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Round the Rocks Race Short on boats, but not on adventure. By Tami Shelton The second annual Round the Rocks race at Grand Isle was certainly worth going to and worth every cent of the entry fee. You should have been there, is all I can say! I had arranged to crew for Dan Robertson who races an H18; his crew was out of commission, as was mine, and besides, Dan had recently bought a spinnaker and I was eager to see what it was like, so David and I caravanned together with John and Brent Driggers. On the way to Grand Isle via the scenic Highway 90, (the same as referred to in Jimmy Buffett books), we watched the cane bend in the wind; even inland it was 15 or so. The closer to Grand Isle we got, the harder the wind blew; it sure wasn't going to be like last year, where the wind was calm. Turning off Hwy. 90 on to Highway 1, which follows Bayou Lafourche (lah-foosh), was like traveling back in time to when Cajuns lived in houses on piers, and everyone had boats in their backyards. Some of the houses were right out in the marsh, with parking near the road and a canal leading to the front door. After crossing myriad drawbridges, we arrived at Grand Isle, and after some confusion (the directions led to the Community Center, but nobody was there), we arrived at the Grand Isle East State Park, our camping site. No better greeting or welcome could possibly have been there than was the sign on the toll booth, "NO JET SKIS"! I couldn't believe it! I wanted pictures... of course nobody brought a camera, damnit! We set up camp; word passes fast in Grand Isle, because soon after we arrived, a man came up to us and identified himself; it was Andy Galliano, one of the organizers. He told us that there was going to be boiled shrimp and red beans and rice, beer and drinks, all at 5:00. Well, that gave us some time to set up our boats and get a little sailing in. John and Brent went out first, followed by Dan and me, and then David. Near shore the surf was 2-3 ft, not hard to get out thru, but once you began to get away from shore the waves picked up to some 4 ft plus. In fact, the Coast Guard said it was 5 feet. And the wind? Gusts were from 15-25, sveraging 20-25 overall. Dave, singlehanding as usual, lasted about 5 mins and bam! he was over. Whoa! Takes a lot to get Dave's 7 ft self flipped, and it wasn't a pitchpole, neither. Dave soon righted himself, and we all dinked around, but soon got tired and went in so we could EAT and PARTY. The skippers' meeting/race party/registration was held aboard the "Paisan," a houseboat moored in Pirate's Cove Marina. Talk about a houseboat; literally a house on a barge, this, with all the trimmings. We cozed up in the living room, watching the weather channel (which told us that the wind was 6 kt, GO FIGURE), eating the excellent boiled shrimp (you had your choice of spicy or mild) and killer red beans and rice, with baked hot sausage on the side, and chips, and beer, and liquor... they had enough food for 60 hungry sailors... but the odd thing is that only 5 showed! The intrepid sailors were: Doug and Camille Stein with their Nacra 6.0NA, Gus Meijes (sorry if I spell this wrong, Gus) and his girlfriend (didn't get her name, sorry) on his H16, David Tilley with his H16, John and Brent Driggers with their H18, and Dan Robertson with H18. Didn't matter, the party wasn't dampened in the least, as apparently the locals were using the race as an excuse to party themselves, and what a bunch! We were regaled with all kinds of Cajun humor, as a fella named "Dude" entertained us all with a roast of his friend (poor guy, he just blushed), making bawdy jokes of all kinds, and giving us a technical description of the uses of the friend's cane (you'll just have to e-mail me and ask...can't repeat here). We laughed so hard it hurt, I swear. We left the party for our tents, noting that the wind was STILL blowing hard (our dome tent was leaning over enough to touch our feet). About 3 am I was awakened by the silence. The wind had knocked off.... Next AM I arose bright and early at 7, to be greeted by the whistling of the rebuilt wind, and hearing the louder hissing of the building surf. Even in the AM the surf looked taller than yesterday afternoon, and the wind was already well blowing as hard as before. HMMM. Dan prudently decided not to run his spinnaker; neither did Doug and Camille. Brent had second thoughts, not having much heavy-weather experience, so David and John went out together on John's H18. |
| The race was to begin at 10 AM, so we did breakfast at our tents and prepared to sail to the start about a half-mile or so west of us. Got to the start beach, to be informed that since the sea and wind had picked up, the chase boats the race committee had arranged couldn't go out, and the Coast Guard was NOT happy about covering the longer offshore course. So they decided to make it a windward-leeward course, |
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following closely the beach,
and not going offshore to the reaching mark (a platform). In talking with a local, we learned that the windward mark was quite hairy, being near a shoal
where the water went from shallow to 100ft. "Watch, the waves get large there..." John Suares showed up with his Nacra 5.5Uni, but changed his mind
after looking at the conditions, as did Eric Galliano (both of these guys are singlehanders). John and Dave arrived to the start after us, to find themselves
with a broken rudder casting. Fortunately since Eric had decided not to race, he was kind enough to lend them his casting. Since the race was a beach start, we anxiously waited at our boats for the call of, "ready, set, GO!" We jumped on, sheeted the jib and off thru the surf we went. Doug and Camille headed up high almost immediately, smoothly pulling away from everyone; didn't even look as though the waves even existed for them. I glanced over to starboard to see Dave and John hooking up and pulling away, and Gus and girlfriend getting themselves ready to go. |
| View from the rear: Tami's sail. We started off and not being at our best upwind, watched the Nacra and the other H18 (John and David) pull away from us right away. Poor Dan really needed some weight out there and I just wasn't enough. Gus and girlfriend got hooked up and double trapped and let me tell you, that guy can really sail a 16! |
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He was going after the bigger boats with a vengeance, passing us up almost like nothing and heading hard on
John and Dave. We beat to the mark and rounded without incident, and got ready to go down (Dan's favorite point, and mine also; we were pretty sure
we could catch up), and -whap!- Gus' H16 went over in the big shoal waves just ahead of us; looked to us at first like a pitchpole (it was a dismasting)...
we were too busy watching him and didn't sheet in, much less head up to avoid the shoal. All of a sudden I felt the boat lurch upward, looked behind
me to see nothing but blue-green water. High high OH S**T factor, up, up, OVER! we got broached! Took us a couple of minutes to shake out and figure
what happened, then we turned the boat back over and somewhat shaken headed up and out again. The Coast Guard, bless 'em, was right there at the
mark to help Gus. Some of the waves there had to be well over 6 ft. It was weird, weird. Dan looked over at me, and he was a comical sight; one of the
lenses in his sunglasses had fallen out. "Rogue wave?" he said. We decided to get the hell outta there and headed up like we should have, then went
on down towards the lee mark. Dan told me as we were heading down that today was his first unintentional flip, and I could believe that... I could see he
had gotten shaken up by the flip and tell the truth, so was I. Bay sailing ain't NOTHIN like this.... We rounded the lee mark, Andy Galliano's monohull, "Adios," a bright yellow thing. We had to jibe twice to get it right. Heading back up again, the final leg, we managed to get into a fleet of shrimp boats and had to wait on one to pass. After, things seemed to smooth out, and we just went on in. Glad to be back, we just laughed it off and were glad to have tried and survived. From Doug's point of view (Nacra 6.0NA): "Going upwind we had to head up to stall the boat in the puffs to keep from going over - we got air on a couple of the waves! We left the jib furled on both the windward legs and I felt more in control. Once we rounded the windward mark, we pulled up the boards, headed up a little to avoid the shoal and then fell back off to go to the leeward mark. Looking back we saw Dave and John staying with us; we weren't putting any distance on them so I figured, what the Hell, all we can do is go over, and unfurled the jib. We took right on off and got away finally from the H18. We furled again after rounding the leeward mark to head on in." David Tilley's viewpoint (H-18): "We left the line with trepidation, worrying about that different rudder casting, but once we got off, we got to flying a hull; we were gittin' it! We headed offshore to get away from the small chop, also remembering that roll tacking is really hard in those heavy seas. Every time we tacked we had to back up to minimize screwing up tacks (we used Rick White's backing-up technique, learn it). Unused to one another and the conditions, we were slow at first, but then we got the groove. We used inertia to get us to the wavetops where the gusts waited and that seemed to work out. "Approaching the windward mark, a green channel marker, we went wide to allow for the shifty winds we anticipated there. With the mark abeam, we headed off, jibed around immediately. On making the jibe, we hardened up a little to clear the shoal, keying off the wind direction as to where we were rather than looking up. We "sheeted in and maxed out," and really began to haul ass when I looked up, and Damn! We were heading STRAIGHT for the mark! 'Prepare to mount the mark!' I yelled. We veered off to minimize damage, taking the mark straight on the point of the bow rather than scraping the entire gunwale of the boat. -CLANG!- We extricated ourselves with some trouble, using again Rick White's wonderful backing technique, and did our stuff and again set forth. "Due to our disorientation, communication between John and I was after limited to 'push stick, pull stick toward you,' and 'other way' 'o.k.' We again headed up to avoid the shoal, and then headed off downwind. We did get into some stomach-lurching waves on top of the shoal; I was glad to be on board rather than trapped out getting beat up by those big ol' waves. "Downwind we went, keeping on the very edge of stalling; heading deep in puffs until it just began to stall the sails and then heading back up a little. As the jib leech had loosened on us upwind, the jib had wrinkled up so it was almost useless. We were really glad to soon see the 'Adios', Andy Galliano's monohull. Poor man, his boat was the leeward mark and he had to sit for hours in those seas, waiting for all of us. To find him, we had keyed off the Nacra who was keeping abeam, jibing right along the shoreline; doing that, he'd gained the layline length staying so close. "We jibed around the mark three times before we could make it. With no jib, we headed back to weather on the final leg, John pulling with all his strength in both arms to fight the weather helm. I controlled the mainsheet as crew and John did a fine job of keeping the boat on one hull and working the waves, and this teamwork succeeded in making the last windward leg a fairly dry ride back in despite the waves. "Unfortunately, we picked the wrong entrance between the rock breakwaters and had to tack twice to get the finish right, but we still came in hard on the Nacra's heels." This was certainly a race for all of us to remember, and we were glad to have been there. We all came out like bandits: the three finishers got $200, $100 and $50, EVERYONE got $25 gift certificates from Sea Chest, we also all got certificates from Murray's giving us $25 off a harness, they had nice door prizes (belts with Hobies on them, and keychains and other stuff), and we generally had a great time. We'd like to thank everyone who was involved for a great job, and especially thank Jean Landry, Andy Galliano and the Coast Guard. Tami Shelton trs4389@usl.edu Back to Features |