Famine
and feast are the themes for
the Ft. Lauderdale to Key West
race... on three hulls of course!
By Doran Cushing
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Famine
and feast are the themes for By Doran Cushing |
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Too little, then too much wind was the theme for the annual overnight 160-mile race from Ft. Lauderdale to Key West sponsored by the Storm Try sail Club. The light northwest wind, which produced a starboard tack spinnaker start for the fleet on the morning of January 13, never quite kicked in. With the raging Gulf Stream running south to north while hugging the coast near the starting line, most of the asymmetrical-rigged boats had to jibe in to the beach, then out to where the stream pushed against the boats in the wrong direction, then back in to the beach. For the majority of the fleet, which ranged in size from 26 to 77 feet, it took the better part of the daylight hours to get within sight of the Miami sea buoy. Aboard tri Southwinds, positioned toward the front of the fleet as the sun set, we tried every sail combination and every point of sail to get around that first mark of the course. It wasn't pretty with half a dozen boats, all on differing points of sail, ghosting within 1/4-mile of each other and wisps of wind teasing us for brief minutes, then dissolving and reappearing around us.
tri Southwinds trucks with a reefed
main and jib We had been close to Steve Marsh's Corsair F-31R most of the day but lost sight of the multihull division leader after it rounded the sea buoy. We later learned that Marsh bailed out in the slow conditions and went home. We were still close to all of the leading boats except the Santa Cruz 70 Chessie Racing, which had disappeared to the south at dusk. With a new breeze starting to build from the west at dark, the leaders converged again near Bug Light, east of Biscayne Bay. The 77-foot Javelin converged with tri Southwinds, both boats carrying chutes in less than 10 knots of wind. We tried twice to sail through their lee, a huge lee, but couldn't punch through so we ducked their stern light and powered alongside the huge monohull. Apparently not happy with our passing maneuver, Javelin began taking us up, inshoreof the course to the light at Fowey Rocks.Race rules for this event don't allow such behavior for safety considerations so we exchanged a few greetings to get the big boat's attention. They finally returned to their proper course, but it was a fateful mistake to mess with us. Javelin came to an abrupt stop with its keel on the bottom as tri Southwinds, drawing less than five feet, moseyed down the course. I'm told Javelin was parked for the better part of an hour, maybe more. We beat them to Key West by 43 minutes. The breeze continued to build into the teens from the west-northwest as we carried the chute through the evening hours and kept the boatspeed in the low teens. |
When our course and the wind angle and strength changed, tri Southwinds stuffed the spinnaker, rolled out the furled screacher, and kept on truckin.' We also rolled two or three of the monohulls, which had slipped away at the Miami sea buoy, including Rick Orchard's Corel 45 Grins and the J/125 Strabo. It didn't take long for the screacher's 340 squarefeet of headsail to become more than we needed to maintain our 12 to 16 knots across the bottom just outside Hawk Channel. Up with the jib and the beat goes on at the same basic speed with the leeward ama not digging so deep into the Atlantic Ocean. The weather and the course kept the wind just forward of the beam; fast and getting faster as midnight came and went. Taking the conservative route, I called for a reef in the main and again tri Southwinds seemed to lose little speed. Fourteen to 16 was still registering on the speedo with an occasional burst to 17 and 18 knots. Our crew was four guys who had never met before the skipper's meeting.
Only two of us, myself and Olivier Capot, had raced an F-boat before.
Both Tom Dwyer and Ron Washburn had solid racing backgrounds, but the
Corsair tri was new to them. I was concerned about doing something stupid,
like burying the leeward hull too deeply and flipping the boat like a
Hobie 16. For the better part of the early morning hours before dawn, we sailed
without a headsail and with the reefed main. Boatspeed held in the mid-teens
and rarely dropped down to nine or 10 knots with 20-plus knots of wind
forward of the beam. With dawn came a more confident skipper; and the threat of two monohulls on the horizon to the east. We hoisted the jib and less than two hours later had moved away from the big monos again. The wind continued to build and was approaching 30 knots in the gusts, but the seas were less than three feet, slightly cocked to our course. Surfing took us away from the rhumb line but added a burst of speed. The GPS said we maxed out above 18 knots, still with the reefed main and jib. It would have been a fine way to end the race at the Key West sea buoy.
Not so. With Grins and Strabo pushing us on the upwind beat
to the finish, I can agree with the NOAA weather report, which said we
had 35 knots out of the north. tri Southwinds points well, but
the short, steep waves west of the main shipping channel on Key West's
south side were killing our speed as well as drenching everyone on the
boat. With little protection from land, we fought up the channel with
Grins passing us on the next to last tack, and Strabo beat
us to the line by 27 seconds. To put it into my perspective, we had the second-best elapsed time in
the fleet. Chessie Racing covered the course in two hours, seven
minutes faster than tri Southwinds. Victor Mendelsohn's Seawind
1000 catamaran trailed us by four hours to the finish and corrected to
first in the multihull division. For what it's worth, had tri Southwinds
raced with our PHRF rating, we would have corrected ahead of Chessie
Racing by more than three hours. The Ft. Lauderdale to Key West race was a hell of an experience. Maybe next year we can get the multihull fleet out in bigger numbers, and I can get used to that leeward ama digging in just a bit more. |
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Results - Ft. Lauderdale to Key West - Jan. 13 Storm Trysail Club 160 nm Boat/Skipper Type Rtg El T Corr T Multihull PHRF 1 PHRF 2 PHRF 3 PHRF 4 PHRF 5 |
