Coast Accounting

By Tom Holman

1993

What a treat in January!! For Key West Race Week, Manfred Tichter's cousin, Dr. Richard Marki, shipped his Baltic DP42 "Predator" to Fort Lauderdale. Mark Corbisiero, Jim Fitzpatrick, Bill Lindemann, Thor Paulsen, Joe Williams, and my family and I flew down to join a group of high level sailors from Uhmer Kolius sailmakers and South Jersey J24 fleets. You may have noticed "Predator" in October on a Douglaston mooring or in Sailing World Magazine. She is sporting a new set of Technora-Black Tape-Drive sails ... quite the hot ticket.

The Key West Feeder Race is a 160 mile run from Fort Lauderdale to Key West, Florida. It's an exciting race for a navigator: the winning approach is to hug the reef, to avoid the Gulf Stream running north against you. The course is defined by a series of 25 marks which must be left close to starboard while constantly turning a right hand arc down the keys. Charlie Barthold, neighbor and editor of Yachting Magazine said: You just run the "picket fence" of lights all night long. You might think that the responsibility of keeping a boat with 8 foot draft and a crew of 10 running this fine line (where the water can go from 500 feet to 2 feet real quick in spots) is not all that much fun. I did have two secret weapons.

First was Ed Danciger. Ed, an old friend of Thor Paulsen, had done the race many times. Thor had sailed with Ed and won this very race! Ed at 75 had decided not to do the race on his boat this year and was looking for a ride. I am not exaggerating when I tell you he was the most energetic person on the boat! He would jump up from off watch or a nap, hit the deck: "Why don't we have a tweeker line on that spinnaker? Could give us a tenth of a knot!" He grabbed a snatch block and jumped down on the rail, clipped it on and was trimming for that extra speed almost in the blink of an eye. Of course his navigation experience and familiarity with the reef certainly took the pressure off me.

Our second secret weapon was a brand new Trimble GPS receiver, which I asked the good doctor to purchase for this race. While I am the first to echo the old adage about not relying on these new electronic toys and practicing correct navigation techniques, I must say that I am now a GPS believer. These new devices are tremendously helpful and accurate but are not a substitute for plotting on charts and keeping an up to the minute (every 15 minutes or half hour) dead reckoning plot when sailing in new waters. Because of the closeness to the reef and the poor crossing angles of LORAN lines of positions in South Florida the Loran information would not be accurate enough for this navigator to be completely comfortable. With the new GPS computer we pre built a route of waypoints using the race marks. Upon arrival at each mark the GPS would automatically switch to the next mark giving us the new range and bearing. Of course we had a DR plot on our charts and kept a log. A nice trick is to put in as a waypoint any navigational danger that you want to stay away from (like a rock etc.) and set an alarm band. Should you mistakenly get too close to this obstruction the alarm will sound. Having 2 people double checking things is a very good idea. It's also a bit of info. we just picked up in a seminar at Sail Expo (but that's later in the story): When picking up your race course numbers and letters, have 2 people on board make note and don't confer; then check that they both came up with the same information before you go into your starting sequence.

So how'd we do? Well the race stared off as a light air affair, not the norm for this season. We had a great start and got off to a good spinnaker reach in the light stuff. While racing in light air can be very tedious, the fact that we were up in the front with the big boys was a help. Also sitting up on the shady side of those fancy new sailss on a sunny, warm, January 14th in emerald green water along the beach between Fort Lauderdale and Miami was not so bad either!

In the course of the next 30 hours we had all kinds of weather. Near Miami the wind filled in and we were flying- ideal conditions. The night was warm and clear. The other watch had a lovely breeze and was doing well on the fleet. They made a few sail changes (which is a lot of work on this size boat) and things were good. Our watch took over and soon the wind went light, not a lot of fun. We hung in there and toward the end of our 3 hour watch we did get moving at 6 kts. again. By this time (3 am) we were happy to get some rest. While it is hard to wake after 3 hours sleep, the good thing about the 6:00 am watch is that you get the sunrise, which as it usually is over the water was spectacular.

Upon waking for our next watch we were greeted with quite a story (which I can't believe I slept through). It seems that the boats behind us had started to catch us. We had been up in the front under spinnaker with the A boats. When Ed Danciger came on deck to find the fleet coming down on us, he quickly surmised that something unusual was wrong. Wind and sail trim looked good but boat speed was down, could we be dragging some- thing? Drop the shoot, go head to wind. As our competition went by thinking we had lost someone overboard or lost our minds, up pops a 10 gallon plastic bucket, which had lodged on our keel! Hard to believe, a one in a million shot, the old dragging a bucket trick.

Now we are again moving nicely but spirits are not as high as they were before our bucket incident. How long had we been dragging it? I hour? 2 hours? Oh well. We are still quite a way out from Key West, I guess we won' be in for lunch as planned. We welcome the increasing wind as Predator starts charging through the water. Should we take down the spinnaker? We are carrying it well and doing better than the boats who went to jibs. OK we will hold on. Shortly, the wind goes forward, looks like the squall line is moving toward us. Bang! No broach but we must get that chute down now. We wind up ripping it when the halyard slips and the sail gets out behind the boat and catches on the end of the boom.

For a half hour we have a great duel with "Top Gun", the C &C 37R, in our division. He is trying to overtake us. Now south of Key West the seas are large. Top Gun is riding our quarter wave extremely close. With some great steering and our superior boat speed in these seas Dr. Marki gives him the slip and he falls off our stem wave. Turning the sea buoy and running up the channel to the finish, right off the dock at Truman Annex, we are surrounded with many boats in our class.

After 30 hours and 160 miles we finish up within minutes of the group to take a 5th in class. Had it not been for that spackle bucket it could have been a bullet and maybe even first in fleet!

Dockside at Truman Annex in Key West, a stone's throw from the "Yachting" main tent, finds us in the heart of things. We have 2 days to relax and get the boat back together before the start of race week on Monday morning. Convert from distance racing mode to around the buoys. Sails must be fixed, tanks emptied, rigging repairs made, and sailing instructions digested. As the crew goes off to check out the rental house, I putter around on the boat. My wife Alisa and daughter Natalie arrive after a great 2 day drive down the keys.

Now all the real heavy hitters start to arrive for race week. This is an extremely high-level affair. As we sit on deck we watch the new Tripp 47 "Deep Powder" from Chicago pull into the next slip. I recognize that man standing back aft - Buddy Melges! Walking down the dock, 5 boats over is "Collaboration". Is that Bill Koch and his America's Cup crew? Now, I am beginning to see why this is called the sailing all-star game. Gary Jobson, Tom Whidden--don't try to call a sail loft this week, they are all here. Our heavy hitters come in too; Rick Applin of UK sailmakers and Mark Corbisiero arrive on Sunday. We will sail with 13 people! Good thing it's a big house. (Actually several of us stay in motels.)

Key West Race Week turns out to be spectacular. Are we lucky! Perfect weather for the entire week; it is sunny, temperature 78' and wind east south east from 12 to 23 kts. How did we do? Nobody got hurt-no small feat; this boat on a short course is tough. Monday was our best showing with a 5th and then we settled into our average I0th place position out of 16 in class for the rest of the week. Doctor Richard was disappointed, but upon further thought: We were like a sandlot base- ball team making it to the world series. The IN4S Taylor 40's and J35's gave us a hard time. Mid fleet was respectable, besides, as we pointed out to Richard: Bill Koch and Buddy were fighting it out for last place in their division!

As we got on the plane the weather turned rotten. We understand the cool north wind and rain stayed for the rest of the week. Traveling to Chicago that week on business I had another sailing encounter. Bill Pinckney stopped by the set to visit a very good friend of mine. Bill has just returned from a solo circumnavigation. He is the first black man to ever do that. He was a makeup artist back in New York in 1969 when I too started in the film business.

To finish up the story we have just returned from Sail Expo in Atlantic City. It was a wonderful show. I would strongly advise you to go next year. Preliminary reports are of a success and the industry would like to do it again. Besides seeing the America cubed AC boat "Jayhawk" and the "Cup" itself, the seminars were interesting. We attended Modem Yacht Design-CAD with Dave Pedrick a charming man, who gave an exciting presentation., The racing rules with US sailing president John Bonds himself, Trim for Performance by North Sails, Mariner's Weather and Bill Pinckney's slide show and talk were really great.

Since we did not get started in sailing until "later in life", we are not completely familiar with all the different one design and dinghy classes. Sail Expo had all these boats and their Class Associations present. We enjoyed talking with the "Optimist" and "Blue- jay" folks as well as learning about the Olympic class boats.

The Atlantic City Convention Center is so big the large boats were displayed fully rigged. It was nice to see so many new sailboats on display. The J92 won boat of the year at the show, the new Sabre 36 was unveiled. I enjoyed going aboard the new Nelson/Marek 43 racer built by Carroll Marine. Bruce Nelson and B arry Carroll were on hand to answer questions. The hull with rig and engine weighs only 6000 pounds!

Besides seeing Bayside/Douglaston folks; Thor Paulsen, Mary Dominique, Mike Robinson and Family, the Fitzpatricks, Tommy and Becky Sakas, and Charlie Barthold we ran into our old friends Gary Jobson, Buddy Melges, the Harken Brothers, Tom Whidden and Dennis Conners. Not bad for two months in office!