Jun 29, 2008

Man to lead team sailing to Hawaii

By Kyveli Diener / Bay Area News Group

Phil MacFarlane has bright eyes, short salt-and-pepper hair and an ever-present smile. And on a recent Saturday afternoon, he was tinted blue from a repainting project on the bottom of his 35-foot sailboat, Sail a Vie.

"That's Papa Smurf to you," he said, not being one to miss the opportunity for a joke.

MacFarlane, 46, hated the water as a child, which he attributes to forced swimming lessons. But he was always fascinated by the sailboats he saw cruising the waters of the Bay while growing up in San Mateo. Then a dare came along that he could not refuse.

"A friend of mine dared me to try windsurfing, and I fell in love with that," he said of the hobby he embraced at 22. "Then I said, this is great, but I need a bigger boat."

He bought his 1971 sailboat nearly 20 years ago, and he has since competed in several solo trans-Pacific races, once beating the entire field on a sail to Hawaii, taking the prize as the overall winner.

On July 14, he will have to work with a team on a bigger boat when he competes in the West Marine-sponsored Pacific Cup, which will again take him to the Hawaiian Islands. He hopes to complete the journey in 14 days.

"I'm looking forward to it," he said of working with five other people on the 47-foot Oceanaire. "It's going to be totally different.

"(I'll) get some sleep, and have a refrigerator on board so I'll have ice cream," he added with a laugh. "That's a treat."

MacFarlane is used to being the only person onboard from his singlehanded races. His first solo adventure was a 400-mile qualifying race for the 2000 Transpac, followed by the Baja Ha-Ha Cruiser's Rally in 1999 to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

MacFarlane placed second in the Ha-Ha and third in his division in his first trans-Pacific race. He has since competed in three more of the races, taking the overall winner's trophy in 2006 and the division winner title twice.

Long before he set his sights on sailing trophies, he decided that a sailboat was more deserving of his money than an apartment. He lived on the Sail a Vie for seven years in the now-closed Peninsula Marina.

"Living on the boat was great," MacFarlane recalled. "Lots of people lived at the marina I lived at. It was a small-town atmosphere, I really loved it. I've never lived in a better neighborhood than that marina."

MacFarlane now shares a home on dry land with his wife of three years and partner of 20 years, Joan. But it's hard to tear him away from his new water-based neighborhood and Sail a Vie's home, Redwood City's Municipal Marina.

MacFarlane's friend Karen Pavich, 35, said the marina has a unique and comfortable atmosphere.

"The boating community is just really cool, kind of the difference between being in Los Angeles and San Francisco," she said. "People are just chill (and) laid back."

Pavich remembers going to the marina with her mother, who had a boat there. Then, several months ago, MacFarlane offered to teach the young novice how to sail on his blue-and-white boat.

"Hanging around on the docks, you just sort of start to meet people, and I've always wanted to sail. Phil invited me out one day, and then that was it. He did run us aground," she said, laughing, before MacFarlane reminded her she was the one at the helm.

MacFarlane has had his own collisions on the boat. Once, while sailing near Angel Island, he hit a piece of a pier that had broken off in a winter storm. The floating chunk was bigger than the boat, and it destroyed his rudder. MacFarlane painstakingly repaired the vessel.

"It's been a great boat. I rebuilt the whole thing, put a new engine in it," he said. "Every single wire in it, I put in. Redid the whole thing. I'm kind of in love with this boat."

Pavich volunteered to help MacFarlane paint the underside of Sail a Vie, a task that takes several days and required a trip to Svendsen's Boat Works shipyard in Alameda. Such maintenance is required every couple of years. MacFarlane said that the sails wear out most often.

When he is racing, MacFarlane relies entirely on the wind, since it is illegal to start one's motor during a sailboat race. He recalls five tortuous days during the 2006 trans-Pacific race when he floated with "zero wind," alone on a boat in the middle of sea.

Despite the occasional mid-ocean stranding that Pavich says can "literally drive you crazy," MacFarlane said he loves being on the water, dealing with the wind and being surrounded by nature. But when asked about his favorite part of the sport, he answers with another joke.

"The wine and cheese," he said, laughing. "That's what everybody thinks about sailing. Oh, it's so romantic. Oh, so beautiful.

"Yeah, right. See what we're doing here?" he said, motioning to the partially painted hull. "So romantic."

But despite the lack of glamour, sailing is something MacFarlane finds himself inextricably linked to, no matter how hard he tries to focus on the kit airplane he is building, the backyard garden he is growing, or his one-man electrical contracting business, Sequoia Electric.

"I keep trying to give up sailing actually, but I just can't," he said, admitting the longest he's been able to stay away has been three weeks. "It just consumes my life - all my money goes toward it, all my time. I just figure there must be something else, but I stay away for a little while and then I just come back."