J24 Blog

http://old.cruisingworld.com/bowman.htm

There was the time, for example, in the early days of the 1987 America’s Cup campaign, when Kirby was sailing aboard the 12-Meter, Eagle, with Davis, Toppa, and Kimo Worthington, among others. They were scrimmaging the Italians off Long Beach, and testing people in different crew positions. In one race Davis was trying out a new man on the bow; Kirby was at the grinders. Moments before the start, Kirby saw that the bowman’s wave-through to Davis was over-optimistic — the committee boat was anchored in deep water with lots of scope, and Eagle was going to foul the rode. With a wing keel and 14 knots of air in the sails, this was an unpleasant thing to contemplate, and Kirby started pulling off his seaboots. Eagle hit the rode a second or two later. Davis tried to tack away from it, and the rode looped over one wing; he then turned downwind, and the rode looped over the other wing as well. Now Davis had no steering, and Eagle was reeling in the committee boat at high speed. Kirby grabbed his knife, ran forward, and dove off the bow. He followed the leading edge of the keel down, took a good thump as the rest of the keel hit him, hung on with one hand, and cut the rode when the committee boat was a few feet from Eagle’s transom. At that point, Eagle took off again.

Peter Stalkus, a former major-league bowman who would later become Tom Blackaller’s navigator on Defender was on board Eagle at the time. “Stalkus knew I’d pop up somewhere,” said Kirby. By the time he hit the surface, Stalkus had a line trailing in Eagle’s wake; Kirby grabbed it and Stalkus hauled him aboard. Eagle restarted, chased the Italians, and lost by only 20 seconds.