Back when ocean racing was a delight

by Craig Leweck, Scuttlebutt Sailing News
In the history of yacht racing, there are few moments when the sport has saved us from ourselves. Clever people keep making equipment better and more costly, and in the realm of offshore racing, less comfortable. Modern boats get to the destination faster, but are painfully wet and tiresome machines.

Keeping these boats light boosts performance, which has led to the removal of traditional galley equipment and proper meals. Freeze dried food is now the daily diet, eliminating more joy from the offshore adventure.

When Scuttlebutt asked if freeze-dried food be banned, Hall of Famer Bill Lee recalled the 1977 Transpac when his MERLIN set a new elapsed-time record of 8 days 11 hrs. 1 min. 45 sec. But it wasn’t the record he was remembering:

“In the good old days before electronic navigation and no refrigeration, Harvey Kilpatrick was our cook. All the meals, breakfast and dinner, were pre-cooked real food, super frozen, and on dry ice. Rations also included a couple of cases of beer. Each morning, we’d take the frozen dinner out, put it in the day cooler with some beer, and later in the day there was cold beer and thawed dinner ready to heat. Yes, real food and drink when ocean racing are such a delight.”

For Jack Walby, quality of offshore life has more to do with choices:

“For at least the past 20 years of my 30+ Chicago Mac Races, the boats I’ve been on has had ‘real food’. The entree is usually a frozen casserole of some kind and breakfast is pre-prepared sausage egg muffins. However, the beauty of the Mac race is only needing to worry about three days of food. As my father said many years ago, ‘If you can’t stand up in the head to take a piss and cook a turkey in the oven, it’s not Yacht racing'(key word: yacht).”