November 1995
Tour du Lac

A Sailing adventure...

The Tour du Lac is a sailboat race held on Lake Almanor in the mountains of northern California. It is unusual in that it is 20 miles long, a marathon for centerboard craft. The course starts from the forested west side of the lake, loops to the extreme south and north ends of the lake, then back to the start.

CAREFUL PREPARATION…This was to be our first event as new members of the Butte Sailing Club, a nice gentle bunch of folk we'd met at Eagle Lake a few weeks earlier. The ice chest had been packed the night before our 4 am wake up call. Didn't Commodore Wade say to bring lots of food and drink? It was to be a long, relaxing race, and we even brought along a bunch of old life jackets to pad the less than cushy interior of the 'Mill so we could recline in comfort as we glided along munching turkey sandwiches and fig bars. Our "go fast" preparations were completed by sealing up the suction bailers with several layers of duct tape on the outside of the hull, so that the nasty things wouldn't leak and get our cushions all damp.

THE START…The drive up from Cool went quickly, and we enjoyed the piney air as we rigged the boat. The mass start was new to us, and we were perplexed for a moment when the line seemed to consist of just one buoy. All became clear, well sort of, when we saw that Jim had grabbed the other mark and was sailing about with it in his Thistle. Were we all supposed to follow him? But then he put it back in the lake, I suppose after adjusting the line to his satisfaction. He did seem a bit possessive of it when at the start gun he tried to luff all boats within reach above the windward end, including the Commodore's Raven.

THE WIND HOLE…Things seemed fine for a while after we got going, as we were just keeping up with a group of about 10 boats at the head of the pack. Hey, maybe we'll show these guys a thing or two about Windmills. In back of us it seemed that a group had gotten lost or something at the start, as they looked to be a couple of miles back. And then we fell into a huge wind hole and sat with sails flopping and watched as the lead group pulled away and the trailing group gradually sailed up. As a seasoned skipper, I have learned to keep my emotions in check at times like this by calmly discussing the finer points of crewing techniques. I carefully explained to Hilda how it was that our plight was the result of her less than adequate attention to jib trim. She eyed me steadily, clearly taking this constructive criticism in the best way, as it was just a bit later as we were approaching the first mark that I suggested that she take down the @(*$&%^# whisker pole (the @(*$&%^# whisker pole is about as high tech as a Windmill gets) a bit more quickly, as we were getting backwinded and were soon to start sailing backwards. At that the sturdy whisker pole came shooting aft in javelin-like fashion, catching me just above the right eye. For a while I thought I saw two buoys, and was just about to have to ask Hilda which one she thought we should round, when fortunately my eye swelled completely shut and the mark resolved itself back into one. It was about that time that a keel boat about 87 feet long glided past about 10 feet to windward, blocking out the wind like an eolian eclipse. But we managed to nip inside the Queen Mary while rounding the mark, and kept just ahead, like a pilot fish leading a whale shark, on the long sail past the peninsula.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR…Just as things were going well, the hiking stick became inconveniently unattached from the tiller. An important little nut had fallen into the cushions of the extra life jackets, and Hilda made some crude remarks regarding unannounced jibes as the boat turned circles while I scrabbled around for it, head down and butt in the air. Once things were back together the wind began giving hints of picking up a bit, and I remarked to Hilda that if we could just get a good breeze, the sailing qualities of the Mill and my skippering abilities could bring us into contention again. And lo, the winds did become stronger, and the waves mightier, and the Windmill did do its thing of planing along, skipping from wave top to wave top, and surfing when it touched down on the water. Boats were left behind and we had visions of trophies shaped like viking ships. We rounded the leeward mark, and hardened up the sails smartly for the long beat up the lake. And then THWAAP! - about 100 yards past the mark the clew separated from the rest of the jib, leaving Hilda clutching a limp sheet and the jib snapping in the wind like a pistol. We learned that Windmills do not sail on main alone, so in 20 foot waves we jury rigged the jib back into action.

Now we were moving again, and with our weight forward the deep "V" bow of the Windmill was doing its thing of slicing through the waves. And the sliced off pieces of each wave came into the boat, despite Hilda's efforts to block them with her body. Soon all the extra life jackets, which we had been keeping dry by taping up those nasty leaky suction bailers, were sloshing back and forth, making getting our feet under the hiking straps more challenging. The normally lively 'Mill started feeling sluggish, so we stopped and "parked" for a while and frantically bailed, as a Coronado 15 went by in a cloud of spray, the crew screaming banshee-like from the trapeze. With bulging eyes I managed to force one of the bailers down and open despite the duct tape, and we dared think we might see land again as it began to do it's job of keeping the lake on the outside of the boat.

THE FLASHY FINISH…Now the Windmill was moving well again, despite the strange looking jib, and we prepared for a flashy finish, impressing everyone with our recovery despite all odds. And then the williwaw nailed us. While hiking out with all we had (gotta look impressive across the line) the wind shifted 180 degrees. I dove for the other side of the boat, while Hilda did a 9.5 point double back flip into the lake (she lost half a point due to an unclean entry), with the end of the mainsheet looped around her ankle. The Harken hexaratchet screamed like deep sea tackle after a marlin strike, as 20 feet of main sheet unreeled in about two seconds, and Hilda was dragged under until somehow getting free. When the boat eventually got back to her, she sank gratefully into the soggy, but cushiony, life jackets as I somehow coaxed the wreckage to drift in anticlimactic fashion across the finish line.