I worked for Baxter and Cicero Sail makers for two summers while I was in college. It was a great time and I got to get involved in the southern California racing scene. At the time the we did most of our racing on a Santana 35 that was jointly owned by Saint Cicero and a wealthy lawyer. For the record, I want to stress the part about the lawyer being wealthy. Every time we sailed out of Newport Harbor, the lawyer’s trophy wife would be standing on the balcony of their home waving at us, and that home just happened to be the house on the point of Newport Island.
The Santana 35 was designed to race in southern California. The prevailing conditions were winds less than 12 knots and a three to four foot ground swell. Since you would be spending half your time sailing uphill, the boat needed power. For the downwind legs you wanted low wetted surface. This combination was the Santana35. It was a 35 foot boat with an unusually large fore triangle to allow carrying a double head rig to windward and really big chutes downwind. Since sailing is strong winds was not a common occurrence, there was only enough keel to help with steering. As I remember, the keel only protruded two feet from the bottom of the hull.
I grew to love the double head rig for starts. The drill called for shutting down the engine with just over five minutes to go until the start and hoisting the jib top. With the high clew you still had good visibility of the boats lining up for the start. The stay sail didn’t go up until less than 30 seconds to go. The downside to any sail plan in those conditions is that you never stopped adjusting (power for up hill and pointing for down hill).
Probably the most memorable day was a simple race up and back down the coast. As you headed north, the trick was to stay as close to the beach as you could to avoid the southerly flowing current just off shore. It was not uncommon to have the life guards hailing us to get out of the surfers. Then there were a couple of fishing piers that extended into the current. We always had one person on “hook duty” when we rounded the piers. I never saw it, but they claimed the fishermen would get angry at time and cast into the cockpit. After sailing upwind for a couple of hours, it was time to put up the chute and head home.
On the day in question we had a new crew member on board. We asked him what jobs he was comfortable with. The answer was a vague “anything”. With no idea, we assigned him the spinnaker sheet for the set. The head sails and main were critical to letting the boat turn (remember the almost nonexistent keel). The guy was critical to staying off the head stay and not filling too soon. Well, there is only one way you can screw up the sheet. The chute filled before the boat was turned far enough down wind and rapidly started over powering the rudder. We all yelled for him to “LET OUT THE SHEET”. His brain decided that letting out two or three feet of sheet would be good. We had another round of yelling and another two feet got eased. By this time, it made no difference as the rudder left the water. This was the first time I had actually been hanging onto a life line stanchion and dangling across the cockpit. We had to run the guy to get the boat under control, so we spent the next ten minutes rigging for a new set.
The best part of the day was about thirty minutes later when the sailing gods got even with our new crew. He announced that he needed to use the head. The owner asked if he knew how. The reply was that it was the same model as on his dad’s boat. About ten minutes alter he emerged from below dripping wet. He announced that the head had exploded. The owner instantly asked him if he had opened to exhaust thru hull fitting, with an answer of “no”. It seems he had been pressurizing the flexible exhaust hose until it burst. The owner knew to ask this question, because it had happened before. The previous explosion happened to the owners wife at Catalina when she was in her evening dress and getting ready to go ashore for a party.
Now that the books were balanced we told him where the cleaning supplies were, and left him to his task.