Northshore Magazine

150 the crew for being slow—and sit on the high side, dangling your legs over the side and leaning over those flimsy-looking lifelines. This is called hiking, which is dumb because you're on a boat. No sooner will you have sat down than you'll have to hike over to the other side again. Then all the boats magically converge at an orange inflatable balloon, where you find the boats you thought were last are now in front of you, the boats you thought were first are now somewhere behind you, and the guy steering your boat is yelling something about overlaps at the guy steering the boat that's trying to overtake you. Then there's more yelling as you turn around the orange balloon and someone says something about jiving and then the mainsail crashes across the boat so fast it parts your hair and you get yelled at again. After a bewildering hour or so, someone on a flag-bedecked powerboat fires a cannon at you and then, like werewolves at sunup, your shipmates transform into normal, engaging human beings, laughing, joking, pressing a cold beer into your hand and asking you how you enjoyed your first race. Being a polite sort of person, you bite back the first reply that comes into your mind. Actually, sailboat racing is a hell of a lot of fun, at any level, once you know what's going on. There's immense satisfaction to be had from working as a team to outwit and out-sail a wily opponent. But there's no question that serious racing is not for everyone. Beer can racing, on the other hand, is, despite the name, a game the whole family can play. It's sailboat racing lite, the one race of the week where no one really cares who wins or loses. Whereas a serious regatta is governed by The Racing Rules of Sailing, a deceptively slim volume that is encoded into every good racing skipper's DNA but should be marketed to everyone else as an insomnia cure, your typical beer can race is ruled by one overriding imperative: It must be fun. The story goes that beer can racing got its name in the early days of casual racing, when sailors who didn't know the rules or the course just followed the trail of empty beer cans left by the leading boats. (There's none of that now, of course—like good sailors, we dump our empties in the recycling bin at the yacht club after the race.) Most—not all—beer can racing is held midweek, both to leave weekends free for serious racing and to bridge that yawning no-sailing gap between Sunday evening and Saturday morning. Some clubs run them on Tuesday evenings, some on Thursdays, and those contrarians on the West Coast favor Friday nights for some reason, but to my way of thinking, nothing beats a Wednesday night beer can race. There is something about leaving work early to go boat racing that just never gets old. Once out on the water in the matchless golden glow of a New England summer evening, you can soak up the atmosphere of a beer can race as well as the contents of the can. The crews on the boats around you are there for the same reason: to have a relaxing evening's sailing spiced up with a taste of low-key competition. You'll see people from age eight to, well, the other side of 80, families, friends, kids, and grandkids; all are welcome. You'll see lucky nonsailors have their first taste of a sailboat race. You'll see boats you never thought would make the start line of a race. What you won't see are squinty-eyed gunfighter glares, protests, or any of the various nefarious tricks boat racers use to gain an advantage over the competition. In that sense beer can racing is the best of sailboat racing, an open-to-all celebration of the simple joys of life on the water. Well-known Californian sailor and writer Rob Moore's Ten Commandments of Beercan Racing serves as a kind of gospel for the midweek crowd. Among them: Thou shalt not take anything other than safety too seriously; thou shalt not run out of beer; thou shalt bring thy spouse, kids, friends, and whoever else wants to go. And, lastly, thou shalt not worry; thou shalt be happy. Amen to that. ● n NB_KJ_NS July 14 FESailing.indd 150 5/9/14 10:42 AM

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