Tuesday, May 18, 1999
By Thatcher Drew
Turtle Has Trouble Up Wind - Wrightsville Beach, NC
Team Turtle is the only remaining rookie in the race. Entegra dropped out after four legs. Michigan went in five. Turtle has made it to the start of the 9th leg and is only about 33 minutes behind Lions International.
Yesterday Turtle finished in last place. Skipper Alexander Korakis, 29, of Tampa, said that the boat just would not go fast upwind in a stiff breeze. "Yesterday when the wind dropped, we could stay with the fleet, but when it piped up again before Cape Fear, we just could not move quickly enough."
Alexander Korakis, Jr. (Left) and Scott C. MacDonald (Right)
One reason they did not move fast yesterday was one of the battens on the lower part of the sail had broken, which tends to de-power the boat upwind.
Korakis bought the boat just before the race. He had two days of practice. He had never sailed a Nacra before. He had never sailed a catamaran with a spinnaker. "Each day is different and we have to figure out how to make the boat work in those conditions."
Scott MacDonald, who moved to Columbus, Ohio two months before the race, had never been on the boat before the start at Ft. Lauderdale.
"This is a tricky coastline here with all the shoals around Cape Fear, so we didn’t know how to round the cape. We ended up hugging the land and going inside the shoal. We like to keep the whole fleet in sight because these guys know where they are going. They’ve done it two or three times already."
Despite their inexperience, Korakis and MacDonald have done surprisingly well with two seventh place finishes in some of the most difficult conditions.
Their ground crew, Jamie Rabbitt, is a design intern for UK Sails. He and Scott MacDonald were on the road crew for team Nuclear last year.
Lions Breaks Rudder Casting At Start - Wrightsville Beach, NC
The Lions Club charged off into the surf, faltered, spun around, and returned to the beach this morning while the rest of the fleet sailed off into a northerly breeze.
It was a pretty day for a tacking duel, and the rest of the fleet was hard at it while Lions madly worked to replace the rudder on the beach. Jamie Rabbitt of Turtle, Rick Loewen, of Tybee Island, and Rick Bliss who sailed Rudee’s last year all pitched in to fix the boat.
Broken Rudder Casting
It was Team Michigan’s spare left rudder (left behind by the Halls) that sailed off with Lions International. Team Michigan dropped out after she turtled and her mast filled with water in a series of nighttime thunderstorms off Tybee Island.
Lions Intl. is sailed by Carl Roberts and Todd Hart. Carl, who became involved with the Lions Club about two years ago, is an architect in Brighton, Michigan. He has helped the club with a renovation project (converting an old train station into a community center) and organized an auction of donated construction materials that was highly successful.
His race itself is a fundraiser. People back home have pledged a certain amount of money per mile, so the longer he lasts, the better he does. So far, he figures he has made about a thousand dollars. The Lions Club is famous for helping the blind.
"I took a number of years off from sailing when I had children." says Carl. "I’ve been changing diapers for eleven years." He has four children.
Todd Hart is from Richmond, Virginia. When Carl was looking for a crew, Mike Worrell put him in touch with Todd. Todd had planned to sail in Challenge 99 with Steve Vanderbol, but the team had to drop its effort before the start of the race.
Ed Schoor of Stoore, CT and Frank BrMeodineo of New Milford, CT are the ground crew. They used to sail together in Maryland. The crew has been given three instructions, which are prominently displayed in the tow vehicle:
1. Launch the boat hard at every start.
2. Be there to catch the boat at the end of each leg.
3. Don’t total the tow vehicle between rule 1 and 2.
