Ship’s Log
Written by Dave Hoffman,  Pensacola Yacht Club

This April will mark 46 years that sailors have raced down Mobile Bay for fame, glory and cold beer in the annual Dauphin Island Race.  The 1983 event was the 25th anniversary and there were nearly 400 boats ready to celebrate.  Among the competitors was a special boat from PYC that produced a record run and an excellent story for telling around our bar 20 years later.  Also, because it includes a dismasting, big wind, intense controversy and an all-time record, this story rates four brewskis on the Antares Tall Tale Scale.
 
In addition to the pageantry and big parties for the 25th DIR, conditions were perfect for a fast race with 25 to 30 knots blowing steady from the north.  Perfect, that is, if you could get to the start line!  Apparently one competitor lost his rig right in the Fairhope YC channel and blocked others from getting out.  Therefore, the Race Committee decided to postpone the start of the huge PHRF division for 10 minutes and give everyone a chance to make the start.  However, with 300 boats milling around the line getting ready to set their chutes, about half of the first group took off at 0900, the published start time, but ten minutes before the actual start!  With their kites flying, the wind howling, and crews trying to keep the big rigs under control, there was no calling them back.  Needless to say, those that started at the correct time were irate and the RC had a tough time sorting out the PHRF winners.  In fact, after a couple hours of partying, banners began to appear at the award ceremony saying “Real men start at 9:10.”  A real controversy, but it did not impact our PYC crew.

As the story returns to the start line we have the multihulls watching the chaos and waiting for their start time at 0930.  Aboard a Stiletto 27 named FAYA were PYC members Joe Bernard (owner and skipper) and Rick Zern plus experienced catamaran sailors Robert Hines and Tom Jordan.  FAYA was one of the first boats made of very light Nomex honeycomb construction and Rick had her tricked out with a huge chute and the necessary hardware, winches, and rigging.  This was cutting edge technology at the time and FAYA weighed only 1000 lbs, but carried over 1100 sq ft of sail area!  She was a well prepared boat with an experienced crew ready to take advantage of ideal weather conditions.  There was some nervousness as they ran the line because they had never used the chute in this much wind, but as the old saying goes, “Let’s put it up and let God take it down!”  At the gun they hoisted the kite and were off like a rocket.

Joe recalls the first few miles were like playing bumper boats as FAYA dodged monohulls that were rounding up out of control everywhere.  She was overtaking boats at such a speed there was very little time to decide to go above or below the overtaken boat and then quickly set up to pass the next one.  The word “scary” was used often.  However, once FAYA had zigzagged through the PHRF fleet the crew began to concentrate on boat speed alone.  They did not have a knot meter, but Rick had lit a cigarette and noticed the smoke was rising straight up in 25 knots of wind.  So they used that as an indicator of relative speed and if the smoke began to move forward a bit, Joe would heat up the angle to the wind until the smoke was again rising straight up indicating maximum speed!  The crew was about to get comfortable with the incredible speed, the three foot rooster tail behind them, and crashing into the backs of waves when suddenly someone realized “Holy #$%&, we’ve got to jibe this thing!”

Joe and the crew carefully talked through the jibe maneuver three times before they tried it.  The cat had running backstays and a vang that needed to be released and trimmed to keep the mast upright and the spinnaker had to be manhandled across the front trampoline all in sync with the boat going 25 knots through the waves.  However, except for the wind catching the chute a bit early and lifting Robert off the boat into the air for a time, all went well and they successfully jibed two more times before the finish.

When FAYA crossed the line there was no committee boat on station, so they recorded their own time, wrestled the chute on deck, and waited for the race officials to catch up.  The RC soon arrived and gave FAYA a finishing time of 1042 that they had determined by watching the finish through binoculars.  This resulted in an elapsed time of one hour 12 minutes.

Since hosting the Dauphin Island Race is rotated among the area yacht clubs, there is no central repository of race results, times, entries or records for this storied event.  However, articles in the Mobile Press Register for both 1983 and 1984 document that FAYA’s one hour 12 minutes set the elapsed time record.