Friday, December 18, 2009

Morning Light -- A Tribute to Roy Disney

Pure coincidence led me to watch this documentary tonight -- it popped up on Netflix yesterday and I added it to my queue.  Until the film began and the credits rolled, I had no idea Roy Disney was behind it.  I also didn't know that he was a sailboat racer and that he'd won the TransPac twice. The film had caught my attention because of my own ancient history in sailboat racing, and my own history with this race.

What the man did was wonderful.  He took a boat -- a good boat -- and handed it over to a bunch of youngsters with varying amounts of sailing experience and no ocean racing experience, and let them race it 2225 miles from Los Angeles to Honolulu.

The boat is what in my time we would have called a 'sled' -- an ultralight, ultrafast, wide, flat racing machine.  From the type of the boat -- a TP52 -- I'm guessing it was designed specifically for the TransPac.  Whatever, it was a competitive boat, no slouch.  The crew were all young people, mostly 21-22 seemingly drawn from various college campuses around this country plus Australia.  They were raw.  Disney brought a bunch of them to Los Angeles for trials, where a smaller group was selected for several months of training in Hawaii.  He gave them coaches, put them through lots of safety trials, and basically honed them for the race.  Incredibly, this bunch went from raw slouches to seasoned sailors by the time the race began off Long Beach in 2007.

Not surprisingly (it is Disney, after all) the boat was equipped with lots of cameras and microphones and apparently, a chase boat for long shots (and probably safety).  For most of the trip, they were alone in the vast Pacific.  Then the only other boat like theirs appeared from the rear and stayed with them for several days, with the lead changing between the two.  The difference is that the other boat was brand new and crewed by professional sailors, not a rag-tag team of newbies.  In the end, the other boat finished first in class, but not all that far ahead.

"My" TransPac was 1971, when my friend Jim sailed his 33 foot Sandpiper (shown here on San Francisco Bay) in the race.  She was the smallest boat in the race and didn't win by any means, but she also didn't disgrace herself.  I flew down for the start, helped with the loading and packing of supplies, then went out on the press boat for the actual start (I was a legitimate member of the sailing press at the time).  After talking to a couple of guys for awhile, after the race started one of them looked at me and said 'can you say all that into a microphone?'.  I said yes, I supposed I could, so we did an interview of sorts and I told them all about Sandpiper and other things I knew about the race.  They were from one of the big all-news radio stations in LA, and as I drove a crew member's car back north I picked up pieces of the interview scattered over a couple of hours until I lost them.

A week or so later I was on an airplane headed to Honolulu.  United had promoted a 'TransPac' flight, for family members.  Once we reached the part of the Pacific where the boats were, the stewardesses rounded us all up and took us into first class, poured us some bubbly and one by one, radio contact was made with each boat and we had a chance to talk to our loved ones.  That was super. 

Each boat is assigned a local host/hostess, and when I landed in Honolulu I was met by Sandpiper's hosts with the words "we've got to hurry, Passage is about to finish off Diamond Head and we're going to sail out to watch".  We made a quick stop at my hotel so I could change clothes, and almost before I even knew I was in Hawaii, I found myself on a sailboat slicing through balmy waters in bright sunshine -- not what I was used to on San Francisco Bay!

Windward Passage (shown here on San Francisco Bay) finished first overall that year, and I can't even begin to go into the parties that began that evening and lasted for days, as each boat came in.  Suffice it to say that it was quite an experience for me and I loved every minute of it. After that first night, I spent most of my days on Blackfin, owned by Ken DeMeuse of San Francisco, who finished second overall.

But back to Morning Light.  Disney gave those kids something they will never forget, a life-changing experience that will stay with them throughout their years on this earth.  Granted, he got a documentary out of it, but I doubt if it made enough money to pay the production costs so I think it's safe to say that he did it for the right reasons.  After watching this, I have a whole new level of respect for the man.  Almost anybody can produce movies, especially if your name is Disney.  Not everybody who has the ability to do something like this for other people does it, however.

Fair winds, Roy.

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