Focused on winning, these athletes have already exercised their creativity to design vessels that maximize their abilities.
By CURTIS KRUEGER
Published November 11, 2003
Skipper Karen Mitchell sits in the tacking transfer seat as the seat's inventor, Jorg Pawlik, makes adjustments on Friday. The two were preparing for the Paralympic sailing trials in St. Petersburg. Sailors launch from Demens Landing.
[Times photo: Willie J. Allen Jr.]
[Times photo: Willie J. Allen Jr.]
These specially designed prostheses belong to Paralympic sailor Roger Cleworth.
ST. PETERSBURG - After the skiing accident that broke his neck and made him a quadriplegic, Mike Strahle finished three months of rehabilitation and immediately fast-talked his skeptical friends into taking him sailing aboard his 16-foot Hobie Cat.
But lying flat on his back, staring at blue sky from the catamaran's trampoline, Strahle felt more like a passenger than a sailor. That day, he dreamed up a seat that would hold him upright, persuaded a guy at a muffler shop to start welding the design and later earned a patent for it.
This week Strahle is racing across Tampa Bay with other disabled athletes who have tapped their ingenuity for the same reason Strahle did: to sail better and faster.
The 20 sailors in St. Petersburg are battling for the right to represent the United States in the Paralympics, an international competition for disabled athletes that is affiliated with the Olympics and will be held in Athens, Greece, next year.
Look across the bay, and you may see Paul Callahan, a quadriplegic with a Harvard master of business administration degree, steering a Sonar sailboat with a crew of three. Callahan, 45, of Newport, R.I., uses a steering system fashioned from a bicycle crank by his crew mate Keith Burhans, 47, an advertising specialist from Rochester, N.Y., who lost both legs below the knees in a boating accident.
You will see other sailors hoisting themselves across special benches that enable them to switch sides in their sailboats, balancing out the weight as the sails fill with wind and the boat heels to one side.
But if you think you're seeing a big exercise in self-esteem, a love fest where everyone is crowned a winner because they had the courage to come and play, then you haven't looked closely enough.
These sailors want to win.
"This is about serious athletes competing against the best of the best," said Maureen McKinnon-Tucker, a mainsail trimmer on a three-person boat, which was third in the standings in the Sonar class as of this morning.
Three-person crews on five Sonar sailboats are battling fiercely for the top slot, which will earn them a trip to Athens. Three of the five are bunched at the top of the standings in a dogfight. "It will come down to the last race," said McKinnon-Tucker, 38, a floral designer from Marblehead, Mass., who became a paraplegic after falling off a 13-foot ocean retaining wall.
However it turns out, she said, "four teams leave here deeply disappointed."
The boats each have been rigged with two sails, a mainsail and a jib, but do not have a third sail called a spinnaker. Spinnakers require too much scrambling about the bow.
Five more sailors are racing solo in smaller boats in what is called the 2.4-meter class. The trials run through Friday.
The St. Petersburg Yacht Club is sponsoring the event at the St. Petersburg Sailing Center on Demens Landing, which has become a fixture in the disabled sailing world thanks to its long wheelchair ramps, floating docks and electric lifts that can place sailors right in their boats.
Paralympians at the Summer Games in Athens next year will compete in 20 sports, including wheelchair basketball, wheelchair fencing, archery, judo and powerlifting.
The sailors in St. Petersburg say one reason they love their sport is that it's so competitive. People who need an electric wheelchair on land can turn a sailboat as expertly as anyone else, especially with some of the modified tillers they use.
"Let's say it's really fun to beat people that have all their arms and legs," said Roger Cleworth, 43, a Web designer from Brandon who crews with Callahan and Burhans and lost both legs below the knee in a traffic accident. "They try real hard to catch back up."
Disabled sailors regularly place high in races against non-disabled competitors and have won the world Sonar championships.
In fact, Tom Brown, the current leader in the 2.4 meter trials here, was on the crew of a team that participated in the U.S. Olympic trials in 2000 and says the level of competition in the Paralympics is virtually indistinguishable.
"The only difference is the missing pieces," said Brown, 43, who lost his right leg below his knee at age 10 because of cancer. Brown, who brought his wife and two daughters for the trials in St. Petersburg, runs a hardware store in Maine.
The sailors' competitive drive is what persuades them to modify the sailboats. The alterations don't change the basic capabilities of the boat, they just enable the sailors to sail them more efficiently. For example, when a crew member swivels Callahan on his special seat to the windward side, the boat stays more level, so the craft goes much faster than a previous system in which he had to sit in one place.
"This game is part tactics, part technique and the rest of it is like fine-tuning a race car," said Jim Thweatt, 49, a sailor and physical therapist from Sacramento.
Many innovations were designed by Gene Hinkel, 61, a custom boat builder from St. Petersburg. He was asked several years ago to help out with the Paralympics and had to ask what it was. But since then, he has come up with several creations, including the "transfer benches" that enable paraplegics to switch sides of a sailboat.
"It means a lot to the sailors," Hinkel said.
Ask the sailors themselves if this sport requires bravery, and they all laugh it off. The sailors wear life preservers, they point out.
"I swim twice a week anyway, so I'm not worried about going overboard," said McKinnon-Tucker.
She says this even though her skipper slid off his transfer bench on Sunday and splashed into the bay. He was picked up by another boat almost immediately. Fellow sailors treated him with suitable respect at a dinner that night by giving him the "snorkel award."
Hinkel sees it differently. A few years ago, regatta officials might have called off the race with the 22-knot winds blowing over the bay on Sunday. But conditions in Athens could be similar. So the trials went on.
"As far as courage, it takes a lot of courage to go out there."
If you go
The U.S. Paralympic sailing trials run through Friday. Each day, sailors gather at the St. Petersburg Sailing Center, 250 Second Ave. SE on Demens Landing. They leave the dock around noon, and racing finishes about 4 p.m. Their boats can be viewed from Demens Landing and from the Pier once they get into the bay.
Skipper Karen Mitchell sits in the tacking transfer seat as the seat's inventor, Jorg Pawlik, makes adjustments on Friday. The two were preparing for the Paralympic sailing trials in St. Petersburg. Sailors launch from Demens Landing.
