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The Race of a Lifetime

by Bill
(Phinney Ridge)

The Schooner

The Schooner "Goodwill"

I thought this little story might interest you. I attached a picture of the “Goodwill”, the schooner on which I sailed in the Trans-Pacific Yacht Race in the late 1950s, from Los Angeles to Hawaii.

The crew of 52 was divided into 3 sections: foredeck, mid-deck, and afterdeck. All the dumb young bucks (like me) were assigned the foredeck. The “brains” of the crew was concentrated aft. When on watch, I never, ever ventured aft where I didn’t belong. Everybody had their area of responsibility and stuck to it.

During a jibe, we had dropped the spinnaker. In large rolling swells, we had to move the spinnaker pole over from the starboard to the port side. That thing was an absolute monster, maybe 2 tons. You can see in the photo how small humans are compared to it. We foredeck guys had our hands full when we heard a tremendous SNAP aft.

The port main backstay pulled away from the deck and the main topmast toppled over, pulled by the massive force of the gollywobbler, skysail and main topsail. The mid deck was a complete wreck with falling debris while the dangling topmast swung wildly against the main mast in the rolling sea.

Thank God the spinnaker was already down; had it been up, the huge combined force of the spinnaker and gollywobbler would have pulled the entire rig to the deck or overboard.

We all stopped what we were doing and ran to the fantail to await developments. There was nothing we could do. The main was battered but still up so we had some steerageway. We were concerned the topmast might break loose, fall to the deck and kill somebody -- or fall straight down like a dagger and pierce the hull. It was a solid piece of timber, extremely heavy.

Climbing the mast to fix the problem was obviously suicidal. We could only watch in horror as we discussed what to do.

Mind you, there was nobody to rescue us. The accompanying Coast Guard cutter for the race was hundreds of miles from our position. There were no other vessels within sight. Our prop had been removed before the race to increase our speed, so we could not control our movement by turning on the engine.

Several hours ticked by. Eventually, the topmast tangled itself enough in the nearby rigging so that it swung less wildly.

Well, now what? One guy, a crazy, wild but very agile guy, volunteered to climb the mainmast and try to secure it. Through a heroic effort, he was able to partially secure it and then a couple of other guys went up to help. Mind you, we were in a rolling sea. The guys up on the mast were being tossed back and forth like rag dolls.

Long story short, eventually the topmast was secured, then disconnected from its rigging with hacksaws and lowered by pulleys to the deck in a controlled manner.

As we cleared away the wreckage on deck, we put the spinnaker back up and continued the race with spinnaker, jib staysail and mainsail. Meanwhile, we broke out the two sewing machines kept for emergencies and started to create a smaller gollywobbler from the ruined one. After doing a lot of re-rigging, we were able to hoist the new sail about a day later.

We limped into Honolulu but were still the first boat to finish the race.

The Goodwill was a steel schooner built in 1921. In a really strong wind on the quarter, this boat could charge like greased lightening downwind. You had to experience it to believe it. Several times during our shakedown cruises, we would surf big ocean swells. Imagine a 150-foot surfboard and you get the idea of what it was like.

In later years, this amazing vessel met its undeserved demise. The owner was fond of cruising the Pacific side of Mexico. During one of these cruises, the boat simply disappeared. Where was it? What happened?

Eventually is was spotted. It was submerged and impaled on the infamous Sacramento Reef off of Baja California. There was no trace of any survivors.

What happened is a mystery. Those who might know are ensconced forever in Davey Jones' locker. The Sacramento Reff is well known and charted. There is absolutely no excuse for hitting this reef. The owner was a well-known alcoholic. Was everybody drunk and not paying attention to navigation?

We'll never know.

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The Greenwood Men's Group's mission is to provide a supportive environment where men from diverse backgrounds can foster camaraderie, develop friendships, share wisdom, enrich one another's lives -- and contribute to the Seattle communities of Greenwood, Ballard, Crown Hill, Fremont, Green Lake, Greenwood, Licton Springs, Loyal Heights, Phinney Ridge, Ravenna, Sunset Hill, Wallingford, Wedgwood, Whittier Heights and beyond.

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