- Local News for Southern Sailors - February 2003 Next Story
Southern Sailing
Why Do They Call It That?
By Dave Ellis
Take the Mug Race, for example. No, it is not named after the face of the guy who has won it in various catamarans so many times. It is named for the trophy. This is a unique event that goes down the north-flowing St. John's River in northeast Florida. Just about any kind of boat can sail the nearly 40-mile course, with the slower boats starting early and the fast cats waiting on the beach until the wind picks up later so they can zoom by. The toughest part of the race, besides sitting on a deck of a small boat for that distance, is figuring out the 'where to park the car and trailer' strategy. When a boat finishes, the entrants' vehicles are 40 miles south of the party.
The late, great Royal Gaboon was once such a free-for-all race. It seems that in the 1940s a few young St. Pete Yacht Club fellows were cavorting in New Orleans when they spied a spittoon, known in 1930s' dialect as a gaboon, in the corner of a local dive. The plan was to create a diversion by starting a fight while one copped the silver-plated prize. Well, the fight sort of got out of hand, but the spittoon was spirited away and became the mounted trophy for a truly different event.
For thirty years the course took boats from off the St. Pete Pier, down Tampa Bay, under the Sunshine Skyway (once it was built), and either under bridges along the ICW or out in the Gulf and in through Sarasota Pass, to the Sarasota Yacht Club. The unique feature was that there were no class rules enforced. Engines were not allowed, of course, but any sail could be used and paddles, swim fins, pushing the boat over shallow water, poling, and any other form of manual propulsion was allowed. Sounds like Laser racing.
Thistles sprouted a masthead genny, Suicides mounted Y-flyer sails, and Lightning spinnakers and cruising boats had all manner of canvas to catch the spring breeze.
Skullduggery was expected. When Page Obenshain got his Thistle to the low bridge with the finish line just to the other side, rather than sail under the drawbridge and around the island, he had an inflatable boat ready to support the deckless hull on its side. Except that another competitor had anticipated this ploy and let the air out.
A Flying Dutchman skipper bribed a bridge tender with four bottles of scotch to open the bridge for him when he got there, but not before and not afterward.
Donny Krippendorf set off a cherry bomb a half minute before the race committee was to fire the cannon for the 8:00 start. Naturally, everybody took off down the bay, except Donny. Harvey Parke on the committee boat upped anchor and gathered everybody up just south of Bayboro Harbor and set up another line. Dave Ellis aimed his Suicide at the line and zoomed across, figuring that his Uncle Harvey would fire the cannon at the auspicious time, which he did.
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Krippendorf won a Gaboon when he got the St. Pete Junior Yacht Club runabout to meet him near the Skyway with a boatload of youngsters with paddles. When the wind died for the usual noontime period, they all jumped overboard and swam to his Suicide. The boat looked like a Roman galley as it swept past the other boats. When the sea breeze kicked in, the extras jumped back overboard and swam to the powerboat. That was banned the next year.
Going under the bridges became a hazard, and clubs change, so the Royal Gaboon died. There was a more recent try, using a much shorter course, but response was limited. Rumor has it, however, that a more robust Royal Gaboon may again be planned. Stay tuned.
The Gasparilla Regatta on Tampa Bay has been sailed since the 1960s in various formats and locations to coincide with the mock invasion by pirates into Tampa, an excuse for bad conduct. There really was no such pirate as José Gaspar. But there most certainly was a Gasparilla.
This was a rascal who had a falling out with the court of Spain when he absconded with some of their funds and buried it along the Spanish coast. Things got too hot for him, so he sailed to Havana and set up business lifting treasure from other ships, especially the Spanish, whom he had grown to dislike.
The west coast of Florida was his beat during the first twenty years of the 1800s, during which time he amassed and buried over $48-million in gold, 1800s price.
Much of it is apparently still there, some along shorelines, some under old oak stands and, presumably, some under residents' back yards.
In the 1820s things got dangerous for the pirates and their crew, most of whom were in their early 20s. The fledgling US government was having success in hanging them. Gasparilla and Jean Lafitte were on their small ships inside of what is now Boca Grande when they saw a tempting target sail slowly by out in the Gulf. They had already decided to hang up their swords, divide the loot among the crew by shares and retire to Cuba.
That one last prize turned out to be a decoy. Gasparilla was mortally wounded in the fight and wrapped himself into some anchor chain and rolled overboard. His ship was sunk off Boca Grande entrance.
Lafitte, sailing behind the other ship, saw the trap and turned back into the bay, having a more shoal draft than the US ship. But he soon tried to run, sailing north to the Manatee River, where the government ship caught and sank the pirate about two miles off the river entrance.
So sometimes there really is a reason for the name of a regatta.
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