{"id":73191,"date":"2021-11-16T12:23:03","date_gmt":"2021-11-16T17:23:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/?p=73191"},"modified":"2023-05-07T00:00:24","modified_gmt":"2023-05-07T04:00:24","slug":"samaritans-of-sayville","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/racing\/samaritans-of-sayville\/","title":{"rendered":"Samaritans of Sayville"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\"J\/24\" <\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n
\n The Good Samaritan Memorial Hospital J\/24 North Americans gave Ian Scott\u2019s Crack of Noon<\/em> team a good taste of Long Island\u2019s Great South Bay.<\/span>\n Christopher Howell<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\t <\/figcaption>\n <\/section>\n\t\t\n\n\n

The ol\u2019 J\/24<\/a> Crack of Noon<\/em> doesn\u2019t leave home often. Its longtime caretaker, Ian Scott, is a busy guy in the summertime, bottling and delivering crisp, clean natural spring water to thirsty and demanding customers. Come June, the rest of his aging crew are busy too, yours truly included, with all the usual excuses. But we show up to race on Thursday nights, as we have for decades, because by 5 o\u2019clock our skipper has the rig tuned, the beer on ice, and the sails on deck. You could say we\u2019re Pavlovian to the sound of ice cubes tumbling onto cans in a cooler.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the competition and fleet size here in Newport, Rhode Island, is a shadow of its former glory, 10 boats regularly show up, so it\u2019s still plenty fun and challenging for us weekend-warrior types. It\u2019s all good right here at home, so why leave town when good is good enough?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I suppose that is why we don\u2019t leave often, but when we do, we don\u2019t go far. This summer, it\u2019s the J\/24 North Americans\u2014our first road trip in nine years. Our destination is Blue Point, New York, home to the unpretentious Sayville YC, a hidden gem on Long Island\u2019s south coast. The clubhouse is stilted on a strip of beach on Great South Bay, a 151-square protected skinny water that averages only 4 feet (and 20 at its deepest).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For hotshot pros and traveling teams, hooking up a trailer and wandering about the country to regattas is no big deal, but for the Crack of Noon<\/em> boys, leaving town is a complex affair. Planning is not our specialty, and while we always start the conversation enthusiastically and early while standing over a pile of empty beer cans in the cockpit (\u201cLet\u2019s do the North Americans!\u201d<\/em>), we tend to leave things to the last minute, kicking our proverbial Heineken down the road (\u201cThe regatta is next week, right?\u201d<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Procrastination is how we end up needing only two hotel rooms and four beds in a rundown Clarion Conference Center hotel in Ronkonkoma, New York, which looks like it hasn\u2019t been occupied since the pandemic hit. Procrastination, in other words, is how we fail to line up a fifth crew to get us to maximum weight. We\u2019ve raced four-up plenty of times on Thursday nights, however, so we figure we will manage. Plus, weigh\u2011in will be a piece of cake. In fact, we can eat all the cake we want before \u00adstepping on the scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we do finally step into the registration room at Sayville, there are at least eight friendly club volunteers to greet us. They efficiently escort us through our registration and onto the scale behind the privacy divider. There we are, a bunch of old dudes, still stripping down to our skivvies and sucking in our guts, even though we don\u2019t have to. There\u2019s no need to pretend\u2014we have a good 140 pounds to spare, and come to find out, we sure could use it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\"\" <\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n
\n Sayville YC rear commodore Steven Thomas comes to Crack of Noon<\/em>\u2019s aid at the J\/24 North Americans.<\/span>\n Dave Reed<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\t <\/figcaption>\n <\/section>\n\t\t\n\n\n

For four glorious days, Sayville delivers spectacular summer sailing conditions, with gusty sea breezes whipping the bay into a steep-lump racetrack that requires full-crew hiking and hyperactive trimming on the sails. Our starts are good, but without those extra pounds, we don\u2019t stand a chance of hanging in skinny lanes, especially when we\u2019re alongside the top boats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Race after race, we\u2019re having fun mixing it up in the middle of the fleet, which is a blessing because it helps us forget about one nagging bummer that we will eventually have to deal with when the regatta\u2019s over: Our tow vehicle died upon arrival in Sayville.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

True story: We were a few hundred feet from the yacht club\u2019s driveway entrance when our trimmer Herb McCormick\u2019s 2005 Ford F-150 croaked. We nursed it and the boat through the gate, parked alongside the gin pole, and that\u2019s where the old beast would remain until a AAA tow hauled it away to the local Ford dealer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To our good fortune, however, our regatta hosts, the good Samaritans of Sayville, are standing under the gin pole ready to lend a hand in our time of need. \u201cDon\u2019t worry about it,\u201d rear commodore Steven Thomas assures us. He\u2019s got a skid steer to get the trailer to its parking spot after we finish measurement, and then he offers his personal truck to get our boat off the island and back to Newport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I mean, we\u2019ve only <\/em>just met the guy, and yet he\u2019s giving us his wheels?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout the regatta<\/a>, Thomas, who commands the bow on the navy-blue J\/24 named Shake and Bake<\/em>, checks in with us twice daily to see how we\u2019re managing and if we need his truck. And every time I see him at the club, he\u2019s either hustling to or from his boat while putting out tinder fires, or making sure all of us racers are having the best time possible. He\u2019s manning the skid steer, he\u2019s directing trailer traffic, he\u2019s pushing boats around with a Jeep, he\u2019s slinging drinks at the bar when the tenders are backed up, and he\u2019s hustling buffet trays of meatloaf from the kitchen to the food tent so the sailors don\u2019t have to wait in line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019s always busy, but never too busy to ask, \u201cYou guys having a good time? You need anything?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Word eventually gets around that the poor lads from Newport are stranded in Sayville. The dealer\u2019s diagnosis is that we\u2019ve blown a crankshaft bolt and the engine is kaput. But that\u2019s when another Sayville Samaritan, Jim \u201cSeamus\u201d Keeley, who\u2019s on race-committee duty, steps out of the blue and hooks us up with a local mechanic, who eventually saves poor Herb from having to go into debt on a new truck. Keeley not only helps line up the mechanic, but also later drives to the opposite side of the island to pick up Herb at the ferry terminal so he can retrieve his ride.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

None of us on Crack of Noon<\/em> had ever been to\u2014or knew anything about\u2014Sayville, but when we gather again for our normal Thursday-night affair afterward, we all agreed, and Herb especially, that Sayville is one of coolest places we\u2019ve raced, with some of the kindest and most helpful people we\u2019ve ever met.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In hindsight, while we were underweight and potentially stranded, we are all the better for getting off our little island. From the moment we coasted into Sayville to the moment we rolled out with the boat hitched to a U-Haul box truck, we thoroughly enjoyed the regatta, our outstanding hosts, the welcoming club and its amazing sailing conditions. It\u2019s a reminder that it\u2019s good for the Crack of Noon<\/em> crew to travel once in a while because good enough should never be good enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next time, we\u2019ll have our fifth, but I\u2019m not sure about Herb\u2019s truck.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Travelling to regattas has its challenges, but whenever we hit the road we’re reminded there is great sailing and good people everywhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":73192,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"BS_author_type":"BS_author_is_guest","BS_guest_author_name":"Dave Reed","BS_guest_author_url":"","hydra_display_date":"","hydra_display_updated":false,"_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":"159","_yoast_wpseo_metadesc":"A J\/24 team travels to Sayville, New York to compete in the class's National Championship.","_yoast_wpseo_title":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","arc_story_id":"","arc_website_url":"","custom_permalink":"","arc_subtype":"","arc_exclude_from_feeds":false,"sponsored":false,"sponsored_label":"Sponsored Content","sponsored_display_label":false,"sponsored_image":false,"post_right_rail":true,"post_right_rail_ad_1":true,"post_right_rail_ad_2":true,"post_right_rail_ad_3":false,"post_right_rail_ad_4":false,"post_right_rail_recirc":true,"fixed_anchor_ad":true,"post_top_ad":true,"post_off_ramp":true,"post_taboola":false,"labels":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":"","ad_targeting":"","ad_settings_ads_on_this_page":true,"ad_settings_automatic_ad_injection_into_the_content":true,"sponsored_url":"","social_share":true},"categories":[159],"tags":[325,177,1498],"class_list":["post-73191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-racing","tag-j-24","tag-racing","tag-wet-notes"],"acf":[],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}