Racing to Have a Good Time

In a Wednesday Tradition, Sailors Head for the Severn

It's 5 p.m. on a balmy evening, and the wooden dock of the Annapolis Yacht Club thumps under the steps of hundreds of Sperry Topsiders and sandals.

The docks are swarming with activity: Aboard more than a hundred boats, grizzled sailors are furling and unfurling their sails, reaching for halyards and backstays and popping open cold ones.

The Wednesday Night Races, Annapolis's homegrown summer sailing festival, are about to begin.

Since the 1950s, the town's sailing set has made its way to these docks most Wednesday evenings in summer to engage in a no-holds-barred contest for . . . well, a good time. In the last 50 years, the event has turned from a nearly rules-free seafaring social event into a well-recognized series of races that attract about 1,000 sailors from all over the Chesapeake Bay, manning 100 boats of myriad classes.

And here come the old-timers who link that past and this present: the ancient mariners aboard a boat called Bucentaur.

The 42-foot Beneteau cruiser, Jimmy Buffett music blaring, lands at the dock with a hearty thwack as the skipper, Jim Myers, tosses out a line to waiting hands.

"You want a beer?" he asks Fred Hecklinger, the oldest crew member, who has just strolled up. Hecklinger, 69, is a local legend as a boat designer. He attended his first Wednesday night race in 1960.

Myers, 59, has been sailing much of his life, and with a sailor's tan, dark hair and a superhero chin, he could pass for someone much younger. Other crew members trek aboard: Geoff Bridges, a cheerful New Zealander; Ross Glover, Chuck Newman and Ken Balenske, the muscular guys who will heave on the lines; veteran Jens Mathiesen, a Dane, who will help out where needed; and the two foredeck hands, Gretchen Krochman and Kate Myers.

The average age of the nine sailors aboard the Bucentaur today is 52, a figure dragged down considerably by the presence of Myers's daughter Kate, 20, a senior at Wake Forest University. Most of the crew has been racing on Wednesday nights since Kate was a child.

"Fifty percent of the battle here is getting out of the office without getting caught," says Glover, an Australian who, like Bridges and Mathiesen, has been drawn to Annapolis by the sailing scene.

After they shove off, a warm, southerly breeze, typical for this time of summer, carries the Bucentaur toward the marshaling area. In the distance is a forest of 120 sails, with crews scurrying over gently bobbing decks like industrious ants. The course will carry the boats in a roughly triangular circuit of the Severn River's mouth.

But there's trouble brewing. As the Bucentaur sprints toward the starting line with 30 seconds left, a threat suddenly looms from starboard. Another boat, the Freedom, is closing in, pinching the Bucentaur into the powerboat that marks the starting line. A collision is imminent.