley (mainsail trimmer) and Dennis confer, zoning into a mind meld between just the two of them—a practice that will repeat itself during tense situations in this regatta.  They were trying to push us off the mark.  The set to DC’s face says, “Not this day, not this mark.”

Caption 4: Dennis Conner on CBII (Q5) Leading Lucia A : Photo by James Robinson Taylor

From our perch on the high side, two thoughts battled for dominance. “What the hell are they thinking?” and “Holy S***, can DC drive!”  Then all thought disappeared as we “lived“ this unasked for game of chicken with one meter of distance between both boats which left no room for error. Silence. Determination. Concentration. We felt the keel slice the water, knew just how long it took the water to jet behind the stern, and could tell without looking exactly how high the wake just by the sound. We saw in slow motion each tuft of wind down the draft and the corresponding sail reaction.  We heard the sound of the rig from the leeward boat as it creaked under adjustments. Then it came, that moment of perfect clairvoyance, when we knew with absolute conviction that DC will round up to the mark and blow Lucia out the back.  The smile already on our faces, we glanced starboard and watched the sequence of events play out, this time in real time. Yeah baby, life was good and was about to get better.

After the mark, Lucia and CB II split course sides and then the wind died.  Finally the wind came, up the left side of the course. Dennis found it first. As we crossed the finish line ahead of every boat in the fleet, DC jumped to his feet, doffed his cap, raised his fists in the air and cried, ” God is an American!”. 

We stepped onto the docks and the celebration was on. Minutes into it, DC was already thinking about the next day’s challenge.  He’s a walking barometer, keenly aware where the wind is at any time of day, on or off the boat.  After each race, he would announce the next day’s wind and weather. He was never wrong. “Watch that cloud as it passes over that mountain. Looks like a truck barreling down a freeway. That’s about 40 knots wind up there and it isn’t going to settle down to what we need before we get out”. Thus started race day two.

Dockside, DC called weather, sail selection, and outlined a basic strategy. Once on the water, after more wind checks, running the start line, and checking sail angles for each mark, he laid out the race strategy practically down to every tack and jibe. He knew what maneuvers each boat in our class was likely to do at the start and had a counterstrategy in mind for CBII. Before each race began, he knew whether it was winnable. Today it was not.

“The wind is too strong for us and we have to give time to the fleet. The Mariquita is gonna love it out here today. This is her kind of wind. The best we can do is finish, not hurt the boat, and take advantage of others’ mistakes.“ Then he added, “The mast could break. Don’t be under it or the boom if it happens. It takes a lot longer to fall than you think. Don’t panic. You have time.”

Then he asked, “Does anybody know the point system? If we cross the start and then just go back to the docks is it the same number of points if we start and finish last?” It was, but once we got started, the love of the game was too strong and we stayed for the duration.

Caption 6: The Mariquita in Motion : Photo by James Robinson Taylor.

As race two began, DC watched each class start, shouting encouragement to the other skippers and keeping up a running commentary with Patrick. “What the hell is she waiting for?” he shouted. Moments later, Mariquita caught the wind DC saw moments ago. “Look at her go, she’s screaming!” he laughed. The something flickered in his eyes. He frowned, turning to our foredeck crew, “The wind just picked up and we have less than two minutes to race start. We need to change the foresail. Can you do it?” As they make the change, Dennis grumbles, “Why was I the only one to notice?”

Race starts are spectacular in a classic yacht regattas as the spar height of some of these yachts bring fear of a rigging tangle as they pitch and tack in aggressive pre start maneuvers.  This is particularly nerve wracking on CB II as she is small and rides low to the sea while her spar is 75 feet high. The yachts jockeyed for the best position off the start and competing crews screamed to intimidate others off their course. In the end, the entire fleet cleared and the race was on.

The wind built and as the seas swelled, so much water rushed over our stern, you could have surfed it. DC hears me commenting to Pat. He turns and says in a dramatic tone reserved for day charters, “It is possible to sink this boat you know”.  He doesn’t.

Caption 7: This Boat Can Sink : Photo by James Robinson Taylor

The waves are high and we searched for ways to increase speed and reduce boat stress in a technique called towing. The trick was to find a larger yacht and edge up astern, catch her quarterdeck wave, and ride along.  We surfed a lot that day and watched for other’s mistakes.

“Look at that sail,” he cried. “As they say in the big leagues, it looks good from afar but it’s far from good!: He winked, “You can borrow that phrase for a social situation too”.

We arrived back in port with no damage to the boat and all crew members aboard. Others were not so lucky but all recovered their crew..

The night before the last race featured the big all crew pasta dinner quayside under the stars.  It was not supposed to be too late of a night but as the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  Fuzzily, someone asks, “Why does Dennis ask us all these questions on the boat? He knows the answer to everything he asks us. Why doesn’t he just tell us?”

Indeed. He not only knows the answer, he knows at least ten iterations and spends much time mentoring the crew, grilling us on what could have been done better. (He misses nothing on the boat.)  He would listen to the response and then carefully reply, “That’s one way and it seems like it might work. Here’s another.” 

Dawn broke early on the last day of racing for all except the race committee who apparently had even more fun at the pasta dinner than the racers.  Given the wind and the course (which was basically a “donkey course”, i.e. a straight line geared for the speed of the largest boats vs triangular course which is more tactical in nature), the best we can do in this race is beat Bona Fide and we did.

Motoring in from the final race, Dennis yelled—“Look girls, look at this boat portside. What do you think? You could get a small fleet of these and sail them around the world. That would get people’s attention about women’s sailing.” “Great idea”, we replied, “Before we do that, how about your idea to have a girls’ team match race a guys’ team on your Formula 1s?  Do you remember saying you’d secretly train the girls?” DC said nothing, but we can see the wheels turning. After a few very long seconds, he looks up and says, “Maybe you girls could come to San Diego in November.”

On Vintage and Classic Yacht Rating systems:

To be considered a vintage yacht, a boat must be made of wood or metal, confirm to original plans and have launched before the end of 1949. To be considered a classic yacht, the same criteria apply but the classic yacht needs to have launched before 1975. Both types were in this regatta and the size of these boats ranged from 9 meters to more than 35 meters.

It took more than a century to sort out a system that would allow for yachts of different sizes, speeds, and sail areas to compete fairly.  Yachts are assigned ratings based upon a complicated formula with about 25 inputs including measured dimensions (like hull depth, freeboard, hull length, beam), calculated dimensions (like sail area, rated length and depth), and coefficients and parameters (like sail area configuration, rig coefficient, authenticity and conformity parameter). Although the formula is standard the subjectivity, it seems, is with the actual measurer.

Once the rating is established, then it is used to calculate the allowance per nautical mile which is then used to calculate corrected time or time on distance. Time on distance= (penalties x elapsed time) minus (allowance per nautical mile x distance). Cotton Blossom II was the smallest of the fleet yet we gave  every yacht 98 seconds per nautical mile, inexplicably up 13 seconds per nautical mile from the previous years’ rating.