Island Race July 2005
On Thursday July 14th Devante’s Dream was sleepily moored in Edgartown harbor on “someone’s” mooring ball. She (and her crew of three) had just completed a 375 nautical mile passage lasting just under three days; arriving at 3:00 AM (see Annapolis to Martha’s Vineyard passage notes). The next phase of the expedition was to prepare for the Martha’s Vineyard Round the Island Race hosted by the venerable Edgartown Yacht Club. Tom Cobin, Paul Reed (both of Annapolis) and Eric Langley (owner of DD) were on board.
Your author, Eric Langley, had got in his mind that he would like to race his unquestionably “configured for cruising” Jeanneau 40.3. As a testament to the configuration Paul pointedly asked upon our departure from Annapolis, “Where is all this stuff going when we race?” Meaning, we have a lot of extra gear that weighs a lot. Stuff like inflatable kayaks and grills and flat screen tv’s and such. Well, it stayed on the boat, although it didn’t matter, but we’ll get to that in a while.
After waking up and getting Paul his required morning coffee from the dinghy sized tub of Folgers coffee I called the Harbor Master on the phone to ask which mooring ball I was supposed to be on. I had a reservation for Thursday night but not for the rest of the weekend. After some delay I found out that I needed to hail them on the VHF. Once I did I found that I was to be on ball number 78, which evidently if far from where we are.
As I look around I spot the special “blue balls” that we had been looking for at 3:15 in the morning. They are right where we were looking but it was really dark. If I had been able to grab one of these we could have stayed right there. Oh well. We get the dinghy off the foredeck and attach the engine (no small feat) and I motor over towards the blue balls to check out the situation.
They are all taken. While tooling around that area I spot another Jeanneau. I talk to the skipper for a while praising our shared vessel brand and discussing the blue ball “situation”. He says that if I can get one I can stay on as long as I want. So I give him my business card and he’s my bird dog for blue mooring balls. He says he’ll call me if one opens up.
So we cast up the ball where on and head up harbor. Number 78 is tucked up next to Chappaquiddick Island next to some very nice houses. We also have a perfect view of the most ostentatious house on the harbor looking towards the west. It’s huge and has a humungous floating trampoline moored in front with a large sign that says, “Keep Off.”
One thing that has been gnawing at Tom and Paul is how tight the helm is on Devante’s Dream. I really hadn’t noticed because I didn’t have anything to compare it to. However, the helm was very tight and had also developed a recurring squeak when turned. So Tom and Paul began investigating how to loosen the steering cables. I was working on the phone downstairs trying to get a mooring ball for the rest of the race week-end and when I came back on deck they were in full attack mode.
Evidently there were four ways to get to the dual helm stations and steering cables. Two in each guest stateroom and two in each cockpit locker. However, despite removing every possible access panel and piece of equipment from all of the lockers now adjustment could be found for the cable. We could see the rotating flywheel that the cables attached to but no way to adjust them.
Eventually, after exhausting all possible options, I called the commissioning agent, Jim Lee, and asked him how we could adjust the cable. He didn’t know off the top of his head but he knew that it could be done. There was another Jeanneau 40.3 in Annapolis and he was going to go over and look at it and call me back. He did call back a few minutes later but did not have an answer. He needed to speak with someone else. Okay, we’ll wait.In the meantime I had placed a call to one of the local crew that was going to be onboard for the race and inquired if there might be any options for mooring that he would know of. He replied that he knew of one house of the harbor that did let their mooring balls out occasionally. It was Ernie Block’s (sp) house, although Ernie was now passed away these few years he said that his son may still do so. Of course Ernie Block’s (sp) house was the very large mansion on the western shore of the harbor that I could see from the cockpit seat I was occupying. After some discussion it was decided that only I would go to attempt the mooring ball crusade. Tom and Paul would remain to work on the steering.
Just prior to leaving Jim Lee call back with some interesting news. The helm steering cable adjustment is accessed by removing the emergency tiller panel cover. Inside one can see the flywheel type disk that controls the tiller. On the top of the flywheel are the bolts that control the tension. Unreal.
So… I get to dinghy over to Ernie Blocks (sp). The reader may be wondering why I keep including the (sp) next to Ernie Blocks (sp) name. Well the reason is it’s not actually spelled Block, it’s Boch. And that is a major difference, especially if you grew up in Massachusetts. Ernie ran a car dealership and his TV slogan was, “Come on down!”, which was instantly recognizable by me. Well I was “coming on down” to Ernie’s place in Edgartown but I did not find out until later that it was Ernie Boch, not Ernie Block!
I tied the dinghy to the dock that appeared to be capable of tying up five or six boats and headed up towards the house. There was a crew putting up a large white tent (for a charity event I was told) and a long walkway with driveway pavers leading up to a sweeping wide double staircase to the “back door” of the house. Glancing in the basement window I could see exercise equipment looking out over the harbor. I rang the electronic doorbell/intercom. No answer. I peeked in the window, it looked very quite inside.
Oh well, no one answering here. Maybe there is someone around the side door. I worked my way around the sweeping staircase to the side kitchen door, which was screen and the inner door was open, and knocked. The screen door made the rattling sound that screen doors make when you knock on them. I also yelled through the door, “Hellooo”. No answer. Off to the front of the house as there were people and cars milling around.
I stopped one of the cars in the driveway and the gal in it informed me that she is just setting up the charity event but that I can talk to Peter, who is driving a golf cart that she points to. After thanks I head that way. Peter must have been wondering, “Who is this guy coming towards me from the back of the house?” I introduced myself as Eric Langley, a sailor moored in harbor. “You can’t moor there,” Peter said right off. “I on one of the town mooring balls,” I clarified. “But I had heard that it might be possible to rent one of the mooring balls in front of the house,” hence the reason for my visit I informed Peter.
“Nope, no way. Ernie’s dead for two years now and she (Ernie’s widow) won’t have anything to do with it.” I explained that I was in town for the Edgartown Yacht Club Round the Island Race, hoping that some name dropping might help, and that I had a town ball for all but the week-ends of my stay. “It’s not gonna happen. She won’t even let her son or business associates use the mooring balls,” he flatly stated.
“It seems a shame that they just sit there unused,” I replied. “Yes it is but that’s the way it is,” he returned. I said that if he could check with the Mrs. that he could reach me at the number on my card and handed him my Devante’s Dream card. The card has a picture of Devante’s Dream at anchor and lists Annapolis and Key West as our hailing ports.
“Key West huh. I’ve been there,” as Peter told me about his stay in Key West and a surreptitious visit to Cuba. “You should go to Cuba,” he implores me. I told him that I suppose I could (even with the embargo and all) as I was writing a book about Key West and Cubans in the 1890’s. We talked for a while longer as he gradually warmed to our common ground, if not my plight. In parting he said he’d see what he could do. I figured I had about a 10% chance of anything happening in my favor. But it was worth visiting the house just for the experience.
Back on the boat I took the offensive with the Edgartown Harbormaster, calling them on the phone. They were very nice about it. I asked them if I could make arrangements with an owner of a private mooring ball (hypothetically speaking) could I use one (they said yes). I reiterated that I was here with the Round the Island Race (read EYC). Eventually they said that I should sit tight and they would see what they could do for me the next morning after check out. Okay, fair enough.
Now we were hungry and needed parts. So… it was off to downtown Edgartown for lunch and parts. We dinghyed (is that a word) past Ernie’s and on to the EYC dinghy dock. We ate at The Wharf (on the dance floor I later found out) and bought parts at the tiny rigging shop next to the landmark Quarterdeck clam shack. Tom got some small pulley’s to rig up a cunningham for the mail sail and I get a bunch of cut rope and a captive pinned main halyard shackle to replace the loose pinned then in use.
We also had to stop at the hardware store for some metric wrenches (French boat) to make the cable adjustments. I bought a sailors knife just like the one that my father gave me when I was on the island as a ten year old boy. It has a large awl (sharp pointed spike) and a nice rope knife. I also pick up some alligator clips for making hat a leash with. I used my new knife to make them and it worked great. The knife got tied (and then quick-release shackled) to my pant belt loop for the remainder of the voyage.
Back on the boat I helped Tom and Paul a little bit with the steering adjustment. Tom has me holding a wrench at an awkward angle in the emergency steering access panel. He’s loosening the cabling for the helm even more. Once he’s done with that and lubed just about everything that can be lubed he’s at the starboard helm (there are two, port and starboard which is very cool) throwing the wheel first left and then right; big smile. “Now that’s what a helm is supposed to feel like,” exclaims Tom. After the entire trip was over I read in the maintenance logs that the steering was noted to be tight but that there was no time to work on it. Duh! We would have delayed our departure if we had known about it!
Later on Tom is trying to get his foul weather gear shipped to the Island (might it have been nice to have it for the ocean passage?) while Paul is trying to help get Cloe get to the Island. Her plane is stuck in Richmond VA due to bad weather. Paul is supposed to pick up a rental car at the airport and pick up Cloe (and Tom’s foul weather gear) on Friday. We also have to provision the boat and rig the spinnaker (while sailing) on Friday. And I need to pick up my brother Scott who is coming on board. I make the comment that Friday looks like a logistical nightmare. It was.
Thursday afternoon we head into town again. I check in with the Edgartown Yacht Club and pick up the race packet. We’re (I’m) pretty disorganized. We don’t have a class flag. I check out the course instructions and attend the skippers meeting. It’s pretty straightforward. Go around the island and try to do it before everyone else. The weather forecast posted on the bulletin board does not look good. It keeps mentioning watch for a shortened course and not much wind. The isobars are really for apart (no wind) on the forecast charts. Paul commandeers that race instructions.
We grabbed some dinner Thursday night and did some bar hopping. However, there seem to be way too many guys at The Wharf bar. The dinghy ride back to the back is in thick fog. We’re about one mile from the Yacht Club so there is quite a bit of zigging and zagging necessary to find our mooring! We get back in time for one more Dark and Stormy and then crash for the night.
Friday morning arrives with postcard views on all sides of
Devante’s Dream. The air is clear and cool but there is very little wind. Tom and Paul take the launch into town to begin their schlepping. I have to work for quite a while with Scott on some business problems. Scott’s trying to get out of the house and down to the ferry in Falmouth, so I handle some of it. It’s been a particularly bad week of nasty problems as work but thankfully Scott has handled them while I have been on the boat. I tell him to get out of there and get on the ferry. He’s not due to get into Edgartown until 1:30 Friday afternoon.The boat is a mess. I do the best that I can in the few hours I have to try and clean up some. I talk with Tom on the phone. He ends up going to the grocery store for provisions for the race and the rest of the weekend. Cloe is still trying to get out of Richmond. If she gets in it will be on the last flight out of NY.
After we pick up Scott we headed out to rig the spinnaker. It’s asymmetrical so there is no spinnaker pole. There is a dousing sock that goes over the sail to make it easy (relatively) to deploy and take down. We take quite a bit of time to figure out how the blocks are going to be rigged and how the sock works. Eventually we get it deployed. The sail is BIG! However, there is barely a Zephyr of a breeze so we don’t really get a chance to see what she can do.After dousing the sail below decks we sail back into Edgartown Harbor. So is everyone else! It’s the EYC Annual Regatta and there are about 200 boats of all sizes heading back into the mouth of the harbor at the same time. Everything from Rhodes 19’s to Opti’s. There is one young man next to us in a 420. He has Devante’s Dream (a 40 footer) to his starboard, many boats on his port and boats ahead of him. And he is in everyone’s wake. He expertly douses his spinnaker (he still had it up!) and sails through the gauntlet with hardly a care. I bypassed the very conveniently located water dock, a floating dock with two fresh water hoses connected to the mainland, so as to save some weight for the upcoming race. Hey, water weighs over 7 lbs per gallon!
Paul is on the phone with Cloe. She is stuck in NY at the airport. She missed her connection to Martha’s Vinyard due to being delayed in Richmond. She’ll have to spend the night at the airport and then catch the first flight out in the morning. Her flight will arrive at 0800 and our race starts at 0830 so I’m not too sure how that’s going to work.
Earlier I had solicited for some local crew for the race. Joe Passafume signed on as crew and he’s invited us to his house for a cookout on Friday night. His wife, Margaret, is the race director for Edgartown Yacht Club.
After cleaning up Tom, Paul, Scott and myself dinghy into shore. We had Paul’s rental car and careened around town trying to find Joe’s house. He lives near Herring Creek Farm, which used to be the Wallace brothers compound (and where I had spent several summers while my father was captain of their yacht), so I thought I knew where I was going. There was a sign that said “Katama”, “Yes, that’s it go that way,” I yelled from the back seat barely able to even see anything from inside the tiny car. Of course that was the right way if we wanted to go to the beach (we didn’t but did find out later we could have cut across to his house) so we had to turn around and take a right at the fork and eventually do find Joe’s house.
Joe, Margaret and their daughter were very hospitable. We enjoyed Joe’s burgers and conversion. I don’t think I strayed much from the kitchen counter for the whole time that we were there. Eventually Margaret and Joe had to move us along because the race started early in the morning. Of course we needed to get some sleep as well! “Where is Scott?” No where to be found. Okay, I guess he just left. Later I think we picked him up by the dinghy after he hitched a ride back to town!
Another late night dingy ride to the boat and more fog. I’m getting better at it though, with less zigging and zagging than the night before. There’s only three of us, Tom, Scott and myself. Paul has a nice room at a B & B but no Cloe!
I set my watch (with the built-in compass) to ring at 0600. But there’s no need to as I usually arise with the sunrise streaming in from the edges of the drawn shade in my cabin. Saturday morning I arose early as usual but there was no sun and no sound. I opened my hatch and poked my head up to gather in the dawn, but there was none. I could not see the boats next to us for the thick fog that blanketed the harbor. I started the engine right away to charge the batteries and get some hot water going.
We cast off the mooring ball and made our way towards the broad channel in the harbor. Fortunately the Edgartown Harbor mooring balls are fairly far apart so we had no problem navigating around partially visible vessels. We join in a line of other vessels heading out to the race course and after a few phone calls we picked up Paul and Joe at the public dock (known formally as Memorial Wharf) on the way to the start/finish line in the outer harbor.
Leaving Edgartown Harbor through the relatively narrow channel was surreal. The thick fog and metallic surface of the water made it impossible to see in which direction we were going. For a moment I saw Edgartown light pass by in the mist on our port side and then there was only the bright white fog in all directions. Other sailboats were near us (I could hear their engines) as we slowly made our way out.
On the way out our compass started to act strangely. It appeared to be reading 180 degrees backwards! I went downstairs and checked the GPS on the laptop and the heading did not match the compass. I had to have Paul take the helm and relay instructions on which way to steer. He had no compass! I was giving him commands like, “10 degree’s to the right,” so that we could avoid the shallows in the outer harbor.
We made our way out to start/finish line and the race committee boat Miss Asia but we could not see her. There were times when we could see the ghostly figure of other sailboats. It made me recall reading about the ghost ship “The Flying Dutchman” as a child as being just able to make out the tattered sails of the ship that had no port. We drifted around for about an hour after several postpone flags were raised til about 0900, then the race committee decided that there was enough wind, now about 2-3 knots to get under way.
That meant that our start would be at 0930 as we were in the sixth fleet. As our start time approached we made a run up to the line, barely moving. Scott asks, “Is something supposed to be happening?” We all laugh. With 5 minutes to go we were at the line and attempting to turn around and run down and then back up. That took 10 minutes. Yes, we crossed the start line 5 minutes after our fleet started! But at least we were moving by then.
In the ongoing saga of getting Cloe (Paul’s friend) onboard as a race crew she had finally gotten on the island and was at the airport. Paul told us that the Edgartown Harbor Master, Charlie, was going to be giving her a ride out to the boat. Sure enough, just after we started, there was the Harbor Master’s boat coming our way. He pulled along side, Cloe jumped aboard and we now had a full crew.
We caught up with the other fleet that started before us, which is a good sign, but the fleet that started after us, the real offshore racers, blew by us in the Zephyr. They made us look like we
were standing still. Scott drove for a while and then and then we settle into Tom driving, Paul trimming the main and Cloe trimming the jib.Tom and Cloe trade some barbs over the fact that Devante’s Dreams’ lazy sheet likes to hang up in the roller block. But we’re sailing
pretty well considering. We still couldn’t see anything. Our first mark was on the other side of Cape Pogue Point, which we could not see. We’re trying to tack up to the mark and I let Tom know that there is land and sand in the direction we are going.After what seems like forever we can finally see the mark. We tack again to make it. We’re slipping. Everybody hike out on the leeward side. We can’t make the mark. After taking again (we needed to sail to Nova Scotia) and hiking out again we still can’t make the mark. We’re going so slow and the race has been so delayed that the current is now foul and going faster than we are.
Paul’s been listening to the radio and several boats have already abandoned the race. I make the call and we abandon as well after not being able to make the first mark. Bummer! Of course on the way back in the skies clear and the wind freshens (to only about 5 knots though).
We dropped of Paul, Cloe and Joe at the public dock. Scott, Tom and I anchored off of Chappy Beach for some swimming and relaxing.
Later that night we met other crew’s just returning to the Yacht Club as late as 2130! They looked beat. The race course was shortened but they still had to come all the way around the island to get back to Edgartown. Six boats in our fleet abandoned.
We’d already had our dinner so it time for some site seeing, ice cream, race talk, dancing, &c and eventually another dingy ride to the boat late at night. Saturday night was the last night on the island for Tom and Paul. It was the first clear night and the stars were out. I pulled out the glow in the dark star chart that my Dad had given me and we plotted the constellations and looked for meteors. Tom had an early flight so he nixes that last Dark & Stormy!
I can’t believe how busy I have been up to this point in time for most of the passage. I bought a book but have had no time to read it. And then I had to get ready for the “girls” (my wife, daughter and mother) to come on board for a week. No rest for the weary!
Eric Langley
Devante’s Dream
