Team Moto entered the October 6, 2013 Foul Weather Bluff Race smug, stale, and stupefied after a three month layoff from winning the Van Isle 360 International Yacht Race in June 2013. Team Moto’s Fab 5 of Kirk Utter, Steve Brockway, Mark Brink, Bron Miller, and Bill Weinstein, was joined for the race by David Brink, Maaike Pen, Scylla, and Charybdis.

A light breeze found Terremoto’s class clustered at the start line by the committee boat. Terremoto arrogantly started at the pin end line of the line with a port tack. The intent was to sail “fat” and cross the fleet in more wind. The reality was that the wind died completely with the class sailing slowly at Terremoto on a starboard right-of-of way. Terremoto was forced to tack and then promptly drifted in to the race mark. This caused Terremoto to take two 360 degree turns to exonerate itself and place it in its traditional starting position of dead last.

Still confident in its ability to overcome its own crippling incompetence, Team Moto stayed on a port tack, transferred to the entire team to the leeward rail, and Terremoto, like a an Opti dingy, moved slowly away from the fleet. After roughly 30 minutes, Terremoto was able to tack on to starboard, and was able to finally edge ahead and cross the entire fleet.

Although the wind was lacking, Terremoto enjoyed the company of Maaike Pen, who had sailed against Terremoto in the Van Isle 360 on the One-Design 35, Radical Departure. Maaike had been encouraged to defect by Bron Miller, who had met Maaike at one of the many Canadian pubs after each leg of the Van Isle Race. In her honor the beer appeared prematurely and time passed pleasantly. Roughly an hour later, Weinstein was forced to remind the entire crew that it was sail boat racing.

By that point Terremoto was ahead of the fleet, in sight of the finish line, and beneath Foulweather Bluff. A team meeting was convened and team members were asked: What direction the wind? Hands pointed in all directions. A second question was raised: What direction was the current? Hands pointed in all directions. Finally, the question: What direction should Terremoto head? Hands pointed in all directions. Therefore, Terremoto chose to sail in all directions and went nowhere. The collision of the ebb and flood tides before Foulweather Bluff had created a huge whirlpool that trapped Terremoto, White Cloud, Tachyon, and some catamarans in akinesia, the absence of movement.

Terremoto’s newest team members, Scylla and Charybdis, asserted themselves. Homer noted in his “Odyssey” that Scylla and Charybdis were mythical sea monsters. Historians later were able to identify the location of the sea monsters as the Strait of Messina between Sicily and the Italian Mainland. Charybdis was a whirlpool off the coast of Sicily and Scylla, described as a six-headed sea monster (picture the six Terremoto crew members after hitting the race mark), and Scylla was a rock shoal off the Rock of Scilla in Italy’s toe, Calabria.

Weinstein lectured the crew, who glumly sat silently stuck at the stern, how Greek mythology was a decisive part of tactical sailboat racing. He tried to inspire them that Odysseus had successfully sailed his ship past Scylla and Charybdis.

Meanwhile, the rest of the fleet, seeking to avoid either reading the Odyssey or avoiding Odysseus’ fate, sailed to the Kitsap Peninsula and followed the absence of current along the shore north until they set spinnakers to sail south to the finish line.

Maaike, who had been educated in The Netherlands, and had therefore experienced a real education, corrected Weinstein for two omissions. First, she reminded Weinstein that Odysseus had been forced to sacrifice six of his sailors to Scylla, but that result, given her unpleasant morning sailing experience with Terremoto’s crew, was an easy loss. Second, she said that akinesia referred to an absence of bowel movement.

Weinstein, stunned by someone who had more useless knowledge than him, promptly muttered analogies to being stuck between “Scylla and Charybdis.” Terremoto was caught between a rock and a hard place, torn between the devil and the deep blue sea, stuck on the horns of a dilemma, and forced to choose between the lesser of two evils. Weinstein’s choice was both classic and classical – he sacrificed his crew, fired up the engine, and motored back to the dock, his Ithaca.