REYNOLDS 33  TRANS ERIE RACE REPORT      by Mike Fahle

FINDING THE BOAT

I have been following the Reynolds 33 on the Reynolds website since it was announced because previous to that I had been very interested in the small folding tri that Randy Reynolds had been developing.  I have been told that he decided that a faster, larger cat could be made for the same price, hence the R-33.  Around midsummer Dave Sullivan told me he had seen a Reynolds 33 out sailing on Lake Erie around the North Cape Yacht Club’s racing area during one of their regular Wednesday evening big boat races.  He tracked down the boat and arranged a ride for about six of his interested sailing friends.  The boat is “WhirlWind”, owned by Dave Walzer who is also the local dealer for the Reynolds 33.  He obligingly took us all out for a sail one evening with his son, so that there were nine of us on the boat doing a little better than the 7 mph wind speed when we put the screacher up that he had just received that day.  The boat was very comfortable, responsive, fast, and easy to sail – the rare case of no disappointment when you have been looking forward to something for long enough that it almost never turns out as well as you have anticipated it will.

FINDING THE BOAT ENTERED IN THE RACE

            I suggested to Dave Walzer that he really ought to race it for exposure to the Lake Erie sailors most likely to be interested in the boat.  We suggested several longer races that seemed ideal for such a fast boat.  A few weeks later Dave called me to ask if I would do the Trans Erie race with him and his son, John.  The Trans Erie race is officially 140 nautical miles (161 statute miles) from the mouth of the Detroit river to Erie, PA., starting at 4 P.M., requiring night sailing through shipping channels, so having experienced crew was very desirable.  George Webb and Dave Sullivan had “dibs” for the other crew position since they “found” the boat and had gone out sailing that first evening but neither could do the race on such short notice.  I suggested Steve Spitler race with us since we regularly crew together on the Beneteau 40.7, “JEB” and also on the F-28R “Kanza” owned by Lou Young.  Like me, Steve also has proven his ability on many other boats including a Tasar (2 person Bethwaite designed dinghy), and different beach cats.  Dave Walzer had previously raced a Hobie 14 and owns a Hobie 21.  Now we had a crew and a race so all we needed was to put everything together to do the race within a very short period.  So it was that Dave and I were swimming around the boat the evening before the race to scrub off the slime and weed growing on the unpainted bottom in his Toledo Beach Marina slip.  So it was that we first flew the oversize spinnaker (200 sf bigger than the standard chute) the morning of the race as we sailed north northeast to Gross Isle Yacht Club at the mouth of the Detroit river.

FINDING THE BOAT RACING

            After resting at GIYC, eating lunch there, attending the skippers’ meeting, and making final preparations on the boat, we left the side of Jim Frederick and Deb Schaefer’s F-28 “Big Storm”; these two are the hardest working, for the sport, multihull owners in the Midwest!  We motored out the channel, into the wind, while the guys put up the mainsail.  It was up just in time to bear off towards the main channel onto a true wind broad reach which quickly turned into an apparent wind close reach at 18 knots with no headsail!  We flew past, to leeward of, the Newick 36 that had been in front of us and had both working sails flying.  Even in the breezy, wavy conditions that existed that morning, at the prestart and during the race, the back of the boat remained very dry and comfortable.  It is interesting how comfortably this boat allows you to scare yourself!  I even commented at some point that this was a bad thing as it would be too easy for crew to get too comfortable and lose the focus that this boat demands at all times.  Still, it was appreciated.  The closed cell foam pad that you sit on along with the seatback makes racing into the 20s seem more like a cruise.  The seatback also provides substantial safety and excellent bracing while working the helm hard downwind in the increasing winds and waves.  Our strategy was to be conservative so we started with the screacher even though most competitors had spinnakers up.  Nine miles into the race the course eased 10 degrees more off the wind so we decided to wait for half an hour (all the time that distance would take) to re-evaluate the spinnaker decision.  We were not sure how much lower the spinnaker would make us sail since we had flown it only that morning and our concern was that trying to wrestle that monster down if we were headed too close to shore would cost more than putting it up later.  The screacher was allowing us to sail lower than anyone else as it was and we finally started to move better down the track after a while also, so it helped us be happy with our conservative decision.  We ended up deciding to wait until we got to Pelee Passage since that would allow us to go another 30 degrees downwind when we were SURE we could carry the spinnaker.  At Pelee Passage we could see no one behind us when we put the spinnaker up although later I was told that Big Storm noted the sail change so looking with the sun apparently works better than looking into the sun.  When we cleared the Southeast Shoal light we decided to jibe.  That maneuver went surprisingly easy since it was only the second we had done it with the spinnaker. 

FINDING THE BOAT RACING INVERTED

After helming to the GIYC and then since leaving GIYC, I needed a break.  The wind had definitely moderated so I asked Steve to steer.  I spent a few minutes coaching Steve on the downwind technique I had been using and he seemed comfortable in a pretty short time.  Steve and I had been given the starboard hull while the Walzer’s took the port hull.  I had brought the food since my wife Carol is not only a Registered Dietician, but more importantly, an extremely good and experienced shore crew who did the work!  I broke out the goodies for dinner which we ate while Steve steered.  Then so that he could eat, Steve gave the helm to Dave.  Again I spent some time with Dave to coach him and check results.  We even shared grapes while he drove and things were going very smoothly.  My plan was to drive at night as that was likely to be the most challenging so I decided to take the next couple hours off to be better prepared.  After putting away the food I asked who wanted cookies and everyone did.  I had to go into the hull and close it completely since waves would send water into the hull from time to time if it was open even a little.  As I gathered the cookies to bring out, I detected a definite lean.  As it increased I remember thinking, “you gotta be kiddin’ me!”.  The hatch “board” between the cabin top lid and the bottom of the cabin is Plexiglas.  When I was on my side fighting off the porta potty and noting the water sideways across the Plexiglas hatch, then I knew that they were not kidding!  We had flipped.  Steve told me later that the boat had just come up too far toward the wind as we were “S” curving our way downwind so that it started to fly a hull too high.  That necessitated letting the spinnaker out which then let the main take over and prevent Dave from driving the boat down.  I learned later that the wind picked up again about then and Dave reported a big gust, so it could have been a combination of wind and waves acting just right to surprise Dave.  The boat stayed on its side for some time – I would guess about 15 minutes.  It was long enough for me to wait until the air pocket in the leeward hull got a little thin for comfort before I came out.  I wanted to wait since I knew that opening the hatch would flood the hull quickly and Randy Reynolds had recently reported that a boat on the Chesapeake had performed a righting on their own.  I wanted to give the other guys a chance to do the impossible before I ended all hope of that!  Finally I let them know I was coming out – then my auto-inflating harness/life jacket exploded (as it is designed to do) and nearly choked me, another first for me that day!  That required me taking it off because fighting 38 pounds of buoyancy to duck under the cabin top in the water was not a good idea.  There is not much room in one of these hulls to start with and even less while taking off an inflated harness while keeping the porta-potty off you and your head above water.  The good news is that the boat was so new that the head had not been used yet.

HAVING THECOAST GUARD FIND THE BOAT

John was the only one who was able to stay on top of the hull since he was forward and grabbed the shroud.  That allowed him to take whatever he needed from that hull.  We got the two survival suits I had brought from our hull, the horse shoe buoy, and my harness which I put back on when I climbed up on the hull.  Steve and Dave had used the built-in foot rest to stay where they were until the boat went beyond ninety degrees when they fell the width of the boat into the mainsail narrowly missing the boom.  Everyone had a whistle and a strobe light on their life jacket and remained calm.  It was still light outside, the water was a warm 76 degrees, and the day had been in the low nineties so if we had to do this we had perfect capsize weather conditions.  I had learned from years of long distance beach cat racing that if you do not have the gear you want on you when you capsize, there is a good chance that you will not have it at all (the speed through the water of a cat on its side is usually faster than you can swim) so Steve and I were wearing fanny packs with emergency gear inside.  I retrieved my radio from my fanny pack and we gave the Coast Guard coordinates from Steve’s GPS from his fanny pack (my GPS was on deck and got dumped).  Immediately Sarnia Coast Guard station responded and coordinated with the Canadian Coast Guard Ship “Griffin” to send help.  The Griffin was anchored near the Southeast Shoal light which they were trying to get painted.  Their high speed workboat developed engine trouble so they went back to the ship while enroute to get us.  After retrieving the workboat, the Griffin weighed anchor to come get us.  After a couple hours, and a beautiful moon rise, the captain radioed that he was two and a half miles away and would be there in 10 minutes and to look for the flashing blue strobe light.  We never did see the flashing blue light but that is because it was overwhelmed by what looked like a small city coming toward us.  Turns out that the CCGS Griffin is a 230’ long Canadian icebreaker.  They put their work barge over the side to come pick us up which was the hairiest part of the rescue since the wave action would slap the two boats together and anything in between was forfeit!  This is literally a small steel barge that can hold and set a 2500 pound navigational buoy.  When we got back to the ship they just placed the crane outboard, hooked up to the built-in web sling and hoisted us and the barge to the deck of the ship!  After getting inside, having our clothes dried, having homemade (shipmade) pizza delivered, and using the ship’s cell phone, life was looking much better again.  Without a radio and a GPS on our persons, life would have been very different because we did not encounter anyone else out there.  The coast guard told us about four people they had rescued the week before who had been in the water for just six hours and were suffering from hypothermia including one who had to be hospitalized for treatment.

FINDING THE BOAT RIGHTED AGAIN

Then an astounding thing happened – the captain came down and offered to help us try to right the boat.  While definitely showing a military style professionalism, all the crew we met were amazingly friendly and helpful.  We had left a strobe light on the daggerboard and the ship could light up a large area nearly like daylight.  The ship hovered nearby while the work barge took us back to the boat and let Dave and John tie on the righting lines.  I was given a coast guard “Gumby” suit, a drysuit of thick neoprene to wear so that I could safely and warmly steer the boat back to shore behind the barge if it was righted.  I was the human cork.  The cat came back to 90 degrees but the righting lines snapped trying to get it upright.  The problem was that the spinnaker was wrapped around the rigging near the top of the mast and acting like a huge sea anchor at the worst location.  We were not allowed to be in the water to try to retrieve the spinnaker (imagine losing one of us then) so we had to abort the righting attempt.  Dave was able to arrange a trip back to the boat the next morning with a salvage crew and right the boat after two divers cut the spinnaker away.  It was slow going because even a small rocking motion on the surface translated to the masthead swinging through a six foot arc fifty feet under the surface.  The boat was brought in with surprisingly little noticeable damage.  The main loss was the spinnaker and much of our personal gear.  Dave and John even sailed the boat back home on Monday after drying things out and getting things back in order onboard.

FINDING PERSPECTIVE

            Panacea, a very well sailed F-27 was the first boat to finish and set a new elapsed time record for the race, beating the previous record set by Earth Voyager, a 60 foot trimaran.  So obviously we would have set the record if we had stayed upright.  However, one of my friends pointed out that we are still setting the elapsed time record, just not the way we wanted.  We were able to learn a lot about the boat in a very short time.  For example, we were surprised to find that the spinnaker took us down on course only between five and ten degrees lower than the screacher and did not add much to the top speed but it dramatically increased our power and average speed as we often sailed right through the waves in front of us.  We also learned that while we were prepared for what happened, we clearly were not adequately prepared for everything that could have gone wrong.  We were fortunate to have one of the best sailing days and nights all summer to do this.  Had the capsize been on a dark night in storm conditions we could have experienced very different results. 

My impression of the Reynolds 33 is that it is a beach cat on steroids.  It felt just like sailing my Mystere 6.0 beach cat with 425 sf spinnaker – just as lively and responsive – and demanding just as much experience and skill on the helm to keep it dancing with waves rather than plumbing the depths.  It was a treat to race and I would gladly do it again; wanting a little more time to prepare and sail with the crew.  This is not a boat for beginners or even intermediate sailors to race, especially helm, especially when the wind picks up and/or the bigger headsails go up.  It takes only a few seconds to lose control of the boat so constant focus and experienced reflexes are required.  As long as we learn from what happens and do better each time, we make progress and derive value from our experiences.  I have read that Randy Reynolds is working on equipment and/or a method to allow the crew of these boats to right themselves.  I would not discourage these boats from racing but would encourage that the racers learn from each capsize incident reported and prepare accordingly, both to prevent it from happening and to be ready for it when it does.  The one thing I know for sure is that if you do not prepare as if a capsize will definitely happen, then you will not be ready when it does!  So if you get a chance to sail one of these boats, take it.  If you get a chance to race one, prepare for it.  The experience will pay dividends on the effort.  The boat is a smile making machine!  J