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Thread: New Boat 4 Sled

  1. #3111
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    Quote Originally Posted by solosailor View Post
    Price is Right style: I bid 1 pound more than the highest bidder. I'll bring a scale.
    Bathroom scale vs professional hotshot sailor scale? Bring it on. My Ace hardware scale’s reputation is at stake.

  2. #3112
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    I wasn't the winner.

  3. #3113
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    Last week's first-to-finish and overall corrected time winner of the Newport to Cabo Race was fully outfitted with electric winches. Nothing against electric winches, except they are dangerous if not used correctly, I wonder how the current offshore racing rules (and PHRF) handicap a competitor, if at all, with electric winches?

    On my 10th birthday I was given a South Coast #3 winch handle. It matched only one winch on our family's L/36, the #3 South Coast winch recently mounted by my father on the aft deck. During serious racing, I was relegated to standing in the lazarette, chest high, with my little winch positioned on center line just forward. If lucky, they'd lead a staysail sheet, or light spinnaker sheet back to my winch.....otherwise, my position was out of the way. I was also in charge of the nearby phone book, which if someone went over, I was to rip out pages and throw them over to lead us back to the MOB.

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    Someone did go over once, my younger brother, who was stationed in the bow pulpit to watch for rocks as we short tacked inside and up to the Pt. Fermin Buoy. He saw a rock alright, and pointed downward to it as it passed under the bow. "Rock, Rock, Rrr bang!" as the keel fetched the rock, we did a crash stop, and my brother did a back flip over the bow pulpit. I concluded the phone book's pages would be of little assistance to my brother who swam aft and was quickly recovered by several strong sea scouts.

    The cool thing about my birthday present winch handle was when fitted vertically into the top of the winch, it would unscrew the top plate, leading to the innards, which then were dead easy to clean and oil. I made sure my winch always spun with alacrity and sounded its cocky clicking noise, increasing my hopes someone would send a sheet in my direction.

    Let me digress a moment. In 1920, the last race of the America's Cup in New York Harbor was canceled because of a forecast for winds as high as 23 knots. Fishermen from Lunenberg to Gloucester were amused. On their fishing schooners 23 knots was not even reefing weather. Topsails were set to get them to and from the fishing grounds faster. Winches? "We don't need no stinkin' winches" would have likely been sniggered comment.

    Lipton offered the International Fisherman's Trophy as a prize for the winner of races between the best schooner of Lunenburg and the best of Gloucester. That first year, the DELAWANA from Lunenburg lost to the Gloucester-based ESPERANTO.

    Shock.

    William J. Roue', Nova Scotia's first naval architect, was commissioned to design the schooner BLUENOSE. Launched in March 1921, BLUENOSE was rushed to the Grand Banks to fish in order to qualify for the race that year. She was captained by experienced Lunenburg fishing captain Angus Walters. From 1921 until the last of the schooner races in 1938, BLUENOSE only lost once, in 1930, to the Gloucester schooner GERTRUDE L. THEBAUD, described by a Boston newspaper as "light and winsome with the air of a Boston debutante."

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    BLUENOSE under full sail.

    In 1938 it was a best of 5 series between BLUENOSE and the THEBAUD. On board THEBAUD was a 22 year old masthead man, Sterling Hayden. In his book WANDERER, Hayden wrote what happened:

    "Captain Angus Walters swung his big salt-banker BLUENOSE in past the Boston lightship, strapped her down, and sent her rampaging up harbor in time for a welcoming luncheon thrown by the governor on behalf of the Commonwealth. Those who were there pronounced it a dandy affair: plenty of dames, plenty of booze, plenty of platitudes. Captain Angus wasn’t there. He stayed by his vessel instead. “Let ‘em spout,” he barked. “I’m getting ready to race.”

    The mayor of Gloucester passed the word to the better saloons on Duncan Street that he expected a little decorum, a little restraint… during the racing. When they heard this, the boys in the red jack boots and the checked shirts smiled. Saloon keepers are smart: by the time BLUENOSE arrived there wasn’t a piece of moveable furniture in a single waterfront bar.

    October came in like a lamb, mewed for a few days, roared like a lion for the better part of two weeks, then trailed off into November. The first two races were sailed in moderate winds and sunshine. THEBAUD took the first one by thirty seconds, and BLUENOSE waltzed off with the second. During the scheduled three-day hiatus that followed, Gloucester got down on its knees and prayed for a living gale. While Gloucester was busy praying, Angus Walters took advantage of the moonless midnight hours to scan the weather forecasts and juggle around with his ballast. When the Clerk of the Weather predicted a breeze of wind–into BLUENOSE went an extra ton or two of pig-iron ballast. When the Clerk called for light airs–back on the wharf went the pigs. Pretty clever. It was also against the rules that governed the races. But Captain Elroy Proctor of the Master Mariners Association and Miss Ray Adams, Ben Pine’s partner, were pretty clever too. They sprinkled a layer of sand over the ballast pile, and Angie was caught red-handed. “Some cute,” said Gloucester. What Angus said did not appear in the Gloucester Times. Everybody shrugged. After all, the little Lunenburger was more than just a crack racing skipper: he was renowned as a dairyman, and like all businessmen he wanted to win and to hell with your goddamn rules.

    The day of the third race dawned with rain and a driving easterly gale. All but one of THEBAUD's crew smiled, and I was the one who didn’t. The reason was simple enough: only the day before, I had been turned from mastheadman to navigator because my predecessor had got all but lost in the second race. To make things worse, Captain Pine was in the hospital with a sinus attack.

    A cannon on the Coast Guard boat let go with a puff of smoke and the race was on. Both schooners hit the starting line going twelve knots and the Canadian pulled ahead. Captain Cecil Moulton hung to the THEBAUD's wheel with his boots full of water and his cap rammed down on his eyes. We averaged thirteen and a half to the first mark, where forty brawny Gloucestermen lay back chanting and straining on swollen manila sheets. “Haul, you bastards, haul!” cried Harry the cook, buried waist deep in the hatch, clutching his derby in one hand, a mug of rum in the other."

    ("Electric winches? We don't need no stinkin' electric winches.")

    "The BLUENOSE tore past the plunging buoy two lengths ahead of us and swung hard on the wind. Her long black snout, streaming spray, reached over a steep sea, then fell like a maul into the trench beyond. Her scarred old timbers shuddered. Her spars pitched hard against their tracery of shrouds. High far aloft, her foretopmast backstay parted and the wire rained down on deck. Fiery Angus–never a man noted for patience–laid down on the wind-honed waters a savage barrage of four-letter words.

    With this stay gone, they were forced to strike their big jib topsail. The smaller THEBAUD forged by to windward, slogging her way uphill now, through charging white-plumed seas. This was the windward leg. Fifteen miles away, dead into the eye of he wind, lay a small white buoy. The visibility was about two hundred yards at best–less in the squalls, of course. Back and forth the two great wagons tacked, sawing away at the base course. When they came about, you could hear the flogging of canvas halfway to Scollay Square. I’m all right, I kept reassuring myself, so long as the wind doesn’t shift. If we can’t find the buoy, they’ll not blame me too much, what with this horsing around, first to the southeast, then to the northeast–with Christ knows what for a current setting beneath the keel. But if the wind should haul and we run for the mark–and I have to conjure a fixed course–what in hell then?

    The wind hauled. I pored over the chart, gauging and guessing and praying. I crossed myself twice, exhaled with resignation, and called out to Cecil: “Let her go east by south and a quarter south.”

    “East by south and a quarter south it is!” his voice came through the hatch. I wished I were Irving Johnson. I wished myself back on the masthead, where there was nothing to do but curse, work, and spit downwind–all the while thinking how tough you were. I took the binoculars and made my way forward past the prone bodies of thirty men–half of whom were skippers of lesser craft. I climbed halfway up the lee fore rigging, locked my legs through the ratlines, and smoked. For forty minutes she blazed a trail with her rail buried deep in foam. The harder I looked the less I saw. Either that, or there were buoys everywhere: dozens of baby buoys bouncing around, plunging like pistons between helmeted seas.

    “That’s it, isn’t it, Hayden?” Cooney the sailmaker called from his place in the bows.

    “I think so,” I called back calmly, seeing nothing yet, stealing a glance at him, from under my binoculars. The BLUENOSE was far astern. The buoy lay dead ahead. If Cecil hadn’t knocked her off a touch, we might have run it down. You lucky bastard, I muttered under my breath; and swinging down to the deck I sauntered aft, looking the world in the eye, vindicated, my belly afire with pride.

    Rounding the mark, we flew downwind like a gull, bound for the finish line. The Coast Guard boat, with its cargo of seasick race committeemen, had quit and run for the cover of Boston. We clocked ourselves across the line. But fishermen are casual about some things. Nobody knew for certain whether we should leave the marker to port or starboard; so we finished twice for good measure, then jogged along slowly, the gang all on their feet, tired, but not too tired to line the rail and give three cheers when the big Queen of the North Atlantic came booming down on the line."

    Alas for the THEBAUD's crew, BLUENOSE went on to take the next two races and won the series 3-2 and became the icon of Nova Scotia, in fact all of Canada. In 1946, BLUENOSE was lost on a reef off Haiti. In 1963, a replica of the BLUENOSE, BLUENOSE II was built in Lunenburg and to this day remains a proud symbol of Nova Scotia and Canada.

    Sterling Hayden became a movie actor. But always preferred his time aboard schooners...

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    Last edited by sleddog; 03-26-2019 at 09:24 AM.

  4. #3114
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    Now THAT was classic Skip writing. The kid whose parents didn't have to photo shop his application in order for him to get into Stanford on a sailing scholarship. And always with the great photos. Thank you. I gotta say, it is always a pleasure to read about the early SledDog. Makes my day.

    And with that I will introduce the segue away from this hallowed thread, sorry to have hijacked it for so long. For those interested in the rudder prize, see New Rudder for Dura Mater.

  5. #3115
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    Well done, Skip! We linked it over to MARTHA and her merry schooner crew. C&V

  6. #3116
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    "Taking the ground," AKA running aground, whether on purpose or by accident, is fading into last century sailing diction. Once an English Admiralty law definition, lest you "take the ground" with your Thames River Barge onto private property as the tide falls.
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    In a long life of taking the ground, three extra-ordinary occasions stand out: In each, no damage was done, and each of the three groundings placed the boat in a unique position (winning an important race, into a glowworm cave, putting the transom under one of New Zealand's most beautiful waterfalls.)

    Taking the Ground #1. 2nd Inshore Race, Admirals Cup, Cowes Week, Solent, 1977 aboard iMP We had a 15 mile weather leg southwest up the Solent (channel between the Isle of Wight and the mainland of S England) against a tide flooding strongly east against the IOR Admiral's Cuppers.

    iMP, 39 feet, was one of the smallest boats, and we often had a struggle keeping clear air from the bigger, faster 40 footers up ahead ahead. They loved to tack on our little Green Machine...

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    In this race, short tacking the mainland shore with iMP's 7 foot draft kept us in slack water, out of the 2-3 knot river of flood current slowing the bigger boats further offshore. The wind, SW at 16-18, was the top end of our #1 jib, and our wire sheets were drum taut.

    A week earlier, during practice, we had scouted this area, the spit and shoals off the mouth of the Beaulieu River. What we found was a broad expanse of flat soft sand and mud, an underwater plain, where we could safely sail with just inches below the keel at half tide.

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    Each time we tacked up the Beaulieu spit, near Needs Oar Point, the boat would straighten up, the keel would dig in the sand bottom, and we'd temporarily stop. As I spun the boat hard, Bill Barton sheeted the genoa on the new tack, the crew would hike hard to leeward, iMP would begin to heel, freeing the keel from the bottom, and off we'd go, leaving a keel skidmark and swirl of sand astern.

    We did this for an hour, dozen tacks or more, each time gaining handsomely on the big boys stemming the current offshore. So visible were our gains, that some of the competitors decided to follow. Nope. They drew 8 feet and more, too deep get their keels off the bottom in our own private Idaho.

    Good Times.

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    Last edited by sleddog; 03-30-2019 at 10:34 PM.

  7. #3117
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    Stories like this always remind me of the time I asked Kame Richards how close was too close to take advantage of the counter current in the bay. He answered with: That depends on whether you're in your boat or someone else's...

  8. #3118
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    That chart reminded me that elsewhere, "red-right-returning" will land you in the mud.

    Of course they also DRIVE on the wrong side of the road so in a way it makes sense. In a way.

  9. #3119
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    That last photo is terrific!
    I like the rooster tail coming off the keel!

  10. #3120
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    Quote Originally Posted by Daydreamer View Post
    That last photo is terrific!
    I like the rooster tail coming off the keel!
    iMP's color scheme attracted a lot of admirers in England and added to her legend. In 1977 we had a duffle onboard with the latest in dental floss: waxed, green, mint. Whenever fans came by to check out the boat, we would liberally dispense "iMP" floss....the Japanese thought this was cool and would bow, thanking us profusely for their iMP floss.

    In one Admiral's Cup race. we needed to floss iMPS rudder, hanging Ragnar by his feet. He snagged a bag with the boathook, pulled it aboard, reads the labeling, and says, "What's "Bandini?"

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