S.J. CAHN -- Editor’s Notebook

This might come as a shock, but there’s no rush in the Daily Pilot

newsroom to cover today’s Newport to Ensenada International Yacht Race

live and firsthand.

Sure, it sounds like an adventurous assignment: 15 or so hours

skimming the surface of the seas aboard a high-speed yacht, taking down

tales of incredible adventures and collecting a few new ones along the

way.

The story would almost write itself.

“At midnight, everything stopped. The wind. The boat. The party.

“For 15 minutes of eerie calm, we didn’t know if we’d make it any

farther (and a few who’d had a couple too many Bloody Marys didn’t care).

Then, suddenly, there was a snap. Then quiet. And another crack, followed

by a staccato as the sails grabbed onto the wind, and we were off.”

This would be fun, in its purest and simplest form, right?

I’m happy to report that my staff seems to know better.

With those winds -- which every sailor in today’s race is praying will

stay strong and steady -- come waves. And with waves comes the rolling of

those magnificent, sleek, built-for-nothing-but-pure-speed boats.

And we all know what comes with that. Heck, last year we had a

photographer barely make it off the boat that toured the harbor during

the start.

They’re certainly getting no argument from me. Oh no. I know all to

well what a little rough water can do.

It was the summer of 1985, and my family was in England on holiday.

More precisely, we were on the shores of England getting ready for a boat

trip across the Irish Sea to visit my mom’s homeland.

It was supposed to be fun. Better than the quick up-and-down flight

from Heathrow to Dublin.

Yeah, my folks still tell me that trip was supposed to be fun.

It wasn’t. Simply put, and I mean this in all sincerity, it was the

worst few hours any human has ever spent on the face of the earth.

A freak summer storm, the worst in memory, kicked up as we prepared to

leave. The winds didn’t howl, they bellowed. The rain didn’t fall, it

shot from the sky in wet, laser streams.

I counted -- in my delirious, brain-crunching skull -- the amount of

time that ferry boat dropped down the backside of those unnatural swells

as we slowly, oh so slowly, plowed our way to Ireland.

One 1,000. Two 1,000. Three 1,000. Four 1,000. Five 1,000. Six 1,000.

Seven 1,000. Eight 1,000.

And then we bottomed out, and up we went, and down we went.

Literally ad nauseum.

I don’t know how many people were on that boat -- hundreds, certainly

-- but I only saw a handful who at some point didn’t get sick. One of

them was my aunt, who has either a cast-iron stomach or the will power of

a Zen master.

She read. Right in the hull of that ship. As I sat on the deck,

drenched, sloppy, trying to keep everything inside me.

I got sick one last time after we were on land (not dry land with that

storm still in full force).

So, believe me, I am not about to push any of my reporters onto the

high seas. And as much as I’d like to write that dramatic race story, I’m

not going either.