In the "Sailors confess" series, we confess our stupidest sailing mistakes. But we are also looking forward to your confession. Send us your text, if possible with pictures, to mail@yacht.dekeyword "sailor's confession". If desired, publication will be anonymised.
During our Atlantic tour, my husband Johannes was given the opportunity to model for an American fashion brand in the USA. The manufacturer of preppy clothing wanted to depict authentic sailors and athletes in its upcoming catalogue. We got in touch with a well-known American sailing couple who had already been booked for this campaign. They were looking for a smartly dressed, experienced single-handed sailor. Before our trip together, Johannes had made a name for himself as just such a sailor. In other words, as a single-handed sailor. The shoot was to take place in Miami and we were conveniently in the area anyway. Everything fell into place.
Photo shoot in my living room
The company had booked us and our boat "Maverick too", a Contest 33, into an expensive but rather shabby marina. Our boat was also to be the protagonist and even ended up gracing the catalogue cover. On the day of the shoot, our salon quickly turned into a fitting room: between logbooks and our belongings, Johannes' hair was styled, shirts were sandpapered to make them look used, and things on my husband's body were pushed back and forth in such a way that he sometimes got wide-eyed with shame.
After a few adjustments below deck, we cast off and circled the marina. I was at the helm because Johannes had to pretend to dive for our anchor. We dropped the anchor to just below the waterline and Johannes jumped again and again into the brackish and oily harbour water of the Port of Miami. The photographer was also in the water with a giant floating ring and his camera, and his assistant tried to keep him in the best possible position. Not so easy, as the marina was located directly on the inlet from the Atlantic into the city. As a result, there was a lot of current at this point, not to mention the swell from the traffic. I myself had quite a bit of trouble keeping our boat on the spot, always afraid of sailing over the photographer in the water, drifting too close to the pier or getting in the way of a passing motorboat.
Known territory on the Atlantic
I was accordingly relieved when I was due to go out onto the Atlantic for the last shot at sunset. Familiar territory. Motor sailing there, I should simply follow my course. Easy. Johannes was placed in a soft purple hammock on our foredeck with a beer. So a completely normal situation at the end of a long day's sailing for a single-handed sailor.
This time, the photographer shot his pictures from on board a specially chartered powerboat. Sitting next to the stylist in the cockpit with me was a woman we called the "nipple guard". Her job consisted solely of pushing Johannes' shirt over the parts of his body that would otherwise have called the moral guardians to the scene in the USA. A hopeless endeavour on a sailing boat, where everything is at the mercy of the wind in terms of styling and a shirt unbuttoned to the navel certainly is. Even then, I didn't understand what the third person's job was. In any case, all three of them had never been on a sailing boat before and were therefore pretty excited. Two of them promptly got seasick straight after casting off. I tried to reassure them that it would certainly get better out there once we had left the choppy passage of the inlet behind us. But the situation made me more and more nervous the further out we went. The photo boat had shot ahead and was waiting for us off the coast. Showtime.
In the past, I had already been on a number of photo shoots where pictures of yachts were taken. In his role as YACHT editor, Johannes had taken me with him on business trips and to events and I had been able to experience live in the cockpit how it works. It goes like this: the boat to be photographed steers its course, the photo boat from which the pictures are taken dances around, sets off and stops. Close to the bow, close in the wake, always looking for the best perspective. And in the course of our journey, we also took pictures of our own boat under sail from time to time. To do this, one of us had to sail the "Maverick too" and the other had to perform daring manoeuvres with the camera in the dinghy. So here too: familiar territory.
The crash
Coast off Miami. A Contest ploughs stubbornly on its course through the Atlantic. A motorboat circles it, again and again. Photos are taken. Nipples covered. Strangling noises from the port side, a low whine. The motorboat stops in front of the bow. Photos are taken. The Contest holds course. The motorboat remains in front of the bow. The Contest holds course. The motorboat stands in front of the bow. The Contest enters the motorboat.
Until the crashing and jerking, it didn't even occur to me that I could have changed course. Of course, I realised that it was going to be "pretty close now". However, I firmly believed that the photographer wanted to seize the very last moment, that the three outboard motors on the photo boat would surely roar loudly at any second and that the boat would sprint to safety.
I remember shocked faces everywhere: the very young skipper of the photo boat, who had only borrowed the boat, the photographer and his assistant, my seasick passengers, who probably thought they were at the end of their lives and wondered how they could ever have entrusted themselves to such a dilettante, my husband, who had been thrown out of his hammock by the impact. And the huge hole that our massive pulpit had torn in the delicate side of the powerboat. The oil slick that was spreading. Shouts that we had to get to the marina quickly before the boat sank. And the awkward silence on board and the terrible feeling of embarrassment on the long, very long journey back to the city.
