In two previous posts, I described preparations made to my H340, Cut I, in preparation for the Regatta de Amigos, a 630 nm offshore race from Galveston to Veracruz, Mexico. In this final part of the trilogy, I write about the actual sailing and race. The race started on June 7 just off the Flagship Hotel pier, a point a few miles west of the jetties leading out of Galveston Bay into the Gulf of Mexico. The fleet was divided into several starting classes. Start times were staggered every 20 minutes beginning around 4 p.m. The late-afternoon start allowed the many entrants trekking down the Houston ship channel from the northeast corner of Galveston Bay to reach the starting line without departing their homeports a day before the start of the race. On the other hand, Cut I is berthed at Serendipity Marina deep inside of Matagorda Bay—a long day’s sail downcoast from Galveston Bay. Accordingly, to make the Friday start, we loaded our gear onto Cut I on Tuesday morning, said goodbye to our well-wishers on the dock and shoved off about noon. By around 4 p.m., we were out the jetties of Matagorda Bay and into the Gulf of Mexico. The trip through the jetties was one of the roughest I’ve encountered; we had wind against waves and very steep, large seas to plow through. Once in the gulf, the seas laid down significantly, but were lumpy and not rhythmic. I’ve been most blessed on all my outings into the Gulf of Mexico by never becoming seasick. Nic, a veteran Gulf sailor, had experienced some seasickness previously and was wearing “the patch.” Ed, having experienced both seasickness and adverse reactions to the patch on prior outings, elected to use the new electronic wristband to control any seasickness tendencies. This device sends electrical shocks into the wrist and the strength of the shocks can be adjusted; the settings range from 1 to self-electrocution. He had it cranked up to 80 percent power most of Tuesday night. Around 6 pm, Nic fixed red beans and rice for dinner; in retrospect this wasn’t the best choice of cuisine for rough-sea conditions. Even so, it tasted good to me and the two crew were able to keep their food down, although it was a struggle for Ed. The stretch of Gulf between Matagorda and Galveston Bays is mined with offshore oil rigs. The radar on Cut I is very comforting and is the key navigational aid in avoiding these hazards. The night was rough, but the sailing was mostly uneventful. One piece of equipment, the Autohelm 4000 autopilot, stopped working as it struggled against the irregular waves. We hand steered for most of the night and most of Wednesday. On a positive note, the lee cloth and lee board I’d made for the settees worked as planned and provided secure berths for sleeping. We arrived at the Galveston Bay jetties and the Houston ship channel about mid-afternoon on Wednesday. By early evening we were in a slip at the Harbor House Hotel, a small marina on Galveston Island right in the thick of the great restaurants on the island. We had a wonderful meal in a nearby restaurant and downed a few gallons of Heineken before retiring for the night. On Thursday morning, we tore the autopilot apart and discovered that a small nylon gear—one among several dozen—was destroyed. We jury-rigged a fix, but I wasn’t confident the repair would hold up for the entire trip. So, I rented a car, we drove to Houston, and we bought a used drive unit that had been completely reconditioned at the factory. Later on Thursday, Nic and Ed hoisted their beefy captain up the mast and I took a good look at all the rigging. Everything looked fine. By late afternoon we had topped off the fuel tank and, as mentioned in an earlier post, had 20 gallons of extra fuel strapped down on the port rail. Thursday evening we sat in the cockpit and enjoyed a couple glasses of wine from the bottles Ed had selected for the trip. On Friday morning we awoke to a lot of commotion in the slip next to us. Sometime during the night a J140, Accumulator, had tied up. Her crew was busy unloading provisions and sails and sails and sails from a van. The young crew of seven or eight was busy organizing their boat for the race. It was evident this would be a boat contending for the first-to-finish honors. They were friendly guys and jokingly we asked them to save us a spot on the malecon in Veracruz—we’d try to be there within a couple days of Accumulator’s arrival. While I had asked my crew to bring no more “stuff” than they could fit in three sea bags, Accumulator’s captain asked each of his crew to share one sea bag with another crew. A serious difference in attitude, eh? Although there was no doubt Accumulator would get to Veracruz long before we did, I thought we might enjoy the trip more. We left the marina around 11 am and idled down the ship channel, through the jetties and around the corner to the starting line. We arrived 45 minutes or so before our start along with 50 plus other boats entered in the race. A zephyr was ripping out of the south at about 4 knots. While we were bobbing around waiting for our start, we spotted our good friends, the Martins, from our marina on their F27, Tumbleweed. They were the only multi-hull entered in this year’s edition of the race. They had worked hard preparing the boat for the race and are very competent sailors; they looked ready to go. At the start of the race, Ed was still wearing his electronic wrist shocker but had it turned to a low setting and Nic had abandoned wearing patches. He indicated the patches changed his personality and left him feeling uneasy and nervous. Thus, the calm seas at the start of the race were welcome because they would give all the crew a chance to gain their sea legs with little dependence on medicine or gadgets. I couldn’t get Ed and Nic involved in an effective starting strategy, but we ambled across the starting line in the middle of the pack. Because the wind was light and blowing more or less directly down the rumb line (about 181 degrees), we intended to put in a couple hours of motor time as soon as we were eligible to do so, which was 30 minutes after the race started. You may recall from earlier posts that Cut I was entered in a division of the race that allowed use of the autopilot and up to 36 hours of motoring time. By around 5 pm we were motoring down the rumb line. Looking far ahead and inside the rumb line, we could see Accumulator working her way to the front of the pack. By around 7pm we were well to seaward of the rest of the fleet and we shut down the motor. Accumulator was about to disappear over the horizon. Towards evening the wind began to build and we were able to maintain a heading within 20 degrees or so of the rumb line. During the night the waves began to build modestly and Cut I was pitching a bit. Early Saturday morning an unfamiliar and unpleasant noise emanating from the area of the mast awoke me. The noise was rhythmic with the pitching. On the H340, the mast struts connect to the mast with 3 rivets per side and two bolts. The noise I was hearing was due to the nuts on the two bolts working loose and allowing the mast to work against the rivets. My heart sank when I made this discovery because I had replaced the rivets and bolts after this very same thing happened six months earlier during another offshore race. My fear was that the loose bolts had allowed the strength of the rivets to be compromised and that the strut and mast were going to continue working against one another. After some discussion with the crew, I decided to just tighten the bolts and keep an eye out for any movement between the struts and mast; I had extra rivets on board and a rivet gun as well, but I didn’t want to attempt to replace the rivets at sea. I could cause a significant problem to become a disastrous problem. Tightening the bolts turned out to be the cure and I didn’t replace the rivets until I was back in Texas after the race. Unfortunately, I kept my log notes of this race on a notebook computer that has since expired. Accordingly, I don’t have a precise record of when I did what during the race. Of course this is somewhat liberating because my story cannot be strictly reconciled to the facts. For the rest of Saturday, we sailed within 20 to 30 degrees of the rumb line making 5 to 6 knots most of the time. As we sailed it became apparent that all of the extra gear and provisions we had put aboard Cut I was constraining her performance. Nevertheless, since my crew was viewing this as a “nonrace” anyway, the loss in performance was unimportant to everyone but me. At this point I should add that I selected this crew because I thought we would be compatible on a small boat for an extended period. I have other crew who are much more oriented to racing that have made Cut I a very competitive boat on shorter offshore races. However, those guys would be like caged animals on a race of this duration. Early Saturday evening we started the motor and changed our tack to put us closer to the rumb line. We enjoyed a good breeze throughout the night and by Sunday morning we were within about 15 miles of the rumb line. Also, we began hearing conversations between other boats and the Mexican Navy. The Mexican Navy had sent a boat to greet us and to provide aid to anyone in need. The navy had a list of all boats entered in the race and we soon determined the navy was trying to check boats off the list as the skippers reported in on the radio. We were relieved to hear our friends on Tumbleweed check in about 10:30. Sometime around 10 am we crossed into Mexican waters and around noon we checked in with the Mexican Navy. I cannot overstate how courteous and helpful the Mexican Navy was to the participants of this race. What hospitality! They stayed out until the final entrant in the race reached Veracruz. We overheard the Mexican Navy tell one skipper that Accumulator was leading the pack and was about 80 kilometers south of their ship’s position. We figured that put them about 80 miles ahead of us. Sunday afternoon we started encountering squalls. We pulled in a reef just in case. We hit one storm squarely and encountered winds in the 30 to 35 knot range. We furled the jib and kept the reefed main up, but luffing, and started the motor and kept the bow to the wind. The torrential rain dropped visibility to near zero. Those conditions lasted for about 45 minutes. One nice benefit of the rain was that it washed all the salt off the dodger and deck. Also, if we would have had a means to capture the rain, we could have filled our water tanks many times over. Unfortunately, in the wake of the storm the wind dropped to near zero. But, that was OK because we were in the motoring class and had lots of hours to expend. We motored for about 5 hours that afternoon in relatively calm seas and made significant progress towards the rumb line. With the calm seas, we enjoyed a couple beers and Nic made an incredible dinner. By nightfall we were within 8 miles of the rumb line. And, as evening approached, the breeze returned and we were back to sailing. During the night we maintained a tack well off the rumb line and by morning we were over 20 miles from the rumb line. Monday the wind started to clock a bit to the east and we started to climb back towards the rumb line. It was a great day for sailing. We circumvented a few squalls and got nicked by a couple, but nothing blasted us like the previous day. We worked our way closer to the rumb line and late in the day we motored awhile and moved even closer to the rumb line. By nightfall we were about 8 miles off the rumb line and maybe 100 miles offshore. Throughout the day we observed only one other sailboat and it was visible only for a few hours. Similar to the previous days, the wind strengthened as evening approached. We enjoyed a good breeze all night long, and even though we could see squalls, none of them intersected our path. Some motoring early Tuesday morning put us near the rumb line. However, as the day progressed the wind became ever lighter. Finally about mid afternoon we relented and started motoring again. We motored into the early evening until the breeze returned; however, it was a lighter breeze than we’d enjoyed on all previous evenings. We bobbed along near the rumb line throughout the night making slow progress towards Veracruz. About 8 am Wednesday morning we were 80 miles out of Veracuz and dawdling in a windless sea. I calculated we could motor the rest of the distance and still be well within the allotted 36 hours of motoring time. And, we did. We motored all day and into the evening and arrived in Veracruz at 22:01. The participants in the race tie their boats along the scenic malecon in Veracuz, med-moor style. With Capt’n Ron’s assistance a picture of Cut I and a picture of Ed and Nic on the malecon are posted along with Part 2 of this trilogy. In the picture of Cut I you will note a plank extending from Cut I’s stern to the malecon. This was our gang plank. Gee I hated walking on that thing. After tying up at the Malecon, we learned Accumulator had finished the race on the previous morning. In the skipper’s meeting the week before the race, each skipper was asked to predict his/her time of arrival in Veracruz. The skipper guessing the arrival time nearest his/her actual arrival time, would win the Navigator’s award. I predicted we would arrive at 22:00 on Wednesday, and we were fortunate to win the navigator’s award. Although we were first to cross the line in our class, we were third on corrected time. Still we won a nice-looking cup for our efforts. Our friends on Tumbleweed had arrived on Wednesday at 14:00 and won the multihull class as the only entrant. We stayed in Veracruz until Sunday and enjoyed the city and her hospitality. Saturday we refueled and filled water tanks. We put about 22 gallons of diesel into the fuel tank and about 45 gallons of reverse osmosis water into the water tank. Sunday morning we departed Veracruz and launched the spinnaker we brought with us for the return trip. We had a tight schedule for the return trip because Nic had to be in central Texas for his son’s wedding on the following Saturday. The return trip featured excellent sailing, even if the winds were mostly lighter than we would have liked. The conditions gave us ample opportunity to fly the spinnaker. Two of the nights featured the heaviest winds of the trip and during those nights we double-reefed the main. We arrived at South Padre Island late afternoon on Wednesday and cleared customs on Thursday morning. We sailed up the ICW on Thursday to Port Mansfield and there we met Nic’s wife and she and Nic drove back to their home to prepare for the wedding. On Friday, Ed and I sailed on up the ditch, through Corpus Christi Bay and right at dark we sailed through the jetties at Port Aransas and into the Gulf. Again, the ride through the jetties was rough. We sailed all night and arrived at the jetties to Matagorda Bay about 8 am. By noon we were back in Cut I’s slip in Serendipity Marina. Epilogue The race was a wonderful sailing event and I would quickly commit to an opportunity to do it again. The crew began and ended the race as friends, and began and ended the race in good health. Cut I withstood the physical demands in great shape and other than needing an oil and filter change and other routine maintenance, was in need of little work when we returned. I did replace the rivets in the strut mounts on the mast. The round trip distance was very near 1,500 n.m. Overall, this was a very memorable experience for me and I hope my writing about it here has offered some value to the reader. Fair Winds! Mike Kinney S/V Cut I
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OKAY! Mike
Very nice article about your trip to Veracruz. I was hoping to make it this year, but as always, other things came up. I was wondering; do they have a no engine, no electrics class? I think it would be fun to use wind and sextant only to get there. It would probably take a very long time and would not fit within the time frame allowed. At any rate, congratulations on your trophy and on selecting a good crew and writing agreat piece about it all. Ron/KA5HZV
Very nice article about your trip to Veracruz. I was hoping to make it this year, but as always, other things came up. I was wondering; do they have a no engine, no electrics class? I think it would be fun to use wind and sextant only to get there. It would probably take a very long time and would not fit within the time frame allowed. At any rate, congratulations on your trophy and on selecting a good crew and writing agreat piece about it all. Ron/KA5HZV
Thanks Mike.
Some people have all the fun! Looking forward to your story. I have only had time to read Part I. But I made a nice WORD document of your three-parter and it is on my night stand. Now if I can just find a quiet evening.
Some people have all the fun! Looking forward to your story. I have only had time to read Part I. But I made a nice WORD document of your three-parter and it is on my night stand. Now if I can just find a quiet evening.
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