In May 2018, I was invited to do a photo exhibition of my sailing photos by Dorothy Guerrero, the proprietor of a local gallery. I was so excited. Like any shootist, I keep a file of favorites. But, at $100+ per print to get a mounted canvas print for showing, I wasn't going to print the whole 200+ image file... so, the choices came hard.
I'd only been shooting in St.Aug for 3 years, so the majority of my best of file was still from MD at that point. I wanted to do justice to MD too. But of course, I was in St.Aug and the audience would want to see their boats. Tough choices.
Ada Fears Inbound. Ada Fears entering Chance Harbor MD for the annual Labor Day Skipjack Races, 2011. For me, this is life.
To give you a little scale of the image, if you look on the horizon on the right side of the image, you can just see the structure of Shark Fin Shoal light. Shark Fin Shoal Light is a light that sits on a huge "spider" and stands about 50' high. It measures about 4 miles from where the shot was taken.
For those of you not familiar, Ada Fears is a Skipjack. Skipjacks are/were working sailboats that harvested the Chesapeake oysters under sail. They were the last working sailing fleet in America. Until the mid 70s (I think) when they were allowed to use their push boats under power to harvest, two days/week. Which essentially killed the sail only days, because sailing these beasts is hard-ass work. And they could make as much money in one day under power as they could the rest of the week under sail.
Most of the remaining Skipjacks have been designated Historic and are now operated under foundations. But, there is still tremendous competition between the sailors of these grand old dames. Hence a plethora of annual Skipjack races around the bay, every year. My favorite trip was the trip to Deal Island for the annual Skipjack races at Chance harbor.
In the 20 years I sailed my own boat on the Chesapeake, I only missed Labor Day weekend in Chance Harbor twice. Once for my father in law's funeral. The second time, because I had been in Wisconsin on a job and my boat had languished for nearly a year and wasn't ready to make the trip.
Doing Battle. This was my last Wild Goose Chase in MD. The Wild Goose Chase, used to be sponsored by the Wild Goose Brewery, hence the name. But, even after they stopped supporting the race the name was kept, because as a reverse PHRF race, the name was uniquely appropriate.
Basically all the boats have a rating, which allows some semblance of equalizing factors for the differing performance of various boats. In a reverse PHRF race, instead of everyone starting at the same time and then factoring in the times after the race is over. The starts are staggered so that theoretically, all the boats should finish at the same time.
In this case, the trailing boat you see is Iif, a Cataline 34 and as the slowest boat in the race, was the first boat to start. The lead boat is a J24, one of the fastest boats in the fleet. Sadly, I don't remember the yellow boat's make. If someone can identify it, please advise. But the J and the Yellow boat are raced by father and son respectively.
It's a 16 mile race down the Choptank river and back to Cambridge. I was acting as Race Committee in my own Bristol 40. These are the first three boats to finish and from the time they came back in sight until a few moments before this image was taken, Iif was still in the lead. The slow tension of the drama was excruciating as my friend Bruce Franz and I watched the two faster boats slowly overtake Iif and set up for their final tack to the finish. Huge Kudos to Greig and Linda Mitchell for maintaining their lead for nearly 16 miles.
My favorite sailing sunset shot of all time. This is Epicure, the same J24 in the image above. The golden hour glow on the sails produces color tones that few people fail to exclaim when they see the print in its full glory.
Over the years, I've had several sailors ask me to duplicate that shot with their own boat. I have tried many times and failed.
Racing the Storm. My last shot from Cambridge. The lead boat is Adventure Kwest, owned by my friends Paul and Kristin West. I call it racing the storm, because that's not a sunset per se, it's an approaching storm near sunset. We were literally racing, trying to finish the race before the storm arrived. It totally missed us, which was a relief. But, that's not the story.
The story comes after Paul suggested I enter the photo in a national sunset sailing photo contest sponsored by a sailing magazine. So, I did. The rules were, photos had to be out on boats, sailing at sunset. And I got Honorable Mention! I was pretty proud of that and my photo, so the photos that beat me out for placing must have been pretty awesome photography, right? Not so much.
I got beat out by...
- A luscious lovely young lady in a bikini on the bow at sunset.
- A puppy on the bow at sunset.
- A toddler and a puppy on the bow at sunset...
And they weren't even particularly good sunsets! I didn't stand a friggin chance. Can't win against bikinis, puppies or kids. Known fact.
The good news is, that the voting was done by readership, but I won "Editor's Choice" award. So, at least there is some hope that the editors of the sailing magazine in question are in fact actual sailors. 👀
Rockstar was for the longest time, the fastest boat in our St. Augustine fleet. Also one of the prettiest and most fun to shoot. Aside from the drama of the shot, I love this photo because of the spray. When I look at this photo, I imagine Rockstar is going so fast, it is beginning to distort as the Enterprise does, just as it goes in to light speed mode.
I'm told the owner of the boat does not particularly like this photo, because of the spray. Because he knows that spray is not coming from his boat. If it were, that would mean he would have crud on his bottom creating the spray. Slowing him down.
Instead, he's going so fast that my little runabout is starting to come up on a plane as my friend Dave tries to get me in the perfect position for this shot... The spray is from my little red boat.
Three of my favorite St. Aug boats battling it out. Kotchka in the foreground is a Hinckley of approximately the same size as my Bristol. I was so looking forward to racing her, but never got the chance. Olive Oyle, one of the prettiest boats ever and hidden behind Kotchka is Girl Dog another expertly sailed boat from our fleet. Not often you catch these guys together in such a moment of drama.
This is a magnificent capture. Two sister ships battling it out at the mark, during race week. Aside from the drama and beauty of the boats and the composition, the best part of the image is unseen. The lead boat owner was so pleased, partially because it is usually their boat sucking the wake of the blue boat, while racing. Bonus!
The
magic of watching the little red headed boy catch some spray and for an
instant, you think / wish it were your own little red headed boy out
there. (My two younger kids never sailed... sigh)
Hiking out so far, it looks like he's scrubbing the bottom under way. This guy was truly an acrobat. I watched him for that entire tack as he came toward me, leaning back ever further as the wind built with his speed. He kept reaching out with his hand, hoping for some support and I kept waiting for him to "scrub the bottom." This was the shot I was waiting for.
As a photographer, I like to get the people in action. In sailing, there's not so much action. Sailing has often been described as long periods of boredom interrupted by sheer terror. It happens a little faster in dinghy sailing, but the concept is the same.
All the action happens at the marks. The sailors are actively working, mistakes are made. Things happen. But, once in a while, it's important to catch as many boats as you can in the image, simply to remind ourselves it is a race and a lot is going on.
This is my favorite youth sailing pic of all time. Because of course, it has a story.
These two plucky kids (the wind was blowing 20kts it was a rough day out there) had just rounded the downwind mark. And what they do after rounding is harden up (sail close to the wind) and build some speed before gauging the lay line for the next tack. As you can see, the young lady is hiked way out, resolute and fierce. The young man, looks like he could crap his pants, any minute.
Well, it turns out, that the young lady in question, is the club's best sailor. And she has been paired with a Spanish exchange student, who as it happens is staying with the club coach and this is his first regatta. In 20 kt winds, no less. LOL Poor guy.
The good news is, he's in college in Jax now, on their sailing team. So, apparently he survived and actually enjoyed himself.
Sunset over the St. Johns River. I was in town, just out and about, getting out of the house. As someone who spent the last 12 years working from home, who knew I'd ever celebrate just getting out of the house. I saw a great sunset developing and raced my ass out to the St. Johns (25 miles) to capture this amazing image.
I knew about the dock and the hanging moss, because it was the dock of a house I had looked at, that was for sale. Sadly, the house sold, but not to me...
So, those were the 12 shots I selected for my exhibition and why. Thank you Dorothy and Tucker for the opportunity to exhibit. It was an honor and a privilege.
--Much Love.
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