Wayback Wednesday

We have a hunch that it might rain big time this winter, which could mean a flooding of the creek next to the Latitude 38 office in Mill Valley. The area floods about every 15 years. Since it’s a real pain to clear out an office full of wet stuff as opposed to dry stuff, we ordered a dumpster and have been throwing away all non-essential stuff. In the process, we’ve come across some old gems that we’d tucked away and forgotten.

Our favorite find so far? The accompanying photos of Latitude’s Ocean 71 Big O sailing in one of the six Antigua Sailing Weeks that we did with her. Big O wasn’t the most competitive boat, but she was the most fun boat in fleets that often numbered more than 200. For the last three years we did Antigua, Big O was declared Party Boat of the Week by the legendary Joel ‘Voice of Antigua’ Byerly. Joel, it might be remembered, always raced with an all-girl crew, and their outfits consisted of nothing more than sandals, a thong and sunglasses. Those were the days.

We did our first Antigua Sailing Week in 1985 and our last one in 1996. Back then Antigua Sailing Weeks were real weeks — five days of racing and two lay days — like the St. Francis Big Boat Series used to be. Competing in week-long Antigua sailing weeks was a true enduro, because back in those days the heavy drinking and late-night partying never stopped. Our crew would straggle back to the boat at about 3 a.m. and have to be roused in earnest as the first gun was at bloody 9 a.m.

Back in those days a lot of boats discriminated against women crew. Not Big O. We’d take anyone who wanted to sail with us, and lots of them were women. Some were hot tamales, too. The last year we did Antigua three of our gals took the top three spots in the Wet T-Shirt Contest. Tania, the winner, was so picante that she won top honors without even taking her top off.

Fortunately, Tania was only the Wanderer’s ‘almost girlfriend’ for the week for two reasons. First, we’d just started going out with Doña de Mallorca but didn’t know her well enough to invite her along. Second, we later found out that Tania had lied about her age and was only 17, not 24 as she claimed. Her German boyfriend Ernest, who like everyone else couldn’t keep up with Tania, explained that he’d taken Tania from Panama. When he asked her mother if Tania could sail across the Atlantic with him, Tania’s mother said "No!” But she relented when Ernest lied and said he was gay.

Have you recently uncovered any ‘wayback gems’?