12 Hours on the Water-A Sailing Race Adventure

It was a busy week at work last week. We're in the final stages of creating a 'relationship management' database through which we can begin to track and be accountable for, well, the relationships that we form and develop as a  Workforce Development Team. So I was very much looking foward to a lazy weekend of cleaning up the house and reading some classics through iBooks on my brand new IPhone (yes I finally made the switch from the old Blackberry, and while I miss my keyboard, the accessibility of applications via the IPhone are much worth it)

So there I was having a nice evening in on Friday evening. I cooked up a stirfy ensemble of fresh green beans, yellow squash, corn, celery, green bell peppers (my coworkers and I all pitched in for a weekly box of vegetables from local farms, very cool, check it out at http://homegrowngainesville.wordpress.com) and was watching the latest Harry Potter film when I got a call from a recent acquaintance that I had made through the Gainesville Power and Sail Squadron (a group here in Gainesville that hosts events and educational opportunities for people with boat). He happened to be entered in a "Mug Race" (http://www.rudderclub.com/mug.html), which also happens to be "the longest sailboat river race in the country". At a wopping 38.5 nautical miles, he informed me that there were many years that, due to lack of wind, no one would finish the entire race. And most years, it would take people nearly 12 hours to finish.  So, did I want to come along and crew his Sirius 21 foot sailboat with him?

With an opportunity like that, of course I said yes! So I planned to rise at 5:30 the next morning and hit the road to Palatka (about an hour away) where I'd meet him at a marina and jump on the boat to start the race at 7:30. 

Sunrise on the drive west to the St.

His boat is a definite fixer-upper. The two days prior, he had sailed the race course going the opposite direction and had found he had some problems taking on water. So we had some bailing out to plan to do if things got too windy. Other than that he explained that she sailed fine and that the jib (little front sail) was mine to man.

At 7:30 we were off, and after some initial complications with some of the rigging not being up correctly, we were on our way.  Partway through the course, Bill (the man I was sailing with) decided to go wide through one of the bends in the river and then cut across the top section. As crew I just followed along, but in my head, I knew that even if the wind was excellent we'd be putting ourselves way off course and likely fall behind anyway.  Well, it turned out the wind wasn't good like he had projected, putting us about 45 minutes behind the other boats. On a 12 hour course, that's understandable, but it still didn't feel good.

Notice how flat the water is-sailing on glass! Not a good thing!

And then...the wind died. We were sailing on glass, which essentially meant we were not sailing at all but sitting on the water and waiting.  Here and there for the next 4 hours we had some good runs with wind. But when we arrived at a long stretch that we expected to be blowing with wind it was totally dead.  Bill called a friend who was on land and asked him what kind of time we were making (if there was any way we'd make it by the 8:30pm race end time).



After some calculations, he reported that at the rate we were going, we'd make it to the finish in approximately 38 hours.

Ouch. So, with neither of us having a true agenda to be competitive in the race, we decided to sail a bit longer, and then motor on back to our start marina and then take my car to Jacksonville (30 minutes by road) and celebrate with those who had finished (not that we were expecting there to be many people).  After a free spaghetti dinner and some beer, 8pm rolled around and the first boats started to come in (remember, that's after over 12 hours on the water). The only people that ended up finishing the race by the cutoff were about 10 catamarans (who are always faster than monohaul boats) and the other 180+ boats were at various intervals along the river.

To say the race were a success would be false, but even without success I had a wonderful time and made a few new friends (and boy am I tan!)

I'm so happy to be involved in sailing here in Florida. It's definitely one community that I'll continue to be a part of throughout my time here. :)