Sailors Go With The Wind Northwest Crew Goes Up Against Top-Notch Skippers

Despite melting snow, the folks slaving over the lone vessel inside the Sail Northwest boat shop aren’t pining for summer.

Where they’re going - about as far from the Northwest as they can get without leaving the lower 48 - it’s hot and humid. Soon, they’ll sail southeast.

The sailboat’s five-person crew will head to Key West, Fla., this weekend to compete against top-notch skippers from around the world. They’re the only crew from the Northwest scheduled to compete in the Midwinters’ Regatta, save a group from Canada.

“They call them the rock stars of sailing,” crewman Ed Broberg says of the stiff competition the race draws.

He and crewmate Bryan Cordes have toiled over the team sailboat, the Boudicca, for six weeks now. It’s named after a Celtic warrior-queen who cleaned the clocks of marauding Romans in the first century A.D.

The crew stripped the vessel down and repainted it. They trimmed the mast by an inch. They flattened the edge of the rudder to reduce drag. They moved the keel forward and are still shaping it to match a laser-cut aluminum template designed by a Seattle engineer.

It still sits propped up in the shop, gleaming white, like an orca lying upside down.

Some days, the devout crew doesn’t let up until 2 a.m.

“We’re doing everything we can to try and optimize the boat,” says its owner, Brien Duncan.

All the 110 or so boats at the regatta will be the same, a model called the J-24. This year’s regatta marks the 20th anniversary of the race and the introduction of the J-24.

That’s what makes this race special, Broberg says.

“We’re trying to get all the boats equal, so what counts is the crew.”

The races begin Jan. 11. Cordes and Broberg are leaving this weekend to haul the 24-foot hull across the country. The rest of the crew - Duncan, Keith Grzelak and Cordes’ fiancee Kerry Harms - will join them at race time.

Duncan, an emergency room doctor, is footing the bill. Sail Northwest is supplying the sweat.

Everyone has the love.

Broberg, wearing a blue America’s Cup sweatshirt, says he took up sailing six years ago. The former ski instructor hasn’t looked back since.

“To get the wind to motor you around …” he starts, fumbling for the right words. “You think back to the days of Christopher Columbus. They had to water-down their sails so the wind wouldn’t blow through the canvas.”

Cordes, whose father owns Sail Northwest, has sailed since he was 2. When he talks about the sport, a grin practically wraps clean around his head.

During the summer, Broberg lives in his boat. Deer drink from Lake Coeur d’Alene as he watches from his breakfast table. “It’s phenomenal,” he says.

Cordes and his fiancee are planning to move into a boat before the winter’s up, snow or not.

In the summer, the crew races weekly. Crew members decided to enter the Midwinters’ Regatta just to see what they could do. If they finish somewhere in the middle, the crew says, they’ll be happy.

Crews will come from Australia, Sweden, Japan, Broberg says.

And Argentina, England, France, Duncan adds.

“Ex-America’s-Cup-type skippers,” says Broberg.

To win over new foreign friends, the crew plans to bring bottled, labeled samples of their own homebrew, Boudicca Beer. Motto: “Drink ‘till you keel over.”

They’ll all keep sailing until about that same time.

“It’s a life sport,” Broberg says. “It’s a sport you can do your whole life. Walter Cronkite still sails.”

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