Billy'sTranspacBlogII-2: Catalina Island Race Installment 2

TranspacBlogII-2: Around Catalina Island Part 2

So, we’ve beaten the CF 37 around the west end, hoisted our spinnaker before they did, and scooted down the back-side of Catalina Island. They mount a charge, but we fight it off. The wind lightens, the light fades, we change to the light-weight spinnaker. Things get quiet. We look at the imposing profile of the back side of Catalina on our left.

The back side of Catalina Island is kind of a foreboding place, perhaps because I have early childhood fears. These emanate from scary stories heard at night on the north side of the island, in a calm and friendly cove called Howlands. Picture a fire, and a father who doesn’t talk much suddenly caught up in a story about the “monster from Iron Bon bay”. The bay is really called Iron Bound Bay, but I’ve always remembered it as Iron Bon Bay. I guess I thought it was adjacent to bon-bon bay or something. Don’t ask me about the monster. I’ve completely repressed the story and don’t want to hear it ever again.

My wife and I actually found the bay on a detailed chart of Catalina Island a couple of summers ago. We were taking a pleasure cruise around the island on the oldest boat in southern California, the yacht Siwash (more on this boat in later blogs), we had decided to poke our nose in there and have a look. The south swell was huge, and the backwash and spray and slop were almost intolerable. The boat rocked and pitched all at the same time. The noise of the seas rolling under concavities right at the sea-land interface is fully unnerving. Extremely low pitched sounds, like the best theater sound system you’ve ever experienced. They definitely sound like monsters. They are monsters. Let’s get the hell out of here before they get us!

So, back to the race. A beautiful spinnaker run, that induced me to catch some sleep before the “parking lot” at the east end. The crew woke me for the jibe, in which we turn 40 degrees to port to bring the wind over our port stern instead of our starboard stern, where the wind had been all the way down the island. We executed the jibe perfectly. Those of you that followed my first Transpac Blog know that this is not a trivial feat. Each corner of the spinnaker has two lines attached. The spinnaker pole that has been holding out the sail to windward on the starboard side, has to swing down past the head-stay where the “bow man” attaches it to one of the lines on the port side of the spinnaker, at which point the pole is hauled back to the port side (you might recall I had been the guy hauling the pole up on the new side on the way to Hawaii two years ago, and hauled with so much vim and vigor that I pulled it right through the sail). The helmsman is supposed to time his swing past the wind to coincide with this hook-up. Well tonight, it actually went smoothly, in spite of the night being PITCH dark. No moon, lots of overcast.

We have a new bow man, Andrew (jeez, did I ever hear his last name?), and he is VERY good. He is focused and quiet, and deliberate, and loves to sail. He hasn’t yet made a mistake and has already bailed us out of mistakes made by other crew members. Yay for Andrew. On this, his first jibe with us, he performed flawlessly.

So now we are approaching the east end “parking lot.” The Psyche crew is full of people who have sailed right through the parking lot, without slowing down. I never have. I later found out that they were sailing in the rare years when there was a southeast gale. Not like the wind today, which was a straight ole westerly, the prevailing wind. They call it a “parking lot”, because the wind usually just shuts off. Nothing. Nada. Ninguno. It causes the greatest anxiety and depression for the boats in the lead, and is the greatest source of hope and renewal for the boats that are trailing. I think because I’ve usually been trailing, I love the parking lot.

One year on board a converted Lapworth 50 called Sumatra, we came into the parking lot dead last. As you approach it from a dead-last position, you KNOW it is calm because you begin to see running lights. Lots of them. We counted them up that one year, and realized that the entire fleet was drifting around in there, and had been for hours. In we came with a westerly, maybe west northwest. We decided we would “hug the beach” and sailed really close to the land, perhaps 25-50 yards off. After losing the westerly, like everyone else, we managed to pick up a sweet little offshore whisper coming off the cliffs and dying before it got to the other boats. We sailed by the entire fleet. I think we ended up finishing 4th out of some 20 or 30 boats. Totally amazingly cool.

The next year we did the same thing, and watched the outside boats pick up wind first and leave us in the mist.

So what would happen this year, wonder we. Well the boys are all thinking the wind will turn south and follow us home, but then we start to see lots of lights. Not the whole fleet, but much more than half of it. Parked at the east end. We blithely come in thinking maybe we can sail right past. We don’t. The wind totally stops. Nothing. Our knot meter finally hits the 0.00 mark, and stays there, and stays there. Actually, 0.00 usually means you are still going forward a little bit. You can look at the water and see it creep past you. But sometimes, the wind goes SO slack that you completely lose the ability to steer the boat. Then it starts these slow turns. “Turning 360’s” its called. Really depressing, but also hilarious, and if it is day-time, you can always go for a swim.

Well, we don’t turn any 360s, but we are slow enough for big schools of small fish to be attracted to our white stern light. We notice them, when we realize that schools of dolphin were racing all around the stern eating the bait.

Ok. So what do you do when you hit the parking lot? You look back at the competition you so skillfully led to this point. Here comes the CF 37, who trailed us all the way down the backside. He sees that we are stopped and takes a hard right out to sea, to try and keep the wind. Damned if he doesn’t keep the wind. He sails right by us, maybe 200 yards outside. He doesn’t have much wind, but he does have some.

So now what the hell do we do? We barely have steerage way. It will take hours to get to his track. This is where everyone else but Steve Calhoun and I hit the sack. Now, I must say that I know why Steve is there, besides sailing the boat as fast as he can. He is the “beam me up” guy. This is an amazing concept that I learned 2 years ago on Psyche in this race. You get into the parking lot, you drift and you drift. The time goes from 2000 hours to 2100 hours to 2200 hours, and you are still drifting. Racing, but going nowhere. Then Steve says, “let’s get out of here.” Oh, wait, no, I think we are catching those guys, I think the wind is coming up. Brroooom.

I can’t tell you what a RELIEF it is when Steve turned on that engine two years ago. We were looking at a noontime finish. Turn on the engine, and we get home before first light! Everyone but the helmsman sleeps all the way home. You roll into bed not all that exhausted. I had never done this till two years ago, but I could verily see the moment coming tonight.

But this night was different. I had the helm, and steered Psyche on a radical course, more or less heading for Newport Beach, about 90 degrees from our course home. I thought, let’s do to the CF what she just did to us. 45 min on that course, and the wind came up a bit, this time out of the east. We were under jib now, just ghosting along, but no more goose eggs. Our speed crept up, and up. Kept her headed out. We crossed way behind the stern of the CF and kept going out, and out. The wind increased a little bit more and a little bit more. Now we were going 4 knots. Turned toward the barn (the course home) and the lights of all the boats inshore were moving rapidly past our forward quarter, our beam and we were leaving many of them behind.

You can see this whole story on the map here.




So, I managed to keep Steve’s hand off the ignition switch. The wind gradually increased for everyone. Here was our east-southeasterly, and it came with misting rain. But we sailed hard into the breakwater. The CF finished in the end just a few boat lengths ahead of us, but because our rating was better we beat her on corrected time, for a 2nd in class, and 7th place in the fleet of 30 something boats. We finished around 4 AM, perhaps 16 hours after we started, all of us feeling pretty good about it all.

I have to tell you one more story about the Catalina Island race. Remember the Siwash I was writing about in Iron Bon Bay? Well, way back in I think 1913, she was 3 years old, and my Grandad was a freshman at Stanford. He brought a bunch of his new college buddies, all cocky and headstrong, as a crew on this same race. A big rain storm had just come through, and they started the race in confused seas and a strong North-northwesterly wind. Really strong. Probably 30 knots or more. The great thing about such a wind, as opposed to the usual west wind is that there is no tacking to get around the island, just point the boat to the west end and sail there. Grandad did, but his crew didn’t. They were all below, puking their guts out, and completely helpless with nausea. But Grandad loved that stuff. Here was Siwash on a close reach going like hell. She was a gaff-headed sloop in those days with WAY too much sail area, but she went fast if you could control her. Grandad could, and did. Single handedly. He rounded the west end and headed down the course, the wind well above 30 knots. No spinnaker that afternoon. He had to drag one of his mates up to help him jibe the massive boom (the wood that holds the bottom of the mainsail). It extended 16 feet past the stern and went BOOM when the wind caught it on the other side of the stern. Then down went the mate for his date with the bilge, and Granddad sped past the parking lot, which was a freeway that year. He told me once that there was NO decrease in wind velocity. He rolled in to the dock around midnight.
Siwash broke the record around Catalina that year, and the record held for 27 years. That is a pretty amazing feat. Grandad was something. Every time I sail at night, I sense his ghost. Especially when I’m on Siwash. His ghost is all over that boat. It is a complete honor to be part of that legacy. Thanks, Grandad.