Saving Old Seagulls

A "Legless tale" - the lost diaries: Plain sailing on the sea of Tranquility

After winning the war of wills (man vs machine) and having thrashed the fickle ancient 102 Seagull into obedient service ... or more accurately from tin pot luck and Divine assistance, we were well underway. The rest of our RISR 2011 race was relatively uneventful.

Before we knew it, we were passing a few landmarks that I remembered from 2007: the little holiday houses on the water; the wreck of the 'Vixen' and the point with all the standing, dead Bermudan Cedar trees. The scenery was particularly stunning in the breathless calm conditions and at times we went quite close to shore getting the ultimate 'ring side seat' views. And as we headed towards the dreaded South Shore, the water got clearer and clearer. "Gin clear" didn't begin to describe the clarity.

Our race then became just a matter of fundamental race management, engine monitoring and 'pacing' the drinks breaks:

1. Remember to top up the auxilliary tank so the motor doesn't run out of fuel (and require re-starting ... I had surely had enough of that already). I usually remembered to squeeze the bulb of the remote tank, about 30-40 times every 20 minutes. And if I did forget, Luce would remind me ... maybe once, and only once did the motor splutter as it 'almost' ran out of gas, but we caught it in the nick of time.

2. Avoid the shallow bits ... nothing that a set of polarized sunglasses and a commanding view from conning the good ship 'Legless' from the standing position couldn't handle with ease. Besides, while we were dead in the water wrestling with our reluctant motor, several classes of seagull racers and then the biggest class with a veritable herd of seagull dinghies passed us on the inside. We were able to see where they were going and follow along at a respectable distance.

3. Maintain some basic navigation: remembering that we were now following the herd, that was a no brainer. Besides the course was pretty straight forward: keep the Dominion of Bermuda on the left, seamonsters on the right, with that dip into the Great Sound to the mark off Long Island .. and no cheating by sneaking under bridges. How hard could that be??? Bruce had pointed out a few potential shoals and reefs that I probably should avoid. I had marked them clearly on the chart ... in faint pencil. So it was just a matter of figuring out where we were from landmarks and my GPS unit. I had trusted Luces' local knowledge, but eventually had to sack her as chief navigator when we passed Luces' fifth "Elbow Beach". In her defence, by that stage, we had loitered a fair distance off shore in search of 'clean water' and big fish, so the beaches did look pretty similar.

4. Drink some water with your wine .. or Race Sponsors Finest (Heinekens) or what ever was taking your fancy at the time.

5. Share "the love" and take turns at steering: The race took us the best part of 8 hours and even "Captain Araldite" himself [tends to stay glued to the tiller ... with a white knuckled grip] couldn't last that long without going nuts. So Luce and I swopped 'command' at about RISR quarterly intervals. The ancient one, relaxed the best he could on a number of cushions that Bruce had given us and generally admired the view and followed our progress on the chart. I tried to give a running commentary of sites and history of the island as we went. But with the ancient one being deaf [he couldn't hear the Bermuda frogs at night time] and the roar of the throaty 102 ... I eventually shouted myself hoarse and abandoned the commentary. But the good ship Legless and crew were happy enough ... and who wouldn't be on such a glorious day?

Since we were in touch with other boats, I could estimate that we were going at least as fast as our nearest markers, and I fancied, maybe just a touch faster. Chances of an overtaking move or two, perhaps???

Our first over take was when a red boat on the inside of us had motor problems ... that was all too easy. It meant that we were no longer last dinghy too. Ahead of us we were slowly winding in the next boat, we were to eventually overtake them along the South Shore by taking the 'out wide' option ... but I will speak about that in the next installment "The perils of the South Shore ... and the Bermuda triangle".

It was good to be well underway and making some progress on our nearest rivals and actually doing the RISR circumnavigation (instead of languishing just off the start line DNF-ing). On reflection, our motor issues demonstrated that you can't just expect to rock up to a race with a boat and a motor (even such a normally reliable old faithful 'Seagull ... Best motor for the world') and expect to barrel off to glory and great things. You need a certain amount of sea-trialling to identify and resolve any unforseen problems, make adjustments, test combinations and generally get into the 'zone'. The more sea-trialling the better.

But we all knew that, didn't we??

Photo: Motor grief behind us, it was time to settle back, enjoy the scenery and the little holiday houses on poles, that I remembered from 2007

A "Legless tale" - the lost diaries: The perils of the South Shore

After the excitement of the start settled, the crew relaxed into the race. Team Legless were soon faced with the notorious ‘South Shore’ leg.

Bermuda mostly lies at an angle from Sommerset in the Southwest corner to St Georges/St Davids in the Northeast corner. This more or less divides the circumnavigation into two long legs, The fabled ‘South Shore’ leg and the not so scary ‘North Shore’ leg.
In reality, there is not much between the two, because depending on which way the wind is blowing, the North Shore can be pretty jobbly at times.

The main difference is that the South Shore only has a relatively narrow band of reef protecting the shore from ocean swells. In contrast, the North Shore has an extended area of shallow reef protecting its inshore. The worst you can experience there is a choppy head wind?. Being (relatively exposed) the South Shore experiences more ‘Ocean’ states with bigger swells. Race legends speak of one pre-hurricane RISR where the swell was a massive 18’ high … some sensational surfing runs were experienced by seagull racers on that day. Some of the Wilder RISR racers had to turn back and do the run again … because they were having so much fun!

But there were no such problems for Team Legless cruising the Sea of Tranquility during RISR 2011. We occasionally got a lift from following “nearly one foot” waves that gave us a temporary boost. But our surf runs weren’t anything to get too excited about.

When running the South Shore, there are two routes. The inside reef route is deemed to be the safest option and most of our near competitors on the day were taking that route. Team Legless opted for the oceanic route on the outside of the reef.

There were two reasons for this:

The inshore route can be exposed to ‘clapotis’ (sounds rather like a venereal disease, but describes a sea state where waves from two different directions meet- usually when a swell reflects off a cliff or steep shore and causes chaotic wave patterns. Having spent a lot of time paddling an extremely tippy kayak which is nightmare scary in any sea even thinking of being ‘Clapotic’ … I can recognize clapotis from a mile away).

I fancied that on the day, the inshore route was a bit clapotic and the jobbly seas were slowing us down. This was verified by our speed over the ground recorded on our handy hand-held GPS. At least outside the reef, the waves and seas state should be cleaner.

The other reason for taking the offshore route was that it would put us into deeper water and that ought to improve our chances of catching more and bigger fish.

So off we went, threading our way over spectacular reef formations in crystal clear water. Sure enough, this tactic paid off in dividends as we soon hauled in and passed our second boat, sticking to its course: threading its way through the reefs and clapotis on the inside.

However, looking back on my fishing lures at one stage, I couldn’t help but notice them standing out like luminescent dogs [or should that be lions?] bollos in the gin clear seas. The lures were absolutely obvious in the extremely clean wake behind the good ship Legless. Even my super … ‘If you were a fish you would just have to bite’ rubber-ballyhoo-in-a-big-game-skirt lure was ‘working nicely’: regularly breaking the surface leaving a string of bubbles behind it, couldn’t attract a hit. I guess in those conditions it wasn’t surprising that we never caught a single fish (unlike in 2007 when I regularly caught fish during the race). Certainly, the fishing prize wasn’t looking too good for Team Legless. But I think fishing was particularly slow for all contestants in the RISR 2011 and not many fish if any at all were caught.

The clear and present danger of the South Shore, particularly for slow moving dinghies, is that the South Shore is invariably going to be a long downwind run. The prevailing winds are most likely to be from the South. In the northern Hemisphere that means they are going to be warm. Certainly in RISR 2007 and again in RISR 2011 the South Shore were sweltering downwind runs.

Team Legless roasted in the sun and heat for this years long, long South Shore leg.

This can be the undoing of any unwary seagull racers. You have to have some serious shade protection and drink lots of water or you will roast, get heatstroke and crash and burn … ending under a palm tree at the end of the race (if you make it that far) like some ‘pour’ hapless unmentionable person did in RISR 2007.

You can get away with imbibing a few or more well paced frosty cold Sponsors finest (Heineken) but anything stronger than that will invariably end ‘pourly’. For example, Pimms loaded with lemonade, fresh lemons, Limes and lots of ice makes a most refreshing and cooling drink. It would still be my first choice. But after sipping on peculiarly strong Pimms mix for 3-4 hours there is real potential for serious trouble down the line. Particularly for those of fragile constitutions.

But you might get away with it.

Anything else is going to be close to lethal.

Too much of a good thing was the downfall of an all girl crew on the south shore in RISR 2011, but we will have to deal with that in the next installment: The "Perils of the Bermuda Triangle".

Picture: Race boat legless (without its 102 Seagull race motor)which on the day cut a perfectly bubble and ripple free wake. The very picture of boat design perfection but not what fishing on the day needed