48° North - Duck Chronicles

There is no way your imagination can possibly equip you for the sheer terror of racing in a small boat at night in breaking seas; the mental disorientation from the howling of the wind; the seemingly imminent danger of losing the rig and sinking; the pain of the bruises as you are thrown into the standing rigging and the deck gear; the mind and body-numbing cold; and your whole physical being screaming at you to shut down and go below until you drown quietly.

by Peter Lagergren

have decided that I need to share my recent Southern Straits experience on Goose 'n Duck, both for what little entertainment value it may provide to others but mostly to expunge some of the racing demons from my soul. Qualifies as group therapy under my medical plan.
Goose 'n Duck is a Choate CF-27 owned by Julie Kadar of the Vancouver Rowing Club. The Duck races with a nearly all female crew, which is an anomaly in the Vancouver keel boat racing milieu. They go out on the Bay, take the starting gun, smoke the fleet and go back to the bar and regale us all with the nuances of how they got in front and stayed there. I hate it when it happens to me, which it has on a regular basis. They race their small boat heads up with a lot of much bigger and supposedly faster boats and win more than their fair share.
At a distant point in a conveniently hazy and slightly disreputable past I had done some serious ocean racing, which I was trying to use to advantage in the bar while trying to impress the crew of the Duck. Didn't do any good mind you, but they got right back at me by asking me to join them for a long distance race. It was called the Southern Straits. I had never heard of it.
Foolish, foolish me. I should have read the promotional material and asked some of the local shipyards about repair bills. I didn't, so there I was, a member of the crew.
I thought I got the invitation because I was suave, debonair, smart and fast on the race course. Not so. They needed the walking, talking, rum-swilling version of a kewpie doll to take up the slack on the overnight portions. There is usually only one man on the boat, a quiet, gentlemanly and respectable big time racer from back east named John Turnbull, who is the tactician of the Duck. The crew like him, respect him and generally listen to his wise counsel. However, I think they had really invited me on the boat as the antithesis to John. I'm a transplanted Texan, a male chauvanist pig and a regular political mossback, all of the things necessary to become the one crewmate that everybody gets to hate and who they can blame all the bad stuff on. Keeps everyone else on good terms with each other. God, I love this sport.
Unfortunately, at the last minute John pulled out and was replaced by Tim Coughlin. That meant that no one on the crew except Julie had ever been in an overnight race, so I thought I could probably add something to the experience.
The Duck is a very well prepared racing boat — all of the standing and running rigging is the latest in high tech materials, all of the controls fall readily to hand and it is a dream to sail. The boat is optimized for light air and will regularly sail up to its handicap potential and then some. However, the Duck has always been a local-waters, around-the-cans boat so it had none of the required offshore safety gear. We spent the last few hours before the race finishing the conversion from inshore day racer to ersatz midget ocean racer. 0100 hours on race day and off to bed for a few hours of sleep. Just like the good (read really, really, bad) old days when I thought this was a normal part of an offshore regatta. However, the nostalgia effects are wonderful and old warhorses like me start pawing and snorting as soon as they smell gunpowder.
On the morning of the race we assembled on the dock, Julie briefed everyone on safety, reviewed the tactical situation developed at the last crew meeting and reminded everyone we were there to have fun. We were going to sail the short course from North Vancouver to Snake Island, to Ballenas Island and then back to the finish at Point Atkinson. We were in Division 6, the one with the slowest and smallest boats. Some real tactical decisions to be made, but mostly a race where you sail fast and sail smart. Winning was a very big part of the fun Julie had in mind, but it was the entire experience that was the big draw. I wanted to say a few words about the existential aspects of near-death experiences and how they relate to ocean racing but, unusually and wisely, kept my mouth shut. Shouldn't have in retrospect, since it could have heightened everyone's pleasure in some of the moments to come.
We went to the starting line and got to watch a whole bunch of really big boats starting before us duking it out on a downwind, port tack favored, start. Do you start on starboard and head to the beach, which is exactly where we were told not to go in the tactical seminar the previous week, or do you start on port and have the entire complement of your Division take you right into the protest room? Tough choices, but all the big boats went to the right on starboard and slugged it out down the beach. It is always fun watching a multi-million dollar 70' plus maxi that is late to the start by two minutes berating all of the small boats around her that were already in their own starting sequence to get out of her way so she could start. Brings out the Marxist in all of us, don't you know. They came by the Duck while we were manuevering to watch the next start and swore at Julie and told her to get off the starting line, while we were probably a couple of hundred meters away from it. Being the helpful person that I am I yelled back at them the question "How much did you pay for that boat?" That shut them right up because they were trying to do currency conversions in their heads so they could answer my question. Nice guys. Never did get the answer, though.
We finally moved to the head of the starting queue and lined up with all of the short course boats. Julie asked me where I thought we should start, I said on the right and go down the beach. She said "are you nuts?" and we started at the other end of the line. I knew this was a mistake. We jibed out immediately onto port and jumped into the current ebbing out from First Narrows. Once we got established with the spinnaker full and drawing I looked around and realized we were well ahead of every other boat in the start. I immediately modified my opinion of how we should have started and announced we had done everything just right in my best I-told-you-so voice. I think the crew bought it, but I'm not sure.
We spent the next few miles furiously working the spinnaker sheet and guy to try and hold off the approaching boats from the Division ahead of us that were trying to get back into the natural order of things, i.e. ahead of us, and not liking it very much that it wasn't working. As long as the wind stayed light enough so that they couldn't waterline us, we were OK and, surprisingly, in the lead. About 5 miles out from the start and into the Straits of Georgia the wind began to build from the east and our teeny weeny waterline became a real liability. It was a glorious day for sailing on the Straits, with patches of puffball clouds, a weakly warm and comfortable sun and no waves to speak of, just a light chop without enough vertical to let us surf them. The entire short course fleet was sailing merrily along on port jibe on a beam reach with the winds out of the southeast. Which is where low-pressure fronts come from. Oh.
On the Duck we kept racing hard, but we ended up just sitting there and watching helplessly as the faster boats slowly and inexorably wound us in and sailed off ahead. I used a few tried and true racing tricks to maintain some semblance of control over the competition but they didn't work and, what's worse, none of the other boats noticed we were doing anything at all. We kept grinding away at it though. At least it kept us warm and active. As we closed in on the Vancouver Island side of the Straits, the clouds clabbered up and covered the sun and the breeze started to chill down.
We arrived at Snake Island at the tail end of Division 5 and well ahead of the rest of Division 6. Nice, but somehow a little unfulfilling. Almost to the level of hubris — here we were ahead of our peers and frustrated that we couldn't catch and pass our superiors. Sometimes the competitive juices just flow in ways that are tough to comprehend. As soon as we passed Snake Island, we had a slow period of less than 5 knots of wind from the east. Just about the time we were congratulating ourselves on being a light air boat in light air, the wind from the east began to build. Within a few miles the winds had built to somewhere around 18 knots and the waves were beginning to build to enough vertical that we were able to surf.
We had found a place in the speed envelope of the Duck where she could really shine. We had the large spinnaker up and we were sailing very deep, nearly dead downwind. We were surfing to 8 and 10 knots in the blasts of the wind and found a sweet spot on a lot of waves where we could dive deep and play the breaking curl of the waves for a quick burst of speed. We had the pole right back on the shrouds with the spinnaker completely out on the weather side and we were doing "the wild thing", a fun little thing where you drive off in the puffs, let the boat roll off a wave and heel way over to weather and push the boat down to where it is by the lee. This sticks the main way up in the air and nearly punches the spinnaker pole into the water. It looks and feels like a death roll, and if you don't catch it in time, it will certainly turn into one, but, oh boy, is it ever fast. The proof was in the event — we caught and passed several Division 5 boats. I can't imagine what they were thinking as they watched us go by. Probably a whole lot of "Wow, look at that! Those idiots are going to crash!" We didn't, which just goes to prove that the sea gods look out for racers and our karma was at a maximum. It was a great ride, filled with heart stopping moments, where everyone was thinking, OK, this is the big one and we're going to make the news, and those wonderful bursts where the bow spray was coming off the maximum beam of the boat, the stern wake was causing the swell to break behind us in a great roar and the rudder had this great vibrating screech like a wild animal being let out of its cage. It was glorious, one of those times that keep you coming back for more and making up for a thousand hours of drifting around the Bay looking for wind on the water. We managed a couple of jibes without incident, so everyone on the Duck was pumped and feeling ever so confident in our ability to go really fast in the lumpy stuff.
I kept saying really smart things like "gosh, if we only had 10 more knots of wind we could make the Duck really fly!" Sometimes, I'm so dumb I even impress myself, because it did start blowing harder, just about the time we fetched Ballenas Island. We doused the spinnaker without incident, hoisted the #3 working jib and did a seaman-like job of transitioning from a surfboard back to a sailboat and started to beat down the east side of Vancouver Island on port tack. Going right down the east coast of Vancouver Island is the traditional way for the fast boats to claw their way back to a point near Snake Island or Entrance Island from where they can fetch Point Atkinson, even with unfavorable winds and an unfavorable tide.
On the Duck we were suddenly faced with a real tactical choice, that if we made the right decision meant we had a shot at a high fleet and Division finish, or we were going to be one of those boats everyone talks about that sailed off into la-la land never to be heard of again. It wasn't that we were shooting craps to get back into contention, because we were quite assuredly in the lead in our Division and all we had to do was to stay between our Division and the finish line and we got a high finishing position. But, that meant we were certainly not going to place high in the fleet standings. The problem was simple. The Duck is a 27 foot boat and it simply isn't large enough to punch its way through really lumpy waves. It was very obvious that the faster boats who were behind us on the water or on handicap would eventually grind us down and pass us. With the wind building constantly, and the waves building at the same rate as the wind, it was pretty obvious that we needed to do something completely different. Prior to the start, Julie said, "Whatever happens, don't let me go straight across the Straits no matter how favorable it looks, because if we do, we'll lose." Now she stepped up to the decision and said, "OK, lets go straight across and hide from the waves as long as we can." Gutsy move, but she had all of the arguments in place to convince the rest of us that it was really the right thing to do.
So we set off across the Strait on an easterly bearing on a starboard beat, which is a course basically perpendicular to the mainland side of the channel, and which would get us into some semblance of protected water as quickly as possible. It was truly our only hope as the wind was forecast to go to 40+ knots. It was obvious that the forecasters were correct, because by the time we got to the middle of the Straits it was blowing a solid 25, with what looked like a lot more to come. As the sun went down we were beginning to contemplate some of the really serious aspects of this weather change. However, we weren't having to do anything unusual to handle the boat and it was riding out the fresh breeze admirably on a full main and the #3. Seasickness was becoming an issue as the waves built, reinforcing the correctness of the decision to head east over to flat water as soon as possible. The last thing the boat needed was a decline in crew effectiveness just before a gale started. As the wind built, the Duck seemed to find a really fast angle of heel, a comfortable pointing angle and some serious boat speed. The Duck was holding steadily over 5 knots across the bottom of the Straits and sailing nearly as high as she does on the Bay in flat water. Going to weather that fast in those kinds of wind and wave conditions in a boat with less than 25 feet of waterline is gratifying and undoubtedly demoralizing to the competition. I love it.
We reached the mainland shore near Sechelt just after dark. As we got closer to the shore, the wave action diminished visibly. We started to short tack our way southeast down the shore and got to see some really big chop on the southern end of the tacks, where we were furthest from the shore. Just about the time I was starting to visualize Brunhilda tuning up for a song, the jib halyard popped with a bang and the jib started crawling down the forestay and seemingly battering itself to pieces as it did so. Sally Hachey and Kathy Preston, the Duck's two bowmen, crawled forward and started to pull the jib down and deploy one of the spinnaker halyards as a jib halyard. Fairly easy and quick inshore, but in open water, at night, with steep breaking waves and strong winds blowing, it is damnably difficult and somewhat dangerous. It takes seemingly forever to do the simplest task while the boat is being thrown around, the bow is continually swept by breaking waves strong enough to take your feet out from underneath you and the water is so cold that your fingers stop working correctly. However, they did get the new halyard bent on and the #3 jib re-hoisted with only cosmetic damage to the sail.
We started the Duck back into the race as soon as we had it under control again and started blasting over the waves trying to make up the half hour we lost while we couldn't make more than 3 knots over the bottom on the main alone. After an hour of bashing our way through the waves, we got an over-ride on the starboard primary winch as we tacked away from the mainland. Just what you want when the wind and waves are building and you're on the tack taking you back out into the worst of it. We tried every trick in the book to clear it, but it had been pulled so tightly from the jib loads that there was no way to clear it. Sally crawled to the leeward rail and lay down next to the jib clew, completely awash in seawater half the time while she was sawing away at the jib sheet with a rigging knife. As soon as she got it to the point where it was cut halfway through, the sheet exploded with this great bang. We slammed the boat over on starboard tack, sheeted in and headed back to the mainland. Nice piece of seamanship, to say the least.
We worked our way down to the tip of the mainland until we were abeam of the Pasley Islands. We were very obviously in the somewhat protected lee of Bowen Island, but that wasn't going to last. We were getting into some fairly steep breaking seas and the wind was becoming a little more of a problem for boat control as we worked our way further southeast and closer to the southern end of Bowen Island. However, we were still under control most of the time and in a really great tactical position. Everyone on the crew was miserable, cold, tired, wet, seasick and just plain mind- and body-sore. Just like everyone else on every other boat in the race. The difference was, this was happening to us, which made it a lot more personal. This was when I got to see some of the real grit of the Duck's crew. They were physically spent from the constant tacking, hanging on for dear life and the hypothermia caused from being repetitively soaked in ice-cold seawater, but they kept racing, and racing hard. If you haven't raced in conditions like that, there is no way your imagination can possibly equip you for the sheer terror of racing in a small boat at night in breaking seas; the mental disorientation from the howling of the wind; the seemingly imminent danger of losing the rig and sinking during the really hard wind blasts; the g-loads generated by the boat being slammed around; the total discomfort of the motion; the pain of the bruises as you are thrown into the standing rigging and the deck gear; the mind and body numbing cold; the water from breaking waves slamming into your body nearly forcefully enough to wash you overboard and your whole physical being screaming at you to shut down and go below until you drown quietly. Nightmares don't come in that version of Technicolor, do they?
At Cape Roger Curtis we began to work our way east up the southern shore of Bowen Island towards the finish. The wind freshened to a sustained 40 knots as we cleared the lee of Bowen Island. I bet we saw gusts up to 60 knots. Oh, the joy of a fresh breeze. Unfortunately, it meant we were in some really big and choppy waves with the tops being blown off in spindrift sheets that felt like you were being pelted by salt crystals fired from a gun when they hit your face. It hurt, and it hurt hard. During our peregrination to the finish I got to witness some really remarkable action from the Duck's crew. Like Sally going onto the foredeck frozen to the core and still managing to work the problems like she had actually done this stuff before. Rebecca Eagan just hanging in there and keeping her brain functional and doing her part on trim and working the sail controls in the cabin companionway pit and occasionally being thrown down into the carnage in the cabin below and crawling right back up again. What an achievement for someone who got sick in English Bay on a sunny day. To keep going and conquer your own body like that is an achievement. Kathy being sick as a dog, leaning over the lifeline puking her guts out and grinding on the winch while she was doing it. Never quitting is a wonderful thing to see. Karin Steichele staying with the navigation at the plotting table down below when the interior of the boat looked like some mad carnival ride with stuff, and the occasional crewmate, being flung across the cabin every other wave, a foot of ice cold seawater sloshing around over the floorboards and managing to always keep up with the game as it was being played out and working the jib trim and the foredeck when needed.
Everyone showed a great amount of grit and it was a real confidence builder to all of us to see our shipmates digging deep and finding the strength to do really remarkable things.
We were 5 GPS miles from the finish sometime after midnight and the waves and wind just kept building. We rather optimistically called the Race Committee and told them we would finish within an hour and kept working the Duck to weather as hard as we could. During the really big puffs, the wind was blowing so hard that the Duck was over at a 45 degree heel angle with absolutely neutral helm, on course and just blasting through the waves. It was so strange to be in really extreme conditions with seemingly no real control problems. We were cold, scared and hurt, but contented nevertheless. That's when we finally got into real trouble.
The second jury rigged jib halyard broke with a bang loud enough to be heard over the wind noise and the #3 jib proceeded to destroy itself as it crawled down the forestay all on its own. The main then began to destroy itself as the boat was being slammed around and the main went from being dramatically over-trimmed to under-trimmed and flogging madly and then doing the whole sequence over again. The helm went to complete uselessness and any semblance of control just went right over the side. By this time both Sally and Kathy were so hypothermic that their hands wouldn't function and they would have been completely ineffective back up on the foredeck.
Julie delegated herself to doing the crawl up the foredeck to tack on the #4 storm jib. Her boat, her responsibility to save the Duck and her crew. Julie showed us the true meaning of courage when she went on the foredeck in the worst part of the gale when the boat was basically out of control. We had to put up the # 4 to get us back under control before something really disastrous happened. That foredeck was a scary, scary, place to be in the middle of the night when your mind and body are imploring you not to do this, and rationally you know your chances of success are slim and your chances of being washed overboard are very high and you will die if that happens. Being strapped in with a safety harness only prolongs the agony since the boat can't stop and it can't turn and you will be dragged along tied to the leeward rail until you drown like a rat unless you are very, very lucky. It takes true courage of the highest form to expose yourself to that danger and potentially sacrifice yourself for the safety of your crewmates.
When the halyard blew we were within a quarter mile of the Bowen Island shoreline, heading towards it on starboard tack. Contact with that shoreline was something neither the Duck nor we were likely to survive. The wind was blowing so hard that with only the main up, the boat simply wouldn't power up enough to tack through the eye of the wind. Every time we tried to tack we would get nearly head to wind and the Duck would spin out to leeward. On the other hand, as soon as the Duck got over 60 degrees off the wind the weather helm built up enough to spin the boat back up to weather. We were trapped in a small angular sector with no way to break out. We kept slogging towards the lee shore and even in the dark we could see the spume from the wildly breaking waves on the south shore of the island. This was a singularly frightening thing, to realize we could see the breakers on a totally dark night. That meant we were really, really, close to shore. We finally got lucky and spun the boat on the top of a wave back onto port tack and headed out into English Bay, right into the teeth of the waves. While we were dealing with this, Julie was still strapped into the foredeck pulpit and trying to clear the #3 so she could bend on the #4. I remember seeing her completely under water at times as waves swept over the bow and watching her go airborne as we shot off the top of one wave and landing on her kiester as we dropped into the following trough.
We were finally into a truly dangerous situation. The Duck didn't have enough rudder authority to turn and run downwind into a safe lee harbor and we were beginning to see the limits of control nearly all the time. Not a good thing at all. It was pretty obvious that either we got the boat balanced or the Duck was in serious trouble.
After slogging southeast across the Bay towards Point Gray, we were going to run out of water on the southeast end of our track, so we decided to tack back onto starboard to head back towards Howe Sound and some protection from the wind and waves. As the boat spun onto starboard tack, there was this very loud bang as the main traveler was brought up short and didn't complete the tack. The main stayed well up on the starboard and weather side of the boat, a perfect position for backwards sailing. I looked over the side and saw that the traveler line had been torn loose from the toe rail and the bitter end had wrapped itself around the rudder fin. The next really big puff hit and the Duck just flopped over onto its port side. The lower spreader tip was about a foot from the water. The Duck began to slide sideways at several knots and the water piling up on the lee rail spilled over into the cockpit like the bow wave of the discharge from a dam. The leeward wake kept building and the water got to within a foot of going down the companionway. Obviously, the Duck was finally completely out of control. Tim levered himself over the starboard quarter and began to unwind the traveler line from the rudder fin. As soon as he got it loose, the main rocketed to leeward, the Duck stood up, the bow came up and Julie came up for air on the foredeck. Dear hearts, this qualifies as one of those sailing moments that everyone involved in will tell for the rest of their days. It was extraordinary and a very near thing.
Julie finally got the #4 bent on and we hoisted it with some difficulty. Can you imagine the loads on a sail in those kinds of wind when you simply do not have the option of putting the boat head to wind to unload the jib? We finally got it done and the boat finally became controllable again. At this point we also had to deal with the main before it completely flogged itself to pieces. The crew got a reef into it with only minor further damage. This entire fandango took at least an hour to complete. It was long, it was ugly and it was not fun.
We started to slog upwind towards the finish pin again. About 10 minutes later we shot off the top of a wave and crashed into the face of the next sea, which had very unfortunately decided to break just as we got there. The impact as we slammed into it was immense. The top of the mast bent so far forward that it looked like a loaded crossbow. I was really amazed that the stick stayed in the boat, but stay it did. When it straightened out again it did it with such force that the tack tie down for the #4 exploded and here we were with no jib and a half blown main and nearly out of control all over again. Julie turned around and looked at us and said, "Ok that's it, let's run for cover". By this time even my competitive juices had been beaten out of me and I was really happy to hear the command to quit. We got a bit of a handle on the #4 by tightening the weather sheet and basically back-winding the bottom fifth of the sail. That gave us just enough power and rudder authority to turn the boat down and reach back to the west side of Bowen Island.
After an aborted attempt to get into the Mount Gardner dock, we ended up hiding out in Tunstall Bay and heading up to Karin's home for warmth, food and sleep until the next afternoon when we assembled as much of our blown inventory as we could and pounded our way back to Vancouver. At the dock we stripped the boat, cleaned up the worst of the carnage and all swore we would do it all over again.
Cheers and kudos to those boats who finished. You sailed well and bravely and got the luck you needed to get home in one piece. For the Duck it was a bittersweet time. Yes, we did well to get that far with no one getting hurt and no significant damage to the boat, but we didn't finish. However, everyone on the crew came back knowing they were made of sterner stuff than they ever thought possible and that is a great victory in itself.
Bravery is a sublime thing and it is what I saw in spades on Friday night on the Duck. I think I have another ride offer from the crew and, by golly, I am going to take them up on it. They and the Duck are a class act.

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