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For those of you who don't know, my officemate Danny and I did a sailing regatta last week from Galveston, TX to Port Aransas, down by Corpus Christi, approximately 150 miles. We were on the Audacios, a 36' Westerly owned by our good buddy Otto (Hobie) Caldwell and crewed by Otto and Meg Littlefield (more to come on the incredible Meg later)... based out of Clear Lake, TX. Clear Lake is a bit of a misnomer... it's about as clear as the cup of coffee I'm sucking down. Anyway. Our 5th crew member was called away by work, so we would make do with 4.
So Danny and I were jazzed at the opportunity to get some sailing and partying in and have a generally good time. The Harvest Moon Regatta http://www.harvestmoonregatta.com/ is billed as a relatively easy party race... "If you subscribe to the axiom, "Gentlemen don't go to weather," then this offshore regatta is for you. Unlike heading out for a Gulf crossing to Mexico or Florida, you will stay close in to shore in relative safety. This also keeps the fleet much closer together adding to the safety in numbers factor." We drove down after work on Tuesday, arriving at the boat around midnight. Wednesday we prepped the boat and bought provisions, and generally bantered about how much fun we were going to have. Danny was to be the GPS navigation dude, and I was basically an Able Seaman. After hoisting Danny to the top of the mast for about 2 hours to replace the wind indicator, we were pretty much ready to go. The forcast was for winds from 5 - 10 knots, basically nothing. It was going to be a piece of cake. (heh heh heh - que the forboding music)
Thursday morning started early. With Otto threading his way out of the maze that is Clear Lake, we made for Galveston and the starting line approximately 8 hours away. Boating around the Gulf is interesting.... you can be miles off shore and have barely enough water to keep your keel out of the mud. Thus, ship channels are your friend, unless filled with other vessels, such as the barges and oil tankers that kept passing us on the way to Houston. That made for quite a sight.... hundreds of sailboats squashed together hugging the outbound side of the channel while huge deep-draft ocean vessels went back and forth in the rest of the channel. After some sailing, followed by some frantic motoring, we made it to the start line with a few minutes to spare.
For those of you who have never seen a sailboat race start, it's quite an experience. Basically all the boats from one heat race about in front of the start during the countdown, trying to position themselves such that they are crossing the start line with full sails when the gun goes off. Talk about chaos! We were right in the middle of it with ~40 foot sailboats going every which way. Somehow Otto and Meg managed to get us exactly where we needed to be, with all of us watching for other boats, and when the gun went off we were among the first, if not the first, boat over the line. The race was on!
The rest of Thursday afternoon was spent in fairly light wind, dueling it out with other friends and foes, constantly adjusting the sails to get as much out of the light winds as possible. If we could maintain a 5.5 knot average, we figured we would make it in early Friday afternoon. During this period we got a bit outside our straight line course from Galveston to Port A (the "rhumb line") and as evening approached we made our first tactical error... we went back towards shore to get on the rhumb line for the overnight sail. Part of the challenge of the rhumb line course was that it took us directly through two large oilfields, filled with working and decrepit oil rigs and well heads. A little detail that we DIDN'T know was that some of the old structures weren't lit. ie: we were going straight through two potential minefields of unlit oil wells, at night. Yeaaaaah..... Another problem with the rhumb line, was that it put us right on the edge of the wind, a mistake we paid for in spades by not being able to sail off wind for max speed.
As the sun went down, things started to pick up... especially the wind. Soon we were breaking our previous speed records in regular fashion. As Danny cooked lasagna (another tactical error) we settled in for the night sail by putting on life jackets and clipping our harness tethers to the jack lines. Soon we were relatively screaming, in sailboat terms. I believe Otto quoted Audacious' hull speed in the realm of 8 - 9 knots, and we quickly started nibbling towards that. The smell of cooking lasagna gave the boat a cosy, comfortable feel, but in a slightly ominous, sickly way. As I was chowing mine down, I had the first inklings of future dread.
By the middle of the night, we realized we were in for a ride. As we screamed through the first oil field, alarmed voices started coming up on the radio calling out GPS locations for unlit oil wells. Unlit! That got our attention! The seas continued to build in a rather chaotic fashion, due to competing swells, shallow waters, and other devilish factors I'm sure. At some point we cleared the first series of oil wells by the light of a full moon and made for the second mass of them off of Matagorda. I think it was also at this same time that Danny bravely chomped down his lasagna, in the pitching, dark cabin below decks, prior to declaring that he was "just tired" and laying down on a rack. It was about the last we'd see of Danny. Our navigator was off line. A few hours before dawn the pucker factor went up a few more notches as the moon went down, leaving us in total darkess, just in time to hit the second mass of oil rigs and well heads. We spent about 2 wide-eyed hours hauling ass through a garbage pit of old oil rigs before the sun came up and gave us some relief.
Relief is all relative. With the sun up, we were able to see our surroundings... that is, when we weren't in a wave trough. My wave height estimates are probably unreliable, but I'm being conservative when I say we were in 6 - 8 foot confused seas, with frequent 10 footers and occasional grand-daddy 12 footers. When sailboats 100 yards away disappear halfway up their mast, you're in some big seas. It was over the next few hours that we listened to one guy get demasted (ie: the mast was blown off), another get blown aground, some lose their steering, and quite a few have sails blow out. After the race, we talked to one gentleman who said his wind anemometer recorded a 43 knot gust, and was regularly recording 25 - 35 knot steady winds. Even Meg, a sailor with significant experience along the east cost, was impressed.
It was also at this point that I could deny it no longer, I had to use the head. Without further ado I crawled below and waded through all of the food and gear that had been tossed on the floor during the night, past Danny, and into the little bathroom I'll fondly call the Hell Hole. I (barely) managed to complete my business without getting thrown off the pot or having it's contents get sloshed anywhere unpleasant, but it was obvious when I finally got back upstairs that my time was running out. The clausterphobic, dark, smelly, rolling bathroom had taken it's toll. It was only a matter of time before I offered my lasagna to the fishes.... my first experience with sea-sickness. By the third event, I had nothing to offer except bile. This was getting unpleasant.
I was lucky. Inbetween chundering I was able to function relatively well, and I felt positively good while at the helm. Danny, on the other hand, began his final descent into hell shortly after I did. We didn't see him again until approximately 5 o'clock the following evening, except for brief flashes as he lurched from the rack towards the bathroom. It must have been horrible.
Thus passed the rest of Friday. Big seas, no sleep, regular dousings, interspersed with praying over the rail. Otto spent most of the afternoon fighting it, and finally succomed, also his first time to be completely sea-sick. At this point, I should mention Meg again. This woman is incredible. Through all of this, she remained completely untouched. With Danny below in a coma, Otto coming down off his adrenaline rush and starting to lose it, me being functional in short bursts, she sat at the helm with a big smile on her face just DARING the weather to give her something she couldn't handle. It would have been a MUCH more miserable trip for us if Meg hadn't been there.... she basically saved our butts. And oh yeah, the 8 knot hull speed? I think at one point Meg hit 10.2 knots surfing down a big wave.
Anyway, to make a long story longer, we finally made it to Port A at about 5 o'clock Friday afternoon. We had spent all day struggling to stay on our course, killing our speed and extending the trip by hours. (Next time (ugh! hehe) we'll know better.) But we made it, we weren't Dead Last, and all our crew members were accounted for. Danny roused himself from his stupor as we entered the protected ship channel and stood on the cabin with me to show the finish line our sail numbers. He gave a big hurrah with the Texas Longhorns hand sign, followed by one last puke over the rail for the finish line observers. "Puke" is relative, he was running on empty.
We were all glad to be done. The Audacious was battered but unbroken and fully functional, quite a boat.
When Otto asked if I was going to race next year, I told him to check with me again in 11 months. hehehe... what an adventure!
Justin