2002 Mills Trophy Race – Ron White Stampedes to the Finish!

Friday, June 7, 2002                                  North Cape Yacht Club

    The muffle heads are back!  The boat is a mess from the mud I tracked in. We shower at NCYC and drive to Point Place for breakfast at the Kingsway Restaurant...their pancakes are the best.  Some pre-race provisioning and we are pretty much ready. It's been windy all day. 15-20 knots out of the east, but NOAA is only saying East 5-15knots and weather radar is saying no wind by midnight......Just say it ain't so!!!

    The pre-race frenzy at NCYC is building to a crescendo.  By 3:30PM, boats are leaving the dock for the first start at 5:30PM.  Ron white and crew show up about 2PM and they raft the F-31, Stampede, off us. 

   We plan to be off the dock by 4:00PM.  It will be a beat to the starting area 1 hour to our east.  Our crew, Kim Smith and Marvin Lampi, ride in with Linda and Al and they take the van, to be delivered to Put-in-Bay.

    As we motor out the channel, we can see that a pretty red monohull, Stand Aside, is hard aground to the right of the channel entrance, heeling hard over, just feet from the steel pylons which mark the end of the pier.  The crew on board Teacher's Pet renders assistance at great jeopardy to their own boat and they are successful!

    By 4:30pm, we are beating to the starting area.  The skies are blue.  The breeze is cool and brisk at 11.6 to 12.6 apparent.  The breeze is due east and appears to be clocking left, contrary to predictions, of course!  Just to be safe, Jim turns on the motor and we motor sail until we are sure to reach the line in time for our 6:10PM start.  We arrive at 5:45PM and all the multihulls are accounted for. 

    At 6:05PM, we enter the start area from the right side and head for the F-28R, Kan Za, Mike Fahle on the helm.  At 2 minutes to go, we are reaching down the line behind Kan Za on starboard tack.  The F-31 Stampede starts at the RC end on port tack.  Phillip Wadsworth starts his F-27, Conker at mid-line and Nice Pair starts well back.

    We ran inside and behind Kan Za, but eventually get caught in their bad air and fall behind.  They tack and we tack.  Nice Pair tacks above us all and falls in behind.  We cross Conker, who is coming out on Starboard.  But he also tacks and the entire fleet is headed for shore.

    Initially, we are being lifted up inside of Kan Za, but they're walking away from us in their pursuit of Stampede.  At 6:25PM, Nice Pair is abeam and to leeward, but not pointing well.  Nice Pair tacks back, and crosses us on starboard...nice photo!

    Meanwhile, some distance ahead, Stampede tacks out into the lake, never to be seen again!  Kan Za sails close into shore before they tack and we follow suit, tacking just off of Crane Creek Beach.  We seemed to get lifted inside of KZ again.  Behind us, Phil Wadsworth caught a really nice port tack lift sailing into shore, gaining on us all.  Conker tacked close into shore and appeared to catch another lift out.  The fleet took another hitch into the shore.

    By 7:50Pm, we were finding more breeze offshore and the multihull fleet was headed out.  Conker sailed into the shore a third time, losing considerable ground. 

    At 9:20pm, it's dusk and time to dress a lot warmer.  At 9:50pm, Nice pair crosses ahead on the layline to Niagara Reef.  We tacked just north of the layline, hoping to fetch Mouse Island on port tack. Our boat speed is 6-7 knots and our VMG is 5.5.  It's 14nm to Marblehead Light.  Stampede is nowhere to be seen.  Nice pair and Kan Za are ahead of us somewhere in the darkness and Conker has fallen back.  Most of the fleet is playing the south shore in anticipation of the southerly shift.

Friday, June 7, 2002, 11:00PM                 The Beat Goes On!  R"2"

    Port tack carries us into Catawba Point.  We can see many masthead lights to the south of us. The guys beat through the pass between the Catawba peninsula and South bass island while I sleep.  

    At 12:00 midnight, the breeze has lightened, but not died, yet.  At 12:44AM, we are making 4.4knots boat speed sailing to our mark, R"2" at Moseley Channel.  We monitor channel 71 to hear boats on the 30nm One-Design Course reporting mark roundings at Ballast Island.  They're on their last leg to the finish.  We have miles to go before we sleep.

    Ever wary of starboard tack boats crossing us in the blackness, we sailed just below the rhumbline at 3.8 knots.  We finally pass R"2" at 2:10AM and set the screacher for the long hall to RW "X" Mid-Channel Buoy at Pelee passage.  I take over the helm so that Jim can nap. We've got less than 5 knots of breeze and we're reaching along at a whopping 4.4 knots, but it gives me such pleasure to reach over the top of the monohulls....and the breeze continues to diminish.

    At 3:31AM, the breeze suddenly shifts aft.  Get the chute up!  But the tack line is in a cluster f___, and the spin halyard is on the wrong side of the screacher, then we raise the chute to find the Screecher halyard overriding the spin halyard..... It takes twice as long to figure this all out in the pitch black of night.  Meanwhile, the breeze turns off and clocks forward, and oscillates between northeast and northwest making the whole effort moot. We switch back to the jib and main.

    At 4:21AM, we are creeping along at .9 knots.  At 6:00AM, Jim gets up from his nap to find Big Storm totally coated in bugs.  He gives her a bath.  At 6:30AM, we're making 2.2 knots and our ETA is 7.5hours to RW "X".  "Aaaaaaugh!!!!"

    At 7:15AM, everyone around us has their chutes up and we are running parallel l to the rhumbline.  We can make out 3 boats behind us, disappearing in the haze and 6 ahead.  Who are they?  Stampede? Nice Pair?  Kan Za? At 7:25AM, we can barely make out Kan Za putting their chute up and they start to pull away.  The breeze fills in a bit for us too and we're making 4.5 knots.

    At 9:35AM, Man Overboard Rescue to recover our ever-faithful crew, Kim Smith who has jumped off the boat!

    At 12:10:12PM, we finally round RW "X" set the screecher for Pelee Passage Light.  Unbeknown to us, Bruce Geffen, skipper/owner of the Crowther 38 catamaran, Nice Pair, had retired from the race at 12noon.  According to Bruce, they had just rounded Pelee Light when he looked back, and he thought he saw Big Storm gaining on him in the Passage.  Bruce figured he could not save his time on us, but in actuality, it was the F-28R, Kan Za, closing the gap behind him.  Bruce was also under intense pressure from his crew to give it up. After all, the Après Race Party was scheduled to start at noon. 

    At 12:40PM, the Race Committee confirms Stampedes finish over channel 71. At 1:03PM, at 2.2 Knots boat speed, we are making slow progress to Pelee Light. We set the screacher in a favorable breeze.  We sight a trimaran ahead. Who is it?  We set the chute at the mark, but are forced to jibe downwind on the backside of Pelee Island.  We can see Kan Za ahead and we are closing the gap, but then the breeze dies and we are becalmed, while Kan Za catches a zephyr and sails off without us.  At 2:00PM, all the monohulls behind us have retired from the race and are motoring at top speed to the party on shore.

    At 3:55PM, we sit for 2 hours, just off Light House Point on northeast most point of Pelee Island, praying that the breeze will fill in soon.  We figure that Stampede and Nice Pair have already finished, and now Kan Za is leaving us too.  If we stick it out, the best we can do is third place, or we might not place at all.  Our crew, Kim is anxious to meet his girl waiting on shore.  We reluctantly retired from the race.  

    At approximately 5:00pm, we motor past Kan Za creeping along the west side of Pelee Island under chute.  They are a forlorn sight.  See the attached photo. But their perseverance paid off in the end.  Apparently, the breeze filled in shortly after we passed, and they rode the breeze all the way to a second place finish at 6:30PM. 

    Our regret was that we didn't quit sooner.  We retired from the race and still missed the party!!!  BAH!  HUMBUG!! 

    We tied up at the dock to find that we missed our friends Phil and Cindy Wadsworth on the F-27Conker.  According to their crew, Kathy Clark, they wandered to close to the High Impact Firing Range adjacent to Niagara Reef and they were escorted off by the military.  Kathy recalled that they were parked four times enroute to R"2".  Then they rounded the wrong R"2" at 2:00AM in the morning.  They finally called it quits at 4:30AM, when the breeze died completely.  They de-rigged the boat and still made it to put-in-Bay in time for the Party and a rendezvous with the other multihull sailors.  But they were gone by the time we got there.

    On Sunday morning, the Mills Race Committee hosted the “Champagne Flag Presentation” at the Crescent Patio.  Besides the usual array of flags, there were many overall flags awarded.  With an elapsed time of 18:29:38, Ron White’s Stampede was the third boat overall to cross the finish line on the Mills Trophy Course, Ron and crew, Bruce Carter, were awarded the Mack Truck Flag donated by Columbus Truck and Equipment for First Multihull to Finish.  Stampede was also awarded First Place in the Multihull Fleet for the best corrected time of 18:52:11. They also qualified for the Highlander Perpetual Trophy to be awarded at the 2003 Mills Trophy Presentation Dinner. Louis Young and Team Kan Za were awarded Second Place with an elapsed time of 24:20:00 and a corrected time of 23:53:42. 

    We retired to the Crescent Pavilion for the Mimosa Awards Party which followed immediately after the trophies to drown our sorrows in alcohol.  The posted results revealed that none of the other multihulls finished the race.  Forty-five percent of the boats racing on the long course dropped out of the race when the wind died Saturday afternoon.  However, most of the boats on the shorter courses were able to finish before the breeze died.

    The good news is that 1) we are due for some good wind for the 2003 Mills Trophy Race, and 2) we are looking at a 12 boat fleet made up of some of the fastest multihulls on the Great Lakes to compete in the 80^th running of the Mills, so the multihulls should be putting in some record times and kicking monohull butt!  

    I think multihull sailor, Mike Fahle put it best,  “The moral of the story is to always sail these races on fast boats.”