Endurance: The Stuff of Winners & Finishers

0545 Day 4: I am equally hopeless and hopeful as I struggle to put on wet foulies for presumably the last time in the dark. It was the final day of the Caribbean 600, but I had this feeling that “it’s always darkest before dawn.”

I wanted this race to just be over already, as somehow each watch was worst than the last. And as I failed to even get out of the companionway before we had a little knock down, the main sheet dumped, the boom bouncing off the swell, and a wave crashed over the deck just for effect… I knew it definitely wasn’t over yet. But the boat and crew got themselves back together as if all was normal — because that is what it had become: normal.

Except in the occasional island wind shadow, we did not see under 20 knots for the entire race. Our first night of the Caribbean 600 I white-knuckled the tiller and surfed into the 20s with the Kickaboo Kite (A5) up in 30+ knots of wind for the 50 NM run to Nevis. After 5 round ups and an unmentionable near-death experience, being quite literally “on-edge” became a new normal. With each knockdown and surprise squall we endured, we were building up our endurance for the next one.

0830 Day 4: We had just gone through what was our worst, and later known as our last, big squall. Storm is a more appropriate word, as it sustained 40 knots with gusts of up to 48 for at least an hour. The dense rain pelted our faces and we could barely see the bow. We knew the sun had risen due to the time of day and the eery glow behind a cloud-filled sky, but we began to doubt if we’d ever see it again. It was a relentless race with wicked weather that just wasn’t giving up. 

Morgen popped open the hatch to see if we had survived the storm. Yes, we survived another storm, but I didn’t know if I could personally endure another more. I was fed up. Then he presented the choice: call it quits now and head home or do another loop of Antigua to finish this race.

This is the moment in the race where you curse RC for making us do an extra leg around Antigua. But this extra lap, and the inevitable beat to finish you know you’re going to suffer through, is what makes the Caribbean 600 course so great. Antigua beckons you home, but the sport demands you go the extra mile. It’s the final leg designed to break you; and it’s offshore racing at its finest.

There was nothing more that I wanted to do than end this merciless race. But when Morgen described that the boats around us were dropping out and the crew down below were okay if we followed suit, my reaction surprised me with its resoluteness.

I stared at him in disbelief that I was actually being given the option to quit. I didn’t hesitate for a second before saying: “F$&k no, I didn’t just go through all that sh#t to quit!” 

And I may have just been stubborn, but I wasn’t actually being stupid. We had just endured some pretty gnarly conditions and we turned out just fine. We almost saw 50 knots and got through it, and if that did ever come our way, we might actually be able to handle it. At that point, what was an extra 2 knots anyway?

Endurance, I’ve found out, is mostly mental muscle memory. It’s learning from previous mistakes and experiences, but not living in fear of them. Endurance is not giving into those voices that say quit, because you know you survived before and you can survive again. Endurance is mental and emotional strength triumphing over the physical limitations we set for ourselves.

Endurance is also a conscious choice. It’s a way of doing things. Endurance is a strategy that you commit to from the beginning. After our wicked kite run to Nevis, we made the decision to not gybe with the kite up — it was the middle of the night, the sea state was messy, my nerves were shot, and we had a lot more to lose with a botched gybe than a sail change. We sometimes made conservative sail plan decisions based upon our current and future conditions: of the weather, the boat and the crew. Our endurance strategy is the reason why we were among the half of the fleet that actually finished the 2018 Caribbean 600, and remarkably with the full sail wardrobe we started with.

Endurance is synonymous with offshore racing. Few other sports require you to compete 24/7 in extreme conditions — endurance is critical to not only performance, but survival, offshore.

So can you teach or practice endurance? Not exactly. But if you strive to push limits, to not allow yourself to give up, yet know when to throttle back, then you can condition yourself to endure, to finish — and ultimately — to win.