This article is from the winter 2024 edition of Mobile Baykeeper’s print quarterly, CURRENTS. The magazine is mailed to active members who have given more than $50 in the past year. To get on the magazine’s mailing list, donate here.
By Caine O’Rear | Photos by Courtney Mason
The Cap d’Antibes juts into the sea about fifteen miles south of Nice. Along its rocky shoreline the blue waters of the Mediterranean lap against a beachfront that soon gives way to dense flora dotted with Roman villas and neoclassical hotels. The stone ramparts of old Antibes, surrounded by cobbled streets and Provençal markets, date as far back as the 16th century. It is a place where time stands still. Indeed, this Old World picture-postcard scene is a far cry from our little corner here in south Alabama, but for Michael Mark, a retired Mobile lawyer and competitive world-class sailor, those differences dissolve when you’re on the water.
Soon, Mark will discover that sailing around the Cape of Antibes, with its strong easterly winds blowing across the peninsula, is eerily similar to sailing out of Fairhope Yacht Club with a good southerly breeze. It is late October and he is one of three Americans competing at the Finn European Masters in Cannes, France, an annual regatta that features more than one-hundred and fifty sailors from twenty-five countries. Michael Mark has sailed European waters before and already knows some of the sailors, so he’s not entirely a fish out of water, though this will be his first time sailing the Cote d’Azur.
The week-long race takes sailors up and down the Mediterranean coast, from Cap Croisette, just south of Marseilles, past the fabled Lérins islands off Cannes. One of these islets is the Île Sainte-Marguerite – a densely forested patch of land with a medieval barracks that once held Louis XIV’s most famous political prisoner, the Man in the Iron Mask. With a Romanesque fortress towering behind them, a sea drama unfolds that might see sailors navigating nine-foot swells in 30 knots.
“I’ve sailed all over the world, and this was by far the most beautiful place I’ve sailed,” he tells me. “The eastern breeze runs parallel to the shore and comes around the point of Antibes,” Mark continues, “and when you sail out of Fairhope with a southerly breeze, you want to go left because the wind slows down over land, due to friction. It’s the way the land is situated, relative to the direction of the wind. Most of the sailing in the Mediterranean is kind of like sailing Fairhope. But that’s one of the basic things you learn after doing this for 50 years: it all works the same. Water temperature and air temperature and currents. They all work the same.”
The Finn is not really known outside of sailing circles, so you’d be forgiven for not having heard of it. It is a cat-rigged, solo dinghy that was part of the Olympic class from 1952 until 2020. It is similar to a Laser, only with more bells and whistles. Considered the most demanding single-hander craft to operate, the challenges further multiply when you compete at the international level like Mark does.
The Race is On
In Cannes, it is early in the competition and Mark is rounding the cape of Antibes, having come up from the starting line at the Cannes Yacht Club. It is cold and rainy on the first day of racing, with big storms that eventually call for a red alert and a halt in competition. Later in the week the sun will emerge. In the rare moments when the wind slackens and there is a brief respite for the racers, one gets to sit back and enjoy the view of the gleaming yachts moored at the Port Vauban marina, in the long shadow of the Maritime Alps. Surely, a man could do worse for himself.
For this year’s European Masters, there are two races each day, with each race split into two fleets due to the size of the field. Each race runs about 60 to 75 minutes and the courses are about five miles long, with a headwind to start and downwind to finish. When you factor in the starting times and the break between races, it can add up to about six to eight hours on the water each day.
“The big challenge is the physical part,” Mark says, adding that he “ate clean” for most of the week in Cannes, dropping ten pounds despite a lot of baguettes. “I’ll sometimes get some cramping issues, but I was happy about the physical preparation.”
As is usually the case with regattas this size, the start can be a hairy affair. And though he’s had some brilliant starts this race week, he still has to deal with the other boats on the open water, even though, as a Finn racer, you mostly compete against the elements and yourself.
“You’ve got to use your brain while being physically tested,” Mark, 65, says about racing the Finn. (The dinghy was designed just before the Helsinki Olympics in Finland in ’52 — hence the name “Finn”.) “You’re using your abs and quads, while also doing math equations in your head. You’ve got to do some meteorology and know what waves or lack of waves might be better for you.”
A longtime member of the Buccaneer Yacht Club in Mobile, Mark has been sailing Finns in Mobile Bay for about twelve years. And what makes you a good sailor in Mobile Bay makes you a good sailor in the Mediterranean. He is currently ranked 7th in the U.S. in the Finn class and has cracked the top 100 in the world. “They don’t have a big tide off the coast there,” he tells me. “Even though we don’t have a big tide in Mobile Bay, we can still get some currents. And that was what was happening in Cannes – with wind, you get current. This is kind of what happens in Fairhope, too – as you get farther off the water, the current is stronger . . . and when you get out of that it can become a little weaker. But that’s the cool thing about figuring these places out.”
With the Finn however, skill is often not enough. Strength and size are required to create enough leverage to drive these boats hard in the open water and you need some heft to really maneuver your instrument with authority. It is generally reserved for sailors who weigh 200 or more pounds and run about 6’ to 6’5”. Mark is a fairly big guy and after a New Orleans sailor recommended it to him post-Katrina, telling him it’s a great physical workout, he made the switch.
At the Masters, Mark finished 100th out of a fleet of 150, but notes that he beat fifty of the best Finn sailors in the world and finished in the middle of his age group, the largest division. The Italian, Alessandro Marega, took home the overall crown, ahead of France’s Valerian Lebrun, the reigning French champion, who also holds the title of European “Master” champion.
Mark is pleased, but says his results don’t do justice to his performance. There were four rounds of competition over the week, with the top racers advancing to the championship round. A lot of the racers had been active throughout the European season, with the Masters event marking the culmination of tournament competition. “It’s amazing how good all these guys are,” he says, “but it’s a brotherhood because we all love doing the same thing. Since you’re in a boat by yourself, everyone is just self-dependent. And they respect one another because they know how hard it is to sail these boats.”
Talk to any sailor with some years on the water and he’ll tell you that sailing is an activity that bonds people the world over. It’s a tribe that transcends cultural, geographical, and political differences. The water is the common denominator. The best part, Mark says, is just the hang, and the keen sense of friendship that develops among the racers. There was little talk of world affairs, other than the de rigueur “Kamala or Trump” query. He befriended one Spanish sailor in particular who interviewed him for his podcast.
“It’s still a coastal place here in Cannes,” Mark says. “You got humidity and a sea breeze. Same sort of conditions everywhere. I was expecting it to be a lot more stuck-up at the yacht club, but it’s not at all. It’s just a good vibe.” Cannes is a chic and fashionable town, known internationally for its annual film festival. The food is, of course, exceptional – most notably the bouillabaisse, a dish that is, according to some culinary historians, an ancestor to our region’s gumbo. Nearby is Monaco and across the border is Italy, where Mark’s wife and daughter enjoyed time shopping together.
For his part though, Mark opted to spend his downtime in the company of his competitors in the club. “You get the chance to meet so many people, and when you find your people, it’s just really cool,” he says. The Yacht Club de Cannes is smaller than the Buccaneer Yacht Club, but surprisingly, he says, it is anything but stuffy, with many of the racers lodging for the week in camper vans outside the club with their dogs.
Most of the sailors he talked to were curious about Mobile Bay (“Where is that?), even the two Americans from Newport Beach in California. He invited several of them to sail in the North American Masters in Fairhope next year in April and lodge at the Grand Hotel. If they come, they will no doubt enjoy our Southern hospitality.
The German Yankee
Joerg Kemnade grew up in Bremen, a town in northern Germany about sixty miles west of Hamburg. In his younger years he started sailing a Laser-like dinghy called the X-4. He’d put it on the roof of his Volkswagen Passat and drive across the Alps to the Adriatic Sea, outside of Venice, a distance of 500 miles. He brought that sailboat over from across the pond when he moved to Mobile in the early ’90s, launching it regularly on the beach by the Grand Hotel. He was in his 50s back then and has remained a stalwart member of the Buccaneer Yacht Club ever since.
The self-described “German Yankee” came to Alabama to work for Degussa (now called Evonik) as a mechanical engineer, eventually overseeing the North American division for copper engineering. He’s been retired since 2011. “Next year I will be 80,” he says, before adding a bit of self-deprecating humor, “I will be called a legend.”
Even as a young man, Kemnade wanted to sail a Finn. In the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, a German Lufthansa pilot named Wilhelm Kuhweide won the gold medal in the Finn class and became a hero in Germany at a time when Cold War tensions simmered. Naturally, a younger Joerg wanted to follow in his footsteps. It took about forty-three years, but in 2007 he was able to finally purchase a Finn – a Vanguard, for about $4,000 – from a fellow club member.
“I still like the boat and am attached to it, though I don’t sail it as often as I did before,” Kemnade says. “But I plan to be in the boat and compete when I’m 80.”
Kemnade has raced competitively throughout the U.S., including at a Master’s race in Milwaukee. To this day, he enjoys the challenge of the Finn with its power and balance, including the fact that it can easily capsize, and yet still has the accouterments of a big boat.
“The Finn community in the U.S. is small but very active,” Kemnade says. “People from the north like to come here when we have the Masters, or the national championship in early spring. We’re like a big family.”
Kemnade has competed in the Dauphin Island race numerous times. In fact, he was set to compete in the tragic 2015 race that saw five sailors lose their lives when 90 mile-per-hour hurricane-force winds suddenly swept the course. Kemnade was poised to race with two other sailors, both over 60 (“we were over 200 years old combined”), but the team made the last-minute decision not to go. “One guy who died, they never found, and I knew him well. And that was a big, big tragedy,” he says.
A great body of water
Mobile’s sailing culture dates back to the Jazz Age, when the Buccaneer Yacht Club was still in its infancy. In those early days the club embodied the live-and-let-live vibe of the times. The war was over and it was time to party. Catamarans and yachts lined the shore, and turtle races happened on the deck of the club. The Jolly Roger flag, the official skull-and-crossbones crest of the BYC, flew from every mast. Susan Roullier, an artist and longtime resident of the western shore, chronicled the club and its founding in a previous edition of CURRENTS.
These days, the flapper girls and the turtle races may be gone and the bar serves more Miller Lite than martinis, but the pirate spirit is still alive in the Buccaneer’s membership. Michael Mark is the de facto leader of the Finn crew, and there are eight sailors at the Buccaneer who are active with that craft. Some of those compete at regattas across the country and some venture worldwide to compete.
David Hickman grew up in Mobile, but he did not pick up sailing until about five years ago, when he was in his mid-30s. He now spends two or three days a week on the water, sailing Finns with the rest of the Buccaneer crew. He chose the Finn because, he says, “It’s as big a dinghy as you can have for a one-man boat. It’s an Olympic class, it’s made for bigger people. I was about the right size. There is a fleet here in Mobile and there are always people sailing them.”
Size and weight are important factors for those racing this craft, and it’s easy to get overpowered by the wind and have the boat keel over. Despite being a relative newcomer to the sport, Hickman competes in local and out-of-town regattas, including a race in Toledo, Ohio. He recommends that anyone who’s interested in Finn – or just sailing, in general – give it a try. “Come on down to the Buccaneer,” he says. “We’ve got boats if you are interested in learning. We don’t have organized lessons, but we’re out here often enough.”
Julian Bingham is another relative newcomer who used to sail fishboats before transitioning to the Finn. Before the great Finn switch, a lot of the sailors at the Buccaneer were sailing Stars, which are a two-person sailing craft. “Stars got more and more expensive and it was harder to sail with a team of two,” Bingham says. “So the Finns started getting popular.”
Changing winds
Those lucky enough to live on Mobile Bay, or at least spend several days a week on the water, are often the ones most attuned to its health. The Bay is kaleidoscopic in its changing nature; its true algebra is only suggested by science and these residents have a heightened sensitivity to its changes. These folks are the Bay’s eagle-eyes and they can be reliable as any weather instrument. As much as any oysterman or shrimper, they understand that without a healthy bay, we have nothing.
“We are out here a lot and you can tell the difference on some days when it is very clear, and then on days when it’s gone murky because of all the silt,” Michael Mark says. “And you see the trash that comes along after a big storm. And of course we’ve been able to see the changes since Gaillard Island was put there, probably mostly positive changes. But we can tell that the Bay has silted in a lot. The Bay used to be a lot clearer – and not that long ago. But you notice it on a daily basis. We had some very nice grass beds right here in front of the club. You could see it sailing where the water’s clear in the shallow water. I used to go with my daughter and soft-shell crab. You could see the animals going through there. Probably in the last ten years they are completely gone. They are just covered up. It’s all gotten silted on top of that. A lot of the silt is coming from the Tennessee-Tombigee, but it’s also coming from this dredging. Any dredging is obviously going to create silt – picking up mud and creating silt.”
Coming from folks who’ve sailed the world over it is important to hear that Mobile Bay is a unique marvel worth preserving. Our Bay is a nutrient-rich, riverine system, and while its optics may not rival the azure beauty of the Mediterranean, it’s special in so many other ways. Those who sail it understand that.
“Mobile Bay is a great body of water,” says Kemnade. “Those who have been here a long time like Michael, they know how the wind behaves. There is also the current and the deep channel in the middle. And you have a tide here, too. That is what is so challenging about sailing. You have to know about weather, how the clouds impact the wind. How is the shore, if there are trees, how does that impact the wind? It’s not just holding the boom . . . that’s leisurely sailing. Racing is a challenge.”
