Around Long Island Race: Once more to the breach, dear friends

by Joe Heslin

1993

It was all Ray Diaz's fault. He gave us the anchor, the advice, and the course. "Go east to Montauk Point, hang a left and head sort of north to Plum Gut, hang another left, and head west to Hempstead Harbor. Piece of cake.

And so it was that the Blue Parrot proceeded to Staten Island on July 23, 1992 to compete in the Around Long Island Regatta. We had RJ DeRose, Mike (never again) Eagan, George Dunnigan, Hal McLaughlin, Ken (this is absolutely my last ALJR) Grabowsky, Bill Lindemann, Bob Coddington, the writer and Captain Joe Falzone.

We had a small measure of what was ahead of us when we started the race in a driving rain storm. Having once been advised that the human body requires two quarts of water per day to function, a wag on the rail reckoned that we had drunk that much rain water before we got to Coney Island (a long way from Coney's in Huntington). Our eyes hurt from the sting of the rain. That first night was not a midnight cruise; we spent the entire night pounding east into heavy seas (guesses from six to ten feet)). Oh, and the wind was blowing twenty knots from the east. Before morning we had two men up all night with seasickness, three broken ribs on two different crew members and a fractured big toe.

Friday was a beautiful day (nursing injuries) with fair breeze and hot sun. We were scrambling to arrive at Plum Gut before 8 p.m. when the door would shut on us at the Gut. We chased Sting and China Doll up Gardner's Bay all day and never caught them. As we approached the Gut at 7:30 our Captain was encouraging (flogging) us to milk the dying breeze for all possible. Secretly (you never argue with the Captain), I knew that we would never make it. Joe F., the Captain, kept insisting that we would. And so we did. At 9:30 we just inched through with spinnaker up. We got about twenty boat lengths past the Gut when the wind died. I had just started to believe that we made it through before the 5+ knot current started pushing us backwards through the Gut. The Blue Parrot has an open transom and the eerie sounds from eddies and whirlpool that were splashing up from the water in the dark were spooky as we sailed backwards under spinnaker with the current.

The fun began. "Where is the anchor? " "Don't ask me. I have a broken back..."

"Forget it. My ribs are killing me." "I found it." "Don't forget to secure the bitter end." With a mighty heave, we threw the anchor into the churning water to prevent us from giving a whole day's worth of sailing back by drifting backwards to Montauk Point. We then found out what happens when you throw seventy-five feet of anchor into one hundred twenty-five of water. Nothing. And so we went (backwards) through Plum Gut for the second time that night. Lady Luck finally smiled at us. Drifting like so much flotsam in behind Plum Island into over one hundred feet of water and slowly, so slowly we drifted in big circles. We sat there until the middle of the night when a little breeze came in and enabled us to weigh anchor ? and proceed through the Gut for the third time that night. We must have gotten a little woozy because we had a vision that we saw a boat anchored in the middle of Plum Gut. Was it really Wuestwind and why would they tie the bitter end of the anchor to the keel ? They obviously found a better solution to the current than we did. And so we went through Plum Gut for the third time that night.

Three dedicated sailors made a blood oath that night and agreed on two facts. These kinds of revelations come to you when you are injured, exhausted, and out of your head. 1) It was all Ray's fault and 2) we will never do it again.

Three months later ... Kenny, it really wasn't that bad.