I would love it if my son joined me on the sailing portion of the trip to the Bahamas! He's been sailing with me since he was eight months old, but I realize the ocean can be a scary place for most adults, and he's only 10! He'll be almost 12 by trip time, but that is still young. Do you remember what you were doing at 12 years old? If he does decide to join me for the trip there, back, or both, I know it will have a major impact on his world view. The ocean is the most mind expanding medium I have ever encountered! It's a sailor's best kept secret. However, there's no need for sailors to worry about the oceans getting crowded because most of humanity doesn't think about it, and those that do think about it are too scared to get outside the site of land. It is a wonderfully empty space that 5 time circumnavigator
Webb Chiles calls "The Monastery of the Sea"!
Getting back to Alex, I convinced him to join me for the
Rockport Yacht Club's 2014 Lighthouse Regatta to see how he would handle an all day sail. My friend Bill Coxwell graciously offered dock space, a room to sleep in, and a place at his business,
C Cushions, to store my trailer for the weekend. So, we headed down on the Friday before the race with boat in tow to get setup for the race on Saturday.
On our way down when we were in the middle of farm country far from any town, I noticed the low on fuel light come on. I guess I should have stopped at the last town. :-( In looking at the distance to the next town, it was going to be on the edge of whether we could make it or not. As I considered my options, I realized that I had a lot of gas in the outboard tank. So, we pulled over, cut the bottom off of a water bottle to make a funnel, and put a couple of gallons into the car gas tank. I left about a 1/2 gallon in the outboard gas tank so we'd have a little bit left over for the race to get in and out of the harbor. I was happy to take a little weight off of Ama Mama, but as you will see, this little ad hoc gas transfer became a slight factor in getting to the start line of the race.
While I was getting the boat ready on Friday afternoon, Alex wanted to try his hand at fishing. Since he had never caught anything really big in his life yet, he was excited to be catching little perch and croakers all afternoon.
The next morning, we got up early to get underway for the race. The the first class was scheduled to start at 1300 which meant the multihull start was 1325. The start line was in the
Lydia Ann Channel close to the Port Aransas Light House, but we were docked over 10 miles away at
Key Allegro / Rockport, TX. I was planning for about 2.5 hours to get to the start line, and we left the dock at 930am. I thought that we had plenty of time, but as we got underway, I realized that the wind was coming right from the direction that we wanted to go!
Since we were headed into the wind, there was a lot of wind chop on shallow Aransas Bay. As a result, Alex started feeling a little sea sick and laid down on the starboard cockpit seat, However, since we were on a starboard tack, when a decent size wave hit, he was thrown onto the cockpit floor. Not the ideal way to get him excited about sailing to the Bahamas with me! Of course he cried, and I consoled him with the thought of the excitement of the race start.
We plodded on into the wind. I wanted to get a little closer to the wind and have higher VMG to the start line because I was worried about making the start on time, but I knew that I didn't have much gas left after the gas transfer from boat to car on the trip down yesterday. However, I started up the motor and figured we'd get as much as we could out of the outboard and the 1/2 gallon of gas we had. As we neared the Lydia Ann Channel the chop settled down, and the wind angle came off enough to allow us to sail up the channel.
We inched our way up the channel, and our estimated arrival time at the start stayed constant at 1 minute before start time! We saw the committee boat and the first couple of classes starting, but we were still on the course side of the start line. We finally clawed to windward of the committee boat, and we threw in a starboard tack to head to the line. One of the F-31s was going for the line. So, when we finally arrived at the line and the F31 had already crossed the line, we followed him because we thought the race for our class had started. I looked up at the Race Committee, and they yelled, "You're over early!" Great! The F-31 kept going, but we circled around the committee boat just in time to start on time with the rest of the multihull fleet. That was a close one!
Alex was excited about that crazy downwind start, and we were finally happy to be started and not bashing to windward. The first leg was an easy downind run up the Lydia Ann Channel. As we rounded the first mark into Aransas Bay, we came up onto a starboard reach, pulled out the screacher, and took off at 7+ knots. The third leg was downwind to a leeward mark just off of the club. Then we had to beat up to a windward mark before we could turn around and head for the finish.
We were having fun until the beat to the windward mark. There's one point of sail and sea state that Ama Mama hates - close hauled into short chop. Well most boats and sailors don't care for this either, but Ama Mama struggles more than most due to her light weight. It was on this leg that Alex started feeling a little sea sick again, and he snuggled up beside me as I steered us as high and as fast as I could to the windward mark.
It's not always fun being the last boat on the course, but that is where we found ourselves. At one point, Alex was pretty much done and wanted to bail out. However, I told him we had to finish what we started. So, we soldiered on and eventually finished around 4pm. We were tired and ready for a shower as we headed for the dock.
We showered up, rested, and then headed to the Rockport Yacht Club for the post race festivities. Alex was awarded a hat for the youngest racer of the day, and he won a crane art piece in the post dinner raffle. Of course that was a nice way to end his first long day on the water.
At some point that evening, Bill Coxwell told me that the Rockport Yacht Club was doing a cruise out to the barrier islands to a place they call Tiki Beach the following weekend. So, we decided to leave the boat in Rockport and come back the following weekend for the cruise out on Father's Day.
The next morning while I was getting Ama Mama cleaned up to leave at the dock for a week, Alex wanted to fish again. He thought this little guy was funny! At the end of the day, it was a great weekend!
