I spent the greater part of last weekend with some good friends aboard Manatee, a Catalina 320 sailing in the Lakewood Yacht club's annual Harvest Moon regatta from the Galveston Flagship hotel's pier to Port Aransas, about 150 miles south. There were over 200 boats entered in the regatta. We were one of the smaller boats, I think. There were a lot of different fleets, grouped according to PHRF ratings and whether or not the boat was using a spinnaker. We were in a non-spinnaker fleet. There were seven of us aboard, which was a lot of people compared to other boats which usually carry four people.
We left Seabrook Shipyard near the entrance to Clear Lake at about 7:45am on Thursday the 21st, and the wind being calm, we motored toward the Houston ship channel to be at the starting line by our 3pm start. There were a lot of boats coming out of Clear Lake at that time and we had quite the armada making our way down the ship channel. Naturally, we hugged the western side of the channel to stay out of the way of the shipping, but even so they were close. They were so close in fact, that we could see porpoises jumping up out of the bow waves of the ships. The empty ships, riding high in the water would push an enormous bulb of water in front of them and the porpoises would jump out of the water of the bow wave in front of the ship. I'd seen photos of this in the past, but never anything like it live.
We got to our starting area and were ready to go for the 3:00pm start. Keith, The skipper wanted me to drive for the start, which I took as a high honor. Our strategy was simple: clear air, lots of speed at the start, and don't care about having the favored end of the line, which is contrary to the racing I'm used to. Why? Well, because cully, it's a long way to the mark and you don't want to get a mixed up with them slow arses a bunchin' up at the pin, that's why.
We did that and at the starting gun we were within 1-2 boat lengths from the near the middle. The winds were 12-15 that afternoon and piped up as the evening came on. For a while we weren’t sure we could weather our first mark, a starboard rounding, the Freeport sea buoy. But, we kept pointing well, and the wind shifted a little bit. We pitied the poor slugs who had to tack over to starboard to make more offing. We envied those folks in the more weatherly boats that were a mile and more upwind of us and were pulling away. But we passed boats in our class, and in other classes, even those that had started an hour before we did.
I had the midnight to 3 am watch, so I turned in around 9 pm to get some sleep. I tried the V-berth, and learned that that is the worst place in the boat when sailing by the wind. The pounding, the occasional trickle of water on my face or legs (usually when I was about to get to sleep) kept me form getting much sleep. I was called for my watch about 10 minutes to midnight, and went up on deck. The moon was still up, and there were lights of other boats visible around us. We took the watch, and I was lookout for the first 30 minutes. I traded off with my watch mate at the helm, and we had a relatively uneventful time. The wind kept about 18-20kts, and we had to dodge a couple of gulf shrimpers with nets out. We were able to see them because of their deck lights, but the deck lights made it tough to see their navigation lights. One shined a light beam on us as we went well astern of him. There were plenty of oil rigs, and we watched for any that were unlit, but most were easy to see. I saw no unlit rigs on my watch, which means there were either none we passed, or I didn't see them and we missed them. I hope it's the former.
After being relieved, I stayed on deck. I started to feel queasy, and just couldn't bring myself to go below. As the early morning hours went on, the queasiness slowly built. I knew I was seasick, the salivation and the headache were definite symptoms. I had taken some Dramamine before I left dock and also after I was onboard, but it seems I was in need of a little more. At one point in time, I thought I was going to be sick and positioned myself in an appropriate place, but I never actually had to commit anything to the deep. I found a place on deck sheltered from the spray and managed to fall asleep.
I awoke shortly after the sun was up, and was greeted by the most amazing water color I have ever seen. It was not really a black color, nor a dark, dark blue, but something between those colors and a dark, dark purple. The swells were about 7-8 feet, and I was hungry, so I ate something and set up on the weather rail watching the water and seeing the color change from that incredible black-blue-purple to a dark green. As the day wore on, the winds piped up and we reefed the jib to help keep the boat from laboring. I started to help with making lunch, and passed the sandwiches to the folks on deck from Jim who was making them. He asked me if I wanted a ham sandwich, and I realized I was getting seasick again. I was reminded of a scene in the Patrick O'Brian books it goes something like this:
Jack: "Are you ill, Stephen?"
Stephen: "No, only slightly incommoded by the bucketing of this vessel."
Jack: "Would you like a nice ham sandwich with lots of juicy fat?"
Stephen: "NO! NO! Just leave me alone!"
It wasn’t nearly that bad for me, nor was the ham that fatty, but I took a slice of bread instead along with some sprite and a Dramamine.
I took another watch, and the day passed on. More and more I was thinking about the end of the race, and our expected finish time. At one time it was after dark, and other times it was before 5pm. We watched the distance to the port Aransas mark slowly decrease, first 30 miles, the 25, them 20, then 15. Finally we got less than 10 miles and I could tell everyone on board was looking forward to getting to the dock and having a shower, a hot meal and a cold drink. As we got nearer the buoy, we heard radio messages announcing two tankers would be entering the channel, and we thought our timing was such that we would lose out as a result, but we were wrong and the two ships entered the channel well ahead of us. We gained on some boats that had sailed above the rhumb line, and rounded the Port Aransas channel mark. We set a whisker pole to goose-wing the jib and kept our speed up at our 7.1kt hull speed we had enjoyed for much of the race. We crossed the finish line at about 5:50pm, and made our way to the harbor. After figuring our where we could tie up, several of us went to the bathhouse and saw the long slow moving line. Baths could wait, but food and beer couldn't. We made our way to a restaurant and I enjoyed one of the best steaks I've had in a long time. It wasn't it was an outstanding steak, but it was wonderful after sailing like that all day. The beer was extra good, too.
We checked into our rented condos, cleaned up and went to sleep.
The next day we spent eating breakfast, doing various chores at the boat and going to the party that evening. The beer and rum drinks flowed, and we found we had won second place in our division, only 40 minutes behind the first place boat and over two hours ahead of the third place boat. Not bad for seven guys who had never raced offshore before.
I returned to Houston on Sunday on a bus, and met the returning boat at the dock on Monday afternoon.
It was a fun time, even though there were pieces or it that were not that fun at the time. I'd do it again, but not for a year.
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