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“What? Are you kidding me? That never happens!”
Such was the response from a sailing buddy when I told him I was joining the Rio 100 crew for the 800-mile Newport to Cabo race.
His reaction was certainly justified. While I’ve sailed off and on my whole life, my racing experience is limited to some fun times I had on an old 39-foot R-Boat back in the 1970s. So how did I come to be a walk-on to Rio, a 100-foot super maxi and the favored monohull to win?
Hold that thought and let me start with three things you must know about racing on a rocket like this. First, there is a world of difference sailing with a professional crew. It’s akin to a high school football player suiting up and playing in an NFL game. Second, it’s off-the-charts exhilarating to be ripping through the dark of night at 24 knots. Third, you’re almost always nanoseconds away from a catastrophe.
Rio 100 is a custom Bakewell-White specifically designed to win downhill races like the Transpac, Pacific Cup, and Newport to Cabo. It set the record for the Pacific Cup in 2016, won the prestigious Transpac Barn Door first to finish in 2015 despite breaking one of its rudders early on, won it again in 2017, and won the Merlin trophy in 2019.
The crew nicknames her “the aircraft carrier” for good reason. So beamy is the aft deck you could probably land a Harrier jet there. At 145 feet tall, the mast towers over anything in the harbor. Indeed, when bowman Ben Bardwell gets hoisted to the top to check things out, you can lose him in the fog. The main is so large it takes six guys on the grinders to raise it.
Because Rio 100 will often run two jibs plus a kite or reaching jib—plus the main, of course, and running backstays—there is a complicated plethora of lines on deck at most times. After five days of practice and three days of racing, I still only had a rudimentary idea of which sheet and line did what. Belowdecks, you can see straight down 100 feet from bow to stern. Aft of the galley I counted 14 pipe berths, but it was always dark—almost pitch black—and I may have missed some.
Surprisingly, the boat has a commercial kitchen-sized grill. While most maxi crews get a pouch of freeze-dried mystery and a cup of boiling water, we ate well on Rio 100. One night the crew even dined on grilled rib eyes…
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