Juana's Good Time Regatta -- Great Sailing Story

by Damon Linkous

It's just over 500 miles from Memphis to Navarre. I had never gone
that far in just a weekend before, but I couldn't resist the
opportunity to sail the Emerald coast one more time this season. My
boat, a Hobie 18 Magnum was in good shape for the trip. Although it's
an '81 model, pretty much everything on the boat has been replaced or
upgraded in the 9 years I've owned it. Everything that is, but the
standing rigging. As far as I know, the shrouds, forestay, and bridal
wires are original equipment.

The original plan was to leave early Friday morning and rendezvous
with Lee (aka  Capt Teach) with a Hobie 18 and Gill with a Prindle
18-2 and caravan on down to Florida.

I pulled out of my driveway pretty much on schedule after a frantic
search for the trailer wiring adapter I needed to plug my trailer into
the Chevy van I had borrowed for the trip. Unfortunately the illusive
adapter was nowhere to be found so I spent the next hour in the
AutoZone parking lot rewiring my trailer to match the van. I'm hoping
this is the worst setback I experience during the trip.

Back on the road I call Lee to give him an updated ETA and find out
that Gill has dropped out of the trip and Lee's vehicle has dropped
it's transmission, so it's suddenly become a one boat caravan. Lee
still wants to head to Juana's to party, so I stop in Grenada to pick
him up and we are on the road again. Nine hours later (including the
time to change a tire on the van)  we pull into the parking lot at
Juana's Pagoda House, it's about 9:00pm and the parking area is jam
packed with cats on trailers. Registration is nicely organized,
payment of the $50 registration fee nets a wristband for meals and $1
Coronas during the weekend, along with two T-shirts.

The wind is howling across the parking lot and several people comment
that they "hope it keeps this up all weekend", the term "be careful
what you wish for" should have come to mind.

The next morning, after a breakfast of fresh biscuits and muffins, we
begin rigging the boat. The wind was so strong that it really
interfered with the setup process. I moved the boat and trailer
pointing into the wind to raise the mast so I wouldn't break another
hinge casting by leaning the mast to the side. The only big problem
came while trying to raise and furl the jib. With the wind blowing
this hard I couldn't get the sail furled tightly enough at the top to
keep it from slightly unfurling and then attempting to flog itself to
pieces, very frustrating, waiting for the lull that never comes to
quickly furl the sail. (if anyone has tips for raising a Hobie 18 jib
in high winds I'd like to hear them)

It was a strange scene on the beach, most of the boats were now rigged
and sitting on the beach as time for the skippers meeting approached,
but most of the sailors were just standing and staring out at the
water. Everyone was silently evaluating whether it would be wise to go
out in these conditions.

I was doing some thinking. Looking out over the waterway with my legs
braced against the wind I'm thinking about several things.

Could I, with limited salt water experience, handle these conditions?
Could my 21 year old boat handle these conditions?
Could I stand to stay on the beach after driving 500 miles to be here?

The answers turned out... "I think so"... "I think so", and NO! so the
decision was made. One thing that helped was that Lee had volunteered
to crew in the conditions, so with over 500 pounds combined crew
weight I figured that at least I'd be able to keep the boat upright,
although low in the water.

Another factor in my decision was just as important. The area we were
sailing is a perfect place to test the limits of your ability safely.
The waterway between the Navarre and Pensacola bridges is pretty
narrow, sheltered from really big waves by a low barrier island. Both
shorelines are soft white sand, so if it was necessary to bail out it
would be easy to do. (At least two boats did that very thing, beaching
near Pensacola and retrieving the boats with trailers when the
conditions became too much.)

The course for Saturdays distance race for the beachcats 18ft and up
was straight downwind to channel marker 131 and back. The marker was a
little over 16 miles away, it was going to be a wild ride! The smaller
cats, including a group of Hobie 16's driven by Boy Scouts from
Apalachicola, were given a much shorter course which turned around at
marker 121.

Here's a map of the course.
http://www.thebeachcats.com/albums2/album02/juanas_race_course.gif

After a pretty informal start in which the big cruising cats actually
started with their skippers at the bar, downing a "beverage of their
choice" before running for the docks, we started the wild downwind
run.

I nearly gave up and turned around minutes after our start, the boat
felt like a bucking pig, with our crew weight exceeding the weight of
an already heavy 18 it really took me some time to get the feel for
the conditions, but after a little while I began to feel the groove
and we started motoring, I mean really flying with rooster tails to
prove it. The boat felt constantly on the edge of controllability
every minute, we were crashing over waves on one jibe and surfing
ahead of them on the other.

As we worked our way down the channel I'm thinking to myself, the wind
seems to be building up a bit from the 25+ at the start, in fact it
was REALLY building as we approached the elusive channel marker 131.
We rounded the marker in just over an hour, to give you some idea of
our speed. The strongest winds we encountered all day were around the
marker, it was an absolute white-out with the tops of the 4-6 foot
waves being blown completely off causing a blinding spray that stung
my eyes despite my full coverage sunglasses.

Rounding this mark was the scariest things I've done on the water
intentionally. My apprehension started well before the rounding as I
realized that we would now have to sail back up wind against this
"dogs off chains" windstorm. I decided that during the return trip we
would try to hug the south shore away from the channel where the water
was considerably flatter, this would mean a lot more tacks than using
the full width of the channel but I thought we'd gain time by not
having to bash through the bigger waves.

This is where my foresight in growing to 270 pounds and managing to
stay there, and recruiting substantial crew, was paying off. Going
upwind against 30+, bashing through and flying over the waves, we were
definitely testing the load limits of the Magnum Wings. We were
airborne as much as waterborne as we crested wave after wave. I don't
know how many times we tacked, but it was a bunch. I was glad I had
worked out my weather helm problems earlier this year, the tiller was
pulling hard but not unmanageable, a couple of times I caught a cramp
in my tiller fingers and tacked early to find relief.

Approaching Juana's we didn't see a finish line and so headed into the
beach, very satisfied with finishing the course. We wouldn't realize
how rare our accomplishment was until later. While standing by the
beached boat preparing to douse the sails I looked out and saw one of
the big cruising cats cross the finish line! (it had sailed a much
shorter course) I wasn't going to have a DNF after all we'd been
through, so we pushed off and sailed out to cross the finish line a
little over 3 hours after we'd started.

Later, when the results were posted and the stories were told, I found
that we were one of only 6 boats out of 17 which completed the long
course. At least four suffered broken rudders, a couple of blown
blocks or sails, and many suffered so many knockdowns that they gave
up.

Sunday dawned clear and windy, but after Saturday's Near Gale
conditions the Strong Breeze's seemed like a vacation. Sunday's course
was Juana's version of triangles, we sailed down and left channel
marker 121 to port reached over to a mark set near the south shore,
and back to Juana's twice. Here's a picture from Sunday, rounding 121
for the first time.
http://www.thebeachcats.com/albums2/album02/juanas_race_marker121.jpg

A lot more boats started the second day with the more moderate
conditions, we now had two other Hobie 18's to race against. (no
others started Saturday). After a poor start both of them were ahead
and sailing well. I was particularly worried about the all white sails
on one of the two. Whenever I've encountered an all white Hobie 18 it
was usually a serious racer. During the first leg to channel marker
121 which served as "A" mark the three of us crossed several times and
were fairly even, although we were gaining on each crossing. We
rounded "A" in well ahead of the two other 18's and headed over to the
reaching mark, as we started back upwind we really began separating,
it appeared the others were having to really depower to remain upright
while our weight meant we could power up.

That was the last contact we had with the other 18's, at the finish,
after almost 4 hours, we finished about 30 minutes ahead of one and 40
minutes ahead of the other. Of course the two Supercat 22's had nearly
lapped us, and had their boats put away before we finished!

I hate it when people exaggerate wind conditions when they really
don't know the speed for sure, all I can say about the weekend is that
looking at the Beaufort Force Scale at
http://www.r-p-r.co.uk/beaufort.htm the harshest conditions on
Saturday match well with the "full gale" Force 8, with average
conditions Force 7. Sunday was more like Force 6 with a little 7
thrown in.

The best part of the weekend was the fact that we completed both
courses without breaking anything on the boat, and no more personal
injury than your standard "boat bites" that come with heavy weather.
But when someone asked me if I'd be back for Round the Island, I bowed
to Neptune and pledged that I wouldn't push the boat in another
distance race until I replace my aging rigging, it doesn't pay to push
your luck too far.

If your still with me this long I'll make a pitch for regattas
everywhere. Whether or not you consider yourself a "racer", try
attending a weekend event like this. Beachcat sailors are great people
and the local organizers go out of their way to welcome newcomers.
It's also about the cheapest sports participation you can do, most
regatta fees are <50 dollars for the weekend and include some
food/drinks/t-shirts, many regattas have camping available near the
site, or arrangements for reduced rate lodging.

If you commit to sailing in a regatta, you will meet lots of great new
friends and you will sail in locations and conditions you might not
have tried before.

Damon Linkous
Hobie 18 Magnum
Memphis Tennessee
moderator(at)TheBeachcats(dot)com
http://www.TheBeachcats.com