Jensen Beach, FL
5/8/00 4:50 PM, EDT
By Zack Leonard
History repeated itself - at high speeds - as 5 time Worrell 1000 Champion Randy Smyth and crew Matt Struble, sailing for Blockade Runner Beach Resort, won the first leg of the Worrell 1000 by 42 seconds over the Dutch team of Gerard Loos and Mischa Heemskerk. It appears that Smyth's elapsed time of 4 hours 39 minutes and 5 seconds will be a new record for the 80.7 mile leg. Loos squeezed ahead of Brett Dryland and Rod Waterhouse of Australia (representing team Rudee's Restaurant) by calling a perfect layline to the finish. The first leg saw a small squall rip through the fleet, causing capsizes, some equipment damage and injuries to several competitors.
The fleet reached out of Fort Lauderdale at 10 AM and diverged quickly with some boats heading offshore for the current boost offered by the Gulf Stream. Smyth stayed in closer to shore while Paul Van Dyke went farthest off shore. The inshore path seemed to work for Smyth until the squall hit the fleet. Smyth experienced problems with a twisted mainsheet system as the breeze built to 30 knots and went over as Struble attempted to untangle the mess. The two spent several minutes in the water, but then got the boat upright and regained the lead sailing in close to shore all the way to the finish. The Dutch and Australians were nip and tuck into the finish when Loos made an excellent layline call to the finish line from almost a mile off the beach to surf into the finish full speed under spinnaker.
To the uninitiated the finish was awesome. Two Orange flags were held up 50 feet apart in the surf line. As the cats approached the beach the crews kept the chutes flying while they pulled up both centerboards. The skippers stayed out on the wire and drove the boats up the beach at 12 knots while the rudders kicked up with impact on the sand. The best crews tripped the halyard just as the boat came to rest 30 feet up the beach. Then the skippers unhooked from the trapeze and ran around to the leeward side of the boat where they helped the shore crew gather the huge asymmetrical spinnaker without letting a thread hit the sand!
Seven minutes after the lead pack finished Steve Lohmayer and Kenny Pierce of Team Tybee crossed the line, followed four minutes later by Alexander's on the Bay, sailed by Brian Lambert and Jamie Livingston. Another tight pack of four boats finished 7 minutes later. The English team of William Sunnucks and Will Self pulled into sixth with an excellent layline call, edging out Kevin Smith and Glenn Holmes of First Response, Jeff Sonnenklar and Lou Adiano of Mobil and the husband/wife team of Scott and Dior Hubel representing Premier Shutters.
The breeze got up to 30 knots as a rain-squall developed 2/3 of the way up the course. Three of the top 5 boats capsized and a number of teams had nasty injuries and boat damage due to capsize. Bill Wallace of Team Tybee/Entegra was catapulted through the air in a pitchpole capsize. He landed face first in the mainsail and put his head right through the Mylar material, leaving him a nasty gash on the bridge of his nose and quite possibly a broken nose. Whitbread veterans Richard Deppe and Tom Weaver of P.Yacht experienced a violent pitchpole. Deppe explained, "we augured in [the bows] at 20 knots and the chicken lines broke so I got thrown around the bow." Weaver wasn't so lucky. He was thrown forward head-first into the bow pole. His shaved head bore two one inch cuts, but the pole got the worst of it. Weaver's skull bent the pole like a spaghetti noodle forcing them to carry on without a spinnaker for the remainder of the leg. Weaver was not hurt badly, but the breakdown cost them a lot of time as they dropped back 1 hour and 24 minutes off the pace.
The chicken lines that Deppe refers to is a restraining line that leads from the stern of the boat and hooks on to the sailors' harnesses. When the boat accelerates too rapidly the bows of the boat will sometimes start to submarine, causing the boat to stop almost instantaneously. If the boat is traveling at 20-25 miles per hour the deceleration will often through the skipper and crew forward with a momentum that they cannot fight without the aid of these restraining lines. Particularly violent bow stuffs, or pitchpoles, can break the chicken line, the harnesses, or the sailors if they are unlucky.
Turtles on the racecourse also caused some problems. Steve Hast and Chris Sawyer of team Cat House hit a large turtle with their windward centerboard as they flew a hull over the unsuspecting beast. Sawyer said "we were wild-ass reaching when bang, we hit this turtle. We stopped dead in the water, the sails loaded up and we were over." John McLaughlin and Peanut Johnson saw several turtles as well and suspected that the hard shelled animal may have been to blame for their broken centerboard. "We heard a loud bang and it was gone" said McLaughlin.
The fast leg left most of the teams grinning from ear to ear. Scott Klodowski of Long Beach, CA and his teammate Brendan Busch have been training in strong breeze in San Francisco for 4 months. "It was absolutely worth the trip, this was just what we trained for", said Klodowski. Chris Sawyer of Cat House waxed philosophical, "this is our first leg of the Worrell, this is the first leg of our life."
Tomorrow the Worrell 1000 will restart as leg two kicks off at 10 AM. We'll have a report on the start then jump in the car to meet the racers at the finish in Cocoa Beach, FL. Race officials, support teams and spectators are going to have to drive a little faster if tomorrow's race is as fast as today's leg. Many of the pit crews arrived at the finish red-faced and ashamed as their teams sipped cold beers on the beach and ribbed them about having to unrig themselves.
