This is a piece about sailing that I wrote for High Profile magazine in March 2009. I also edited the book Chasing Moonlight: My mid-centennial victory by Vince Perez.
Green Water, White Lather
Vince Perez and Subic Centennial race to victory in the South China Sea
By Jessica Zafra
When most men turn 50 they take stock of their lives and make plans for the future, which is no longer as distant or vague as it used to be. Some of them throw a party, some buy a sports car, some deny the passage of the years. When businessman and environmentalist Vince Perez turned fifty, he decided to do two things: take to the sea, and write a book about it.
Vince had been sailing since his childhood. His father, Vicente Perez, had sailed around Oyster Bay as a cadet at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy. As a Commander in the Philippine Navy, Perez senior took up sailing as a hobby, and Vince and his siblings spent their weekends at the Army and Navy Club.
Vince’s parents Vic and Lucy Perez sailing around Manila Bay in 1958
Vince’s banking career took him to Pittsburgh, New York, London, and Singapore, but he never got over his love of the sea. In New York, where he was the first Asian partner at Lazard Freres, he bought a small boat which he christened Leigh Ann, after his wife Leigh Talmage. When the couple returned to the Philippines in 1996, they acquired a Mumm 30 sailboat built by the legendary Bruce Farr. They called it Lethal Viper—a play on their names—and it won a few regattas.
Vince and Leigh in Komodo, Indonesia
The following year Vince’s friend and fellow banker Ernesto “Judes” Echauz invited him to join the syndicate that acquired Subic Centennial, a 46-foot Sydney yacht designed by Iain Murray and built by Australia’s largest yacht builder, Bashford International.
The boat was named for the Centennial of the Philippine Republic, and it did its home country proud. During its debut year in 1997, as the nation marked its 100th year, Subic Centennial won the Raja Muda Regatta in Malaysia, the King’s Cup in Phuket, and the Straits Regatta in Singapore. Vince was part of the crew in the Singapore race, and he joined them again in 1998, when Subic Centennial won the China Sea Race. This biennial race, which started in 1962, is considered one of the world’s greatest offshore races, a test of tactics and nerve. It starts at the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club and ends at the Subic Bay Yacht Club in Olongapo, Philippines.
Subic Centennial went on to bag the most coveted sailing trophy in Asia, the Thomas Lipton Cup. More than the race victories, the most important occasion for Vince was his parents’ 40th wedding anniversary in August 1997, when his father boarded Subic Centennial to sail one last time around Subic Bay with his entire family.
In 2001 Vince was appointed Secretary of Energy in President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s administration, and he made the decision to quit sailing. He stepped down as Energy Secretary exactly four years later.
Then in March 2008, ten years after their China Sea Race victory, Judes Echauz asked Vince to join the team once more. “Naturally I was excited at the prospect of sailing again, but I was also full of apprehension,” Vince recalls. “I had not trained since 2000. I was completely physically unprepared for such a challenge. I had hoped to have a few weekends to practice my sailing skills, but I just never found the time. A week before the race, I even considered dropping out of the Subic Centennial crew.”
In the end he decided to accept the challenge to mark his 50th birthday. The crew for the 2008 Rolex China Sea Race was composed of medal winners from the 2007 Southeast Asian Games. Judes Echauz was skipper, Jamie Wilmot the senior coach, Stephen Tan the cockpit manager, and Vince the co-skipper.
“I was seriously out of practice and could not be trusted with the heavy lifting,” Vince laughs. “Although Judes had graciously given me the honorary title of co-skipper, my actual role—for which I was fairly qualified—was that of ballast.
“I would sit on the windward rail as a counter weight to the mast heeling towards the leeward side. If we changed tack, I would shuffle across the deck to the opposite rail. If the winds were to die down, I would go below deck. It’s good to feel useful in some way.”
Despite its combination of experience and fresh talent, Subic Centennial was not considered one of the favorites in the race. The competition included formidable entries from Australia, New Zealand, and Hong Kong, and another Philippine entry, Challenge led by Manny Tanco.
A conservationist and advocate of clean, sustainable energy, Vince had just been named Chairman of World Wide Fund (WWF) Philippines. His vice-chair, Lory Tan, had urged him to keep a log of sightings of marine life during the China Sea Race. Vince not only kept a log, he also described the hardships and humorous moments of the race and reflected on his personal and professional journey of the past fifty years. The result is Chasing Moonlight: My mid-centennial victory, an action-packed, often revealing account of the 2008 Rolex China Sea Race.
By the way, the race ended in another victory for Subic Centennial.
The crew of Subic Centennial sitting under the gennaker
* * * * *
Excerpt from Chasing Moonlight: My mid-centennial victory by Vince Perez
March 20. Thursday. 1803h. First radio positioning.
The sea was so rough, it was impossible to cook anything on the stove. So dinner was a single cinnamon roll. Later we had saltines and coffee. Warm coffee never tasted so great!
Fortis Mandrake was leading the fleet, sailing in 19 knots of wind, with 500 miles to the finish. We were eight nautical miles south of our desired rhomb line, the imaginary straight line between Hong Kong and Subic Bay, which would be our shortest route.
We continued to hike out on the port rail to balance the boat in the strong winds. Waves were crashing onto those of us sitting closest to the drenched bow. We endured this punishment for we knew that counter-balancing the boat on the windward rail could give us an extra half a knot in cruising speed.
With gusty winds, we hardly saw any birds or marine life. Once we thought we spotted the black dorsal fin of a shark. Sadly, it was only the floating corner of a black garbage bag!
Waves began crashing onto our bow. Driving rain tattooed our sails. Green water sloshed over the deck, and white lather spilled over the rails. We were slammed up and down over waves that tested our riggings and strained our buttocks. Thick salt spray from the incessant whitecaps stung our faces. We kept our heads low, barely sheltered by our hoods from the wind-driven rain.
As darkness fell I lay down along the rail and drifted into a troubled sleep. It was the sleep of exhaustion from bearing the brunt of the angry sea for hours. I felt snug wearing my foul weather jacket and trousers, until one enormous wave smashed onto the deck. Suddenly my eyes popped open: cold water had seeped into my clothes and touched bare skin! Seawater had entered my foul weather gear, my shorts and even my thermal underpants. I was soaking wet.
Later during that wretched night, Judes and I decided to strap on life harnesses to the lifeline around the boat. This was a safety precaution in case a large wave washed one of us overboard. The life harness was also a life jacket. Suddenly a rogue wave smashed onto me, crashing down with such force that it triggered the automatic inflation of my life jacket. Picture me sitting there with my hair dripping wet and plastered onto my scalp, wearing a yellow balloon like a fat, loud necktie. Mercifully there were no cameras present.
Skippers Judes Echauz and Vince Perez are interviewed by CNN after Subic Centennial crossed the finish line. If they seem a little perplexed by the attention it’s because they did not know they had won the race.
Chasing Moonlight: My mid-centennial victory by Vince Perez is available at National Bookstores, in the Autobiography section.
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