Confessions of a Grinder
My first person account of competing in the America’s Cup as a grinder on board the 12-meter USA from the St. Francis Yacht Club back when the America's Cup was really really cool, 1986-87.
by
Brad Alan Lewis
Copyright 1988, 2012 by Brad Alan Lewis
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Prologue: Message in a Box
I returned from a long run this evening and saw the green light flashing on my message machine: “Brad, this is Bruce Epke. I was wondering if you’d like to come up to San Francisco to do a little sailing with us on the 12-meter. We need a grinder. Let me know if you’re interested.”
I didn’t know anything about grinding, and the last time I had sailed was on a Hobie Cat fifteen years ago, but I was definitely interested.
Two days after I received Bruce’s short message the fiscal end of my southern California life was reduced to a few checks crammed into envelopes to satisfy Visa, Amex, Shell and MasterCard. Without a real job or a wife or any serious outstanding debts, I was able to attempt this adventure on short notice. Not too many citizens of this urban paradise can pack up in a few days and leave for an undefined length of time for a job that promised no financial reward. I was lucky.
I earned that freedom on August 5, 1984, at Lake Casitas, the site of the Los Angeles Olympic rowing venue. With a very tough partner named Paul Enquist from Seattle, we nudged our double scull ahead of the Belgian’s double scull with roughly five strokes until the finish. We won the Olympic gold medal, waved from the victory platform, shouted cheers to our families, stood ramrod straight while they played the national anthem. We were the first Americans to win the double scull event in fifty-two years, and surprisingly we were the only American men to win a rowing gold medal at the 1984 Olympiad. It was a great day. The morning after we won I went surfing at 56th Street in Newport Beach.
For thirteen years I had lived within a rowing prison, and while I loved the first ten or eleven years of confinement, I eventually started to get restless. Rowing around Newport Harbor six mornings a week and another four afternoons became unbearably tedious. I needed something new. I could think of no better adventure than 12-meter, America’s Cup sailing to fulfill that desire.
I wanted to attempt this sailing adventure for another reason: to prove that I could handle a tough, long-term, team environment. Through rowing I had been labeled a loner, “the moody and resentful Californian” according to author David Halberstam in his book The Amateurs. But I strongly disagreed with that generalization. I was capable of being a team player, and I welcomed a chance to prove it. Surviving a year in an America’s Cup syndicate would be the ultimate test, especially since a novice grinder is far down on the syndicate’s hierarchy.
The offer to go sailing with Bruce was not completely unexpected. Bruce and I had been trapped in Tampa, Florida, at a grueling Olympic rowing training camp in early 1984. On our one and only afternoon of freedom during the two-week struggle, we drove across the long bridge to the St. Petersburg Yacht Club in a rented Camaro to inspect firsthand the yachts lining the docks. The yachts were here, Bruce told me, in preparation for another leg of the prestigious SORC, Southern Ocean Racing Circuit. Along with being a champion rower, Bruce was a veteran of the 1983 America’s Cup and many other big boat regattas, including the SORC. As we drew near St. Petersburg he became more and more excited. His heart obviously belonged in the sailing arena and not in rowing.
We took our time walking up and down the dock, studying the wild-looking, rakish craft. Bruce introduced me to his old sailing friends, telling them proudly that he was in the process of trying out for the Olympic team. But he looked longingly at the boats, especially at a ninety-foot, ultra-sleek beauty named Boomerang, on which he had formerly crewed.
On the drive back to Tampa I told Bruce to call me after this Olympic mess was over if he ever heard of a crewing position that could be filled by someone long on enthusiasm and short on experience—someone like me. He didn’t call for two years, and I’d almost forgotten having asked him to remember me. Bruce had not forgotten.
Three days after I received Bruce’s message I loaded my pickup truck with a duffel bag full of clothes, a portable computer, and a surfboard and left for San Francisco. The surfboard was destined never to touch northern California waters, but over the next year I wore out the computer.
My only passenger for the long drive was Jack London’s Sea Wolf, which I had rented from Books-on-Tape. I learned a fair amount about life at sea from this century-old book, but it did not prepare me for what lay ahead: the tension of competition, the storm-driven wild outings off San Francisco and Fremantle, the interminable boredom of boat work, the pure unadulterated fun of sharing these moments with my mates.
I left home on Thursday, February 20, 1986.
PART I: ENTER THE NOVICE SAILOR
1
Arriving
I pulled into the St. Francis Yacht Club parking lot around noon on Friday. From the sidewalk above the marina I could see two sleek sailboats, one on each side of a long skinny dock. Yes, those are 12-meters, I thought to myself. No doubt about it. Their Spartan topsides cleaned of the slightest projection confirmed that they were not cruising yachts. I knew the look of a 12-meter from my ten thousand sightseeing tours around Newport Bay. My old training ground was home to a former America’s Cup contender named Newsboy.
With a dozen men on each boat working like aquatic pit crews, I was fairly sure I had come to the right place, but which boat was the USA? Bruce had told me on the phone that the Chicago syndicate was also based at the St. Francis, and I asked a man who was standing along the railing, with twenty other midday spectators, which of the two yachts was the USA. I didn’t want to go applying for my grinder job on the wrong boat. “The one that says ‘Pacific Telesis’ on the side is the USA” he said. We talked for a few seconds, and then I walked down the steep ramp that led to the dock.
The whole 12-meter name game was confusing at first: a corporation whose sole business is to win the America’s Cup is called a syndicate. The syndicate based in San Francisco, to which I was applying for a crew job, was the Golden Gate Challenge. They had raised some money and built a 12-meter named USA. But this USA 12-meter was only a practice boat. The real 12-meter that the Golden Gate Challenge intended to race in Fremantle was still being designed. Most syndicates owned at least two 12-meters, one for practice and one for racing. The first USA, the one I was looking for, was nicknamed Evolutionary-1 or E-l.
I tried to look cool and ready, like hot grinder material, as I approached the USA. I was dressed in black Levis, a pair of blue Docksides, and an In-and-Out Burger T-shirt. The night before, I had shaved off my beard, leaving only the mustache. My image of sailors, at least the modern-day version, did not include a beard. I felt nervous.
At first I couldn’t find Bruce. The crewmen working on the USA took time out from their chores to give me a short “What the hell are you doing here?” look as I walked toward them. I quickly glanced at each crewman, anticipating Bruce’s smiling face, but he wasn’t there, unless he was working below decks.
“Have you seen Bruce Epke?” I asked one of the crew. He told me to ask someone else, and as I turned away I heard him suggest to another crewman that they should post a guard at the top of the ramp so that tourists, nobodies, Lookie-Lous, geeks, hangers-on, groupies, lost walkers, and lost souls would not wander down the ramp and bother the crew.
Instead of looking for someone else to ask, I looked at the USA. The impression of simplicity that I had when standing along the railing was now gone. Close-up she was an intricate beauty, very complicated with blocks and winches and a thousand yards of lines tying it all together. The towering aluminum mast seemed grossly out of proportion, as though it had been made for a much larger boat. Not a sliver of wood except for the flagstaff on the very stern could be seen on any part of the yacht.
The sixty-foot hull shone with a fresh white glaze like a newly painted car. Slicing across the whiteness was a thin silver and red stripe about six inches below the gunnel that ended with the words “Pacific Telesis.” What the hell was Telesis? It sounded like a rare tropical disease, but it turned out to be the phone company and the syndicate’s major sponsor.
Three opened hatches, two in the front and one midship, led to a black undefined world below decks. I peered into the middle hatch, and one of the crewmen I hadn’t noticed before, peered out. It wasn’t Bruce, and I looked away. Cordless drills, wrenches, hammers were scattered over the topsides—it looked as though it had rained tools only a few minutes before. Everyone was working fast, and needless to say, I felt very out of place.
Finally someone told me Bruce was probably in the equipment trailer. This was my casual introduction to 12-meter America’s Cup sailing and the crew of the USA.
Along the east side of the yacht club, two hundred yards from the 12-meter dock, next to a little alcove where a few old men sat drinking rum and playing cards, I found the forty-foot container to which I had been directed. I was surprised at my first glance inside: this solid steel box with its bland industrial exterior was outfitted like a high-class marine supply store, including a workbench and shelves and every form of power tool known to man. In the back of the container I could see Bruce hot-knifing the end of a line to keep it from fraying. I walked to the back of the container and watched him work for a moment. A biting, foul odor drifted from the burning nylon line, but I doubt that Bruce even noticed the stench. He put down the knife just long enough to shake my hand.
“Hey, good to see you,” he said.
“Yeah, same here.”
“Listen, we launch in five minutes, so give me a hand with the sails.” Bruce was a good-looking man, about six-foot-four, 220 pounds, with very little body fat—a strong, well-muscled athlete. Rowing for the University of Pennsylvania and on several national teams, including the 1980 Olympic team, had made him hard and tough and instilled in him a self-confidence that I passionately envied. He said little in the way of small talk, and I’ve been with him for hours when he didn’t say a word.
Two or three times a day his eyes narrowed down, and he displayed a lightning-quick temper. In rowing we called these characters “heaters,” and Bruce was a classic, supreme heater. Bruce heated up at least once a day, something everyone dreaded, though we knew his outbursts occurred for only one reason: more than anyone, he sought perfection in all our crew maneuvers, and he settled for nothing less. Bruce also publicly acknowledged, loud and clear and in front of everyone, a job well done. The magnitude of the job was unimportant: if you did something well, remembered a new technique, or simply kept your head in a dangerous situation, Bruce pointed it out. He complimented you in a sincere, straightforward manner that made you feel so good you couldn’t wait for it to happen again.
Bruce’s nickname in the yachting world was Sheik, and everyone called him Sheik Bruce or Sheik Epke or just plain Sheik. He had acquired that nickname during the summer of 1983 when he was a grinder on the America’s Cup hopeful Defender. In some obscure movie every character in a little band of pirates had the title Sheik dropped in front of his regular name, so they called each other Sheik Gary or Sheik Charlie—the head of this band of pirates was named Sheik Bruce. Being a natural leader and possessing sheik-like nobility, Bruce was given this nickname with universal acceptance. He had now moved up a notch on the ladder of crew success to the rank of sewerman on the USA. “I’m in charge of everything that goes on below decks,” he told me, “in the sewer.”
Bruce’s love—his passion—was classical music. We would sit in the Sheik-van in a distant corner of the St. Francis parking lot and listen to Gustav Mahler’s First Symphony, the Titan. I could see the windsurfers ripping the water in front of Crissy Field, but Sheik had his eyes closed—better to hear the music. Mahler was talking to him now, real intensely and only to him. Bruce had the music turned up so stinking loud, his face all contorted as the good part drew near. He reveled in the music like no one I’ve ever seen. And if it wasn’t enough, he rewound the tape and played the good part again: “Now listen,” he said every time. “Listen to the horns—hear it? Listen again— this is it, now listen. Hear it? Hear those horns?” He would roll in his seat a few seconds and pull his knees up to his chest—completely mad with happiness.