What do you do when you run out of juice, and home is 20 miles away?

Sunday, August 5th, 2023, ~23:30 EDT: "Let's call it."

While it is decidedly uncharming to begin a story with the decision to give up, it was equally decided that everyone on board was completely over this race. We were drifting towards midnight on a sheet of black glass about a mile south of Seguin Island. Speed: 2kts. Finish line: nearly 20nm away. Perhaps this predicament would have been met with more zeal if the preceding daylit hours had not featured a heavy dose of similar, windless drifting. Perhaps if we had been sailing our actual racing boat, we would have been better equipped to coax more motion out of the vessel. However, the most pressing issue was that the US Women's National Team was set to play Sweden in the final match of World Cup group play at 05:00, and we were well on schedule to miss it. Apart from outright death and disaster, this was a pre-discussed nonnegotiable - unanimous grounds for abandoning the race.

Still, the unmistakable scent of failure was in the air as I retrieved the engine key. A heavy silence settled over the deck. Everyone stared at their feet. Non-negotiables notwithstanding, it was hard not to feel like losers who wanted to go home and watch TV. I bent down and slid the key into the ignition, half hoping that someone would pipe up with a sudden change of heart - half wondering if I should pipe up with a sudden change of heart. Instead I turned the key and listened to the starter kick, then sputter, then die.

And that's when I realized that the batteries were dead.

Now is probably a good time to explain why we were even racing my boat in the first place. I had been halfway across the Atlantic on a Passport 40 when Pat Dionne's Chicama ran aground and was condemned to a summer in the boat yard. It is very important and definitely relevant to this story that I had nothing to do with that crash (though I will allow the faint possibility that grief over my absence may have played a minor role). I returned from Portugal in July as the seventh member of a seasoned crew that had no boat to race.

This was when attention turned to my J/34c, Apollo. Though I had used this racer/cruiser exclusively for cruising, the previous owner had raced her. She had come with a spinnaker and a streamlined pit. It wasn't unthinkable that she could handle a lap up to Seguin. We had three weeks to gear her up, test the chute, and convince ourselves that the staggering added weight of a wood-paneled cabin interior wouldn't leave us dead in the water. When we arrived at the start line, we had flown the spinnaker exactly once, and I was covered in Benadryl cream after discovering that Tim Caven's Red Rudder did not have a Dan Buoy on board that we could borrow, but DID have a wasps' nest. Our goal was simple: beat one other boat, maybe.

Perhaps it is becoming clear how a detail like ensuring that our instruments were running on house batteries was foolishly overlooked. I surely don't have to explain the lead-balloon reception that this blunder evoked from my exhausted crew of soccer fans as we bobbed in the Atlantic at midnight. However, one thing was clear. The only TV we were worried about now was not being featured on the morning news. We needed to make this boat MOVE.

The most promising strategy was also the most demoralizing. With no engine, in open water, in the middle of the night, I pointed the boat away from land and went looking for better wind. After an hour-long push into the abyss, the telltales started to convincingly wiggle. I set a heading for Portland at a blistering 5.2kts.

The best part of this race is that the return leg is guided by the glow of the city. There is something comforting about pushing towards the single stretch of light across an otherwise invisible, black horizon. What is NOT comforting is the realization that your 04:00 upwind approach to Portland Headlight is going to be met with flagging wind and the bared teeth of an outgoing tide.

The early morning mechanics of the 2023 Monhegan/Seguin finish line should be entered into the annals of cruel and unusual punishments. We needed to cross a 100 yard stretch of water between the southern channel marker and the rocky beach of Ft. Williams State Park. The looming mainland was serving double duty: shielding the wind and blocking off a western approach. This meant that the only way in was from the east, across the ripping tide of the channel's narrowest point. The dawning sun was just bright enough to see the waves smashing dramatically into the lighthouse promontory in the wake of the finish line, where a wrecked sailboat would make for excellent Sunday photo fodder at one of the state's largest tourist attractions.

Our first attempt to cross the channel hit a max speed of 3.1kts and was aborted two-thirds of the way across. The tide had pushed us so far back and the wind was so light in the lee of the fort that we couldn't afford to dump any more speed into a tack without risking a rocky demise. We circled back to the tip of Cushing Island and plotted a more downhill approach. The question at hand was whether we'd be able to execute a similar bailout if we made it all the way to the finish mark, but didn't have the speed to round it. This is a fun time to remind yourself that we don't have an engine that we can turn on if the answer is no. So getting this second approach exactly right was VERY important.

We hit the channel for a second time at a shade broader than a beam reach, max speed 4.6kts. The finish mark inched closer and closer - to the mark, PAST the mark! "Ready to tack," I called out. "Coming about." I threw the helm across and watched our speed plunge as the bow passed through the wind and caught on a port tack. And then...

Nothing happened.

In my ten years of sailing I have never seen a boat move less than Apollo moved in those initial seconds. We were close enough to the finish mark to see each paint chip on the buoy, and yet individual tree trunks on the coastline stayed rooted in place between our port shrouds. Behind us, waves exploded against the rocks like the snapping jaws of some ferocious creature with a treat dangled in front of it. After 16 hours of racing, we were caught on a perfect treadmill of tide and wind, ONE boat length from the finish line. My soul left my body.

Finally, after an agonizing eternity, a tree slipped past our shroud. Then another. The boat inched forward. "WE'RE MOVING!" someone shouted.

We crossed the finish line at 05:50. It took another two hours after that to sail onto the Chicama mooring at Centerboard Yacht Club. As soon as the boat was secured, Elise pulled out her phone.

"Wait the soccer game is still on! It's down to penalty kicks!" she called out as I started pouring rum into glasses. The sound of the broadcast filled the cabin.

"Get out!" I exclaimed. "What's the scor-"

"Oh no. We just lost." She turned off the phone. Silence.

But at least there was plenty of rum, amirite?! It would be another hour before the Centerboard launch driver would clock into work and come rescue us. By that point the race was long since finished. We had come in 5th, miraculously beating out four other boats. The last thing I heard from the crew as we piled off Apollo was...

"We're doing this again next year, right?!"

editors note: in 2025 the RC moved the finish line out about 1NM from the headlands to help alleviate the dead zone near the finish.