The sailing trophies that count are the experiences

A yacht racing dispute in court, allegations of fraud and misrepresentation, million-dollar damage claims . . . must be those America's Cup syndicates at it again, making sailing look foolish with their hyperlitigious antics.

Sorry to say, it's not. Sailing is being made to look foolish all right, but this time it's by an amateur sailor who didn't like the way trophies for a PHRF race were inscribed. Deciding that the affront had inflicted suffering on him worth $1.1 million, he sent his lawyer to the Cook County Circuit Court to sue a crewmate and the sponsoring yacht club.

That Chicago court handles more than 2 million cases a year, so it's conceivable it has been asked to rule on something more trivial than this yachtsman's snit, but it's hard to imagine what it would have been. A dispute over a suspiciously sticky wicket in a croquet game, perhaps. Here's the story, as reported by the Chicago Tribune, to the titillation, no doubt, of readers given a glimpse into the sporting lives of the yachting set:

A Mumm 30 named Illusion sailed in the 2002 Chicago-Mackinac Race. The boat is owned by the plaintiff in the lawsuit, and he was aboard during the race. It was entered, however, by one of the defendants, who was identified on the entry form as "owner/charterer" and "person in charge." After Illusion won the Large Boat PHRF Division, the plaintiff asked the Chicago Yacht Club to inscribe his name on the trophies. Chicago Y.C. insisted that the inscriptions bear the name of the registered skipper. The owner then sued his friend and the yacht club.

The Tribune story goes on: In his suit, the plaintiff sought to get official records, Web sites, press releases and Mackinac Cup and Ogden McClurg trophies changed to reflect that he was Illusion's skipper. He also accused his crewmate of fraud and has sought $100,000 in compensatory damages, $1 million in punitive damages, plus attorneys' fees and costs.

According to affidavits from two crew members, the defendant was the navigator and crew organizer, while the plaintiff was the principal helmsman, steering the boat for more than 30 hours in the race. The plaintiff said he tried a number of times to get the skipper designation changed, starting before the race. Several weeks after the race, the defendant also asked the race committee to change the skipper-of-record designation.

The yacht club responded that it couldn't, after the fact, change the name of the skipper as it was listed in race committee records before and during the race. The club said the matter should have gone to arbitration within the sport, and not to the courts

The plaintiff was quoted as saying, "I feel like I'm doing the only thing that is left to me outside of forgetting about a very significant life achievement."

You could debate the merits of the case. The racing rules make it clear that by entering the race the entrant agrees to accept the decisions of the race authority-period. Even so, the yacht club could have been a bit less stiff-necked about it and if the two friends, or former friends, could agree, inscribe the trophies the way they wanted

Sure, you could debate it, but why would you want to? Why waste the time? It doesn't matter who's right. Anyone who thinks sailboat racing is about engraved cups and mugs is missing the point. It's about the experiences. They're the real trophies.

My name isn't on the Mackinac Cup (not for lack of trying, I should add), but it does appear on a permanent trophy at another yacht club. I have forgotten exactly which very significant life achievement it commemorates, but I do remember that my name is spelled wrong. I suppose there's a statute of limitations that precludes a lawsuit.

Like most people who spend summer weekends racing sailboats instead of tending their lawns, I have a house full of take-home trophies. I should say a basement full, because it is to that subterranean realm, where my authority is undisputed, that all but the few aesthetically redeeming trophies have been banished by the person in charge of the upper realm. Many of these are put to good use as vessels for nuts, bolts, screws, cotter pins, electrical parts, mouse traps and odd pieces of hardware. Others just sit there aging. They are numerous, no doubt, but I'm afraid this should be taken more as sign of relentless participation in decades' worth of races than racing prowess. Maybe my very significant life achievement is being a prolific sailboat racer.

Funny thing, in most cases I couldn't tell you what races the trophies represent without reading the tarnished inscriptions. But I can recite, chapter and verse, details of wind and water, incidents and accidents, good luck and bad from races past-because what matters about sailboat racing is the experiences and the memories they create, the trophies that count.

The race that has now been dragged into court, last summer's remarkable sprint from one end of Lake Michigan to the other, was an uncommonly rich source of those kinds of trophies. The fleet was borne up the lake on boisterous southerlies that yielded unforgettable sailing sensations. The rising volume of the sound of surging water along the hull through a night of freshening breeze. Double digit speeds flashing ever higher, cheers as new peaks were recorded. On-the-edge steering that at times went over the edge into a broach. Miles reeling off so fast it was hard to believe the GPS was telling the truth. So fast that Illusion, a Mumm 30 remember, finished the 333-mile race in under 35 hours. (If the plaintiff really did, as claimed, steer for 30 of those hours, that was a very significant life achievement. Helmsmen on our boat lost their touch after an hour.)

This was good stuff, but the outstanding feature of the race, the full-bore, oversized, Technicolor experience, was the squall that attacked the vanguard of the fleet at the top of the lake with such ferocity that rigs were destroyed and a large multihull capsized. It appeared as a familiar roll cloud heralding a squall and in seconds morphed into a dirty green, black-topped monster with fanglike tendrils reaching the water.

Our crew, working a wholly warranted sense of desperation, got the spinnaker 90% down, which was just enough. The ensuing sleigh ride with a full mainsail in 60 to 80 knots of wind felt like riding a rocket in a dark tunnel while being pummeled by rain and spume at high velocity. The sea flattened and the boat seemed to rise as if on hydrofoils as it ran before the storm at 25 knots. Exhilaration gave way to angst. Reefs lay downwind, and turning into the tempest to try to wrestle the main down was not an attractive option. Eventually the wind eased just enough to let us steer up to the course, and then enough to allow a headsail to be set. Gray's Reef lighthouse appeared ahead; some boats that had been abeam were now astern. These memories are colored by details of the weather, the boat and the sails, but mostly they're about the people with whom I was sailing, and how together we met the challenges of a memorable sailboat race.

That's what trophy memories are about-sailing experiences shared with shipmates through the years.

As for suing a shipmate over a trophy, that's something best forgotten, not preserved as a sailing memory.