When the Going Get's Weird...
What was it that Hunter S. Thompson said about the weird? The
traveling carnival that is the Worrell 1000 is picking up mass each
day. Many fans and supporters join the fleet at the Florida border for
what are traditionally the more challenging legs. The size of the shore
gang seems to have doubled here at Jacksonville Beach. Android made the
trip from Reno just to watch the start of a leg of the Worrell 1000.
Linda has joined team Fully Involved with her parrot Chelsie on her
shoulder, lending a pirate spice to the already eccentric stew of
characters that follow this event.
Leg 6 starts in Jacksonville Beach and runs 121 miles to Tybee Island,
Georgia. Rhumb line for this leg would take the fleet more than 50
miles off shore. Sometimes it pays to sail the rhumb line, sometimes
it's better to hug the shore to stay in the thermal sea breeze that
clings to the coastline.
The forecast calls for Southeast wind at 10 knots. If true, that would
allow the fleet to carry spinnakers, sailing at or near wind speed. At
the start the wind was East at 4 knots and the dying swell was 3 to 4
feet. It was hard for the boats to punch through the breaking waves
even with lusty, shore crew pushers grunting along like bobsledders.
Guidant won the start when Katie Pettibone whipped out a paddle and did
the Hawaiian thing, launching them through the surf into the lead
(paddles are legal in this event!). Jamie Livingston of Alexander's on
the Bay is an experienced paddler from years of surfing, but when
Pettibone broke out the paddle he looked deflated like a cowboy in a
showdown who turned to draw and realized his gun wasn't loaded.
Alexander's was stuck in the surf for several minutes and will have to
work back through the fleet for the first time in this event.
"Captain" Kirk Newkirk and "Sergeant" Glenn Holmes of the US Air Force and
Team Key Sailing also jumped off the line well. Pyacht Men and Tommy Bahama
rounded out the top starters.
Team Fully Involved broke a rudder in the surfline and forked the bows
of David White and Chris Sawyer's boat in a head-on collision near the
beach. It's unclear whether White and Sawyer sustained major damage to
their boat, but they did not return to the beach for repairs. Craig
Callahan jumped off the bow of Fully Involved in an attempt to intervene
in the impending collision, but thought better of putting his body
between the two sharp bows with the still powerful surf tossing the
boats around.
Revenge of the Slime Creatures
Fear flickers in the eyes of the sailors when they recount the tales of
woe. Grown men weep when they "flashback" to the horrifying spectacle.
Millions of blobs of slime shaped like mushroom caps with Bart Simpson
fringes on the underside are populating the ocean from St. Augustine all
the way to North Carolina. The fleet has entered the dreaded slime belt
and the damage has been significant. The pesky blobs have taken the
place of the dangerous surf as public enemy number one and the sailors
are helpless against them. "You can hear it when you slice them clean
in half," commented Livingston. If you are lucky it simply kicks your
rudder up like the beach kicks it up at the finish, but sometimes it can
be much tougher. You can harpoon the pesky orbs, slicing halfway
through and leaving a stubborn pile of goo clinging to your rudder
blade. Or the critters can wedge their way between the top of the
rudder blade and the rudder casting, creating huge rooster tails of spray
and slowing the boat. The membranous creatures do not seem to be
endangered in any way, but they should still stay out of the path of the
catamarans if they can possibly help it.
The population of these jellyfish is so dense in some places that it is
common to hear the thump of contact 20 or more times in a minute! Many
of the sailors have replaced the springs in their rudder systems, but
most have also added a shock cord backup system that will allow them to
lash the rudder down if the rudder system fails after kicking up
hundreds of times.
Leg 6 is the last leg before the night legs to Isle of Palms and Myrtle
Beach. The next three legs offer huge strategic opportunities and
pitfalls. It's easy to escape from the pack and take a flyer in the
dark, but flyers can backfire causing losses. After the horrible start
this morning Alexander's has their work cut out for them. No lead is
unassailable in this event and Waterhouse has been up this coast 11
times.
We'll have a report from the finish this evening.
