Outdoors: Sailing/Boating

Block Island Race Week is a biathlon event for yachtsmen on the East Coast and beyond: It offers some of the best competitive sailing in the nation paired with endurance partying.

Decision, of New Orleans, left, jockeys for position with T-Squared, of Middletown, for a mark in the IRC Super Zero division on Block Island Sound during Race Week on Tuesday.

The Providence Journal / Gretchen Ertl

It is an elite affair that ends today, having drawn more than 2,000 sailors to the shore of picturesque Great Salt Pond this week. They were hedge-fund managers, media giants, and yacht workers who gathered nightly under a big white tent overlooking bobbing masts to trade war stories and drink. They did both with abundance.

“In general, we work hard and play hard,” said Tony Quinn, part of the crew on Xhibition, a yacht out of Dedham, Mass. “We party as hard as we sail.”

Quinn, a Londoner now living in Newport, works for Gryphonsolo, an offshore sailor’s campaign to sail around the world alone. He was halfway through his fourth rum cocktail Tuesday night, plastic cups stacking up in his hand.

Premier racers and amateurs, young and old, the sailors made a handsome crowd marked by bronze skin and pale raccoon eyes from sunglasses. Most wore shorts, flip-flops, and sailing vests. And everyone wanted to win.

“Out on the racecourse, you’re enemies, but everyone’s a gentleman,” said Julia Flemma, of Westport, Conn., part of Cabady’s crew. “But when you get off the racecourse, you’re friends — if you like them.”

The sailors spend most of their weekdays two miles out on Block Island Sound. Their evenings begin with a two-hour, open bar party hosted by big-name sponsors such as Rolex, Heineken, Lewmar Marine, Mount Gay Rum and Yellow Tail wine.

The decibels rise to a roar as they talk technique and watch footage of the day’s race. Photographic images of the sailors in action are beamed onto the tent ceiling. An awards ceremony closes out the celebration at 8 p.m.

“We do a lot of partying,” said Ben Poucher, 24, of Charleston, S.C., one of the younger and more exuberant racers from Bandit’s crew. “We go to the tent; go to dinner; go out; get up and do it all over again.”

A hangover, he said, enhances performance.

The Storm Trysail Club held its first Block Island Race Week in 1965, attracting 175 boats and 1,200 sailors. It was modeled after Cowes Week, the world’s largest and longest running regatta, which draws Britain’s finest yachtsmen for a week of competition and revelry.

An invitation-only club known for its legacy of sailing adventure on challenging seas and love of libations, Storm Trysail organizes race week on alternating years with the Newport to Bermuda Race. Other sponsors put on the event in the off-years. Through the years it has drawn corporate attention, including this year’s presenter, Rolex. Proceeds from a raffle drawing for prizes that included a Rolex watch and $500 Vineyard Vines gift certificate will benefit island organizations such as the rescue squad, early learning center and North Light.

Jim Bishop, vice commodore of Storm Trysail, has lost track of how many Race Weeks he’s attended. Part of the draw, he says, is the island’s intimacy and few distractions.

“People aren’t playing golf in the morning and racing in the afternoon,” he said. Many boat owners rent houses along some of the island’s windy dirt roads, with some hiring chefs to cook fresh tuna, puttanesca and other delicacies,

Bishop, who stays in a converted 1928 work boat, races his J/44, Gold Digger, out of Jamestown in the summer; Rye, N.Y. in the spring and fall; and West Palm Beach, Fla., in the winter.

“Racing is like playing three-dimensional chess. It’s about the wind, the tide, the crew, the competitors,” said Bishop, 74, who owns Caithness Energy, a power company in California. “I don’t think anybody’s figured it out.”

His own partying is slowing down, he says, but he is one of the few judging by the numbers. Nightly, the crowd plowed through 50 cases of Mount Gay Rum, 50 cases of water and 8 kegs of beer not to mention wine and vodka, said club commodore John Fisher, of Darien, Conn.

A total of 183 boats paid $550 to $900 to race in dozens of classes across the week. They ranged in value from an estimated $30,000 to upward of $1.5 million. One of the stars — the 66-foot Blue Yankee — was built specifically to outpace its competitors under a new handicapping rule. It was leading through the early part of the week.

Another beauty was Devocean, with an incredibly lightweight 45-foot sloop with a teak deck, owned by Stephen De Voe, a co-owner of the Jamestown Boatyard. It was one of three such boats in the country.

“You want a race where you can see your competition,” said De Voe, of Stamford, Conn. “You want the lead to change. [On Block Island] the lead is always changing.”

Wind permitting, the sailors fit in two races around inflatable buoys, maneuvering the hulking vessels to hug the bright markers and hopefully edging their competition out. Slight variations in how they handle their craft can be deciding.

Tuesday was dedicated to the around-the-island race, a competition that sends boats past the island’s towering bluffs and historic lighthouses. With light winds and vexing currents, many of the boats clumped together at the island’s southern and northern points. Though the congestion made a stunning array of colorful sails along the skyline, the tight quarters led to seven protests. The final results were not posted until Wednesday — the first delay in more than three decades, race organizers said.

After racing in Wednesday’s foggy, stormy conditions, Andy Fisher rewarded the crew of Bandit with ice cold Heinekens as they discussed the day’s performance, detailing such intricacies as how they took up slack and handled sails. A cowboy flag flew above as the crew wore black T-shirts, with Sail Fast or Die on their backs, and matching gray vests.

“It’s not over,” said Fisher, of Stamford, who lost his left arm six years ago in a motorcycle accident, thus his boat’s name. “There plenty of racing left.”

Not long after the boats docked around 4 p.m., The Oar restaurant overflowed with sailors eager for frozen mudslides and dark n’ stormies, a concoction of Goslings rum and ginger beer that the bar serves this one week each year. Throughout the week, Mount Gay girls circulated at local bars with trays of free rum drinks.

“They’re, um, savage,” said Magdalena Pjotrawska, a waitress at The Oar. “They don’t eat anything; they only drink.”

An hour later, many of the sailors lined up to get into the tent as Bob Marley’s “Waiting in Vain” blared. And so the cycle continued.

kmulvane@projo.com