Report from Dr. Sam's cousin, Paul

GULFPORT TO PENSACOLA RACE 2003 

Last year was my first entry in the Gulfport to Pensacola race.  I'd had my Corsair 31, Tribology, only a few months and 102 miles of offshore racing sounded like a good experience.  But faced with beating into 30 knots of wind and six to eight foot choppy seas until dawn, we joined half the fleet in withdrawing -- for us, near the Mobile sea buoy and spent the remainder of the night anchored behind Dauphin Island.  We hoped that this year's race would be another adventure, but one we would complete.  Recently finishing first in the 62 mile "Race to the Coast" had buoyed our optimism.

Besides my wife Shearon and myself, Tribology had as crew Bob Crawford and Mike Parsons, both Corsair 24 owners.  There was no shortage of multihull expertise on this boat!  Of the 91 entries, our multihull start was last, an hour behind "A" class.  On top of the five-minute class spreads, they even threw in an extra fifteen-minute delay to make sure we couldn't catch the big boats.  It didn't work. 

We started at 1:00 Friday afternoon, into a SSW breeze just in front of a storm approaching from the north.  It was a long almost one-legged beat out to Ship Island, and mostly a very tight reach to "GP", the Gulfport sea buoy.  By then we'd caught all but the top twenty or so monohulls.  We bore off east there, reached up to catch the leading edge of an approaching storm, and rode that for the next 5-6 hours -- a wild mixture of reaching, running, and a little beating in wind that ranged from wild to crazy -- hard rain, lots of lightning, and one waterspout.  We just had glimpses of our competition, mostly much closer to shore, one or two at a time through gaps in the squalls.  We passed the Java (J-130) at close range about an hour before rounding "M", the Mobile sea buoy.  For an hour, Decision (Santa Cruz

52) and Tiburon (Melges 30) were a mile or two behind us with spinnakers flying while our jib was strapped in tight -- it was that kind of fluky, localized, wind.  As we approached "M" buoy, they both disappeared into a squall, and a few minutes later the committee boat magically appeared out of the rain just as we tacked around the buoy, a bit offshore from where my GPS thought it should be. 

We had long stretches of screecher reaching at 15 to 20 knots, riding the puffs to ease the pressure but coming up in the lulls.  The big puffs hit us like hammers, accelerating the boat another 6 to 8 knots in seconds. Fortunately, the seas were pretty flat, and we could usually turn most of the power into boat speed.  But not always, and stuffing the bow of one ama at 20+ knots is really loud and wet!  The GPS recorded a maximum boat speed of 167 knots, probably related to when I dropped it, but our true top speed was likely a bit less.  We had reached 24.5 knots in the recent Leukemia Cup, and I suspect we may have topped that this time out. 

When the weather finally mellowed, it was well after dark and we were all alone.  The front had passed, wind switched to out of the NE and eventually got very light.  We played the surf line for a couple of hours before and after Gulf Shores, Alabama -- even got spotlighted by someone in a sixth floor condo.  The wind seemed best as we just approached the outermost sand bars.  The wind finally filled in better and we finished on a tight reach at 1:34 Saturday morning, only twelve minutes ahead of Decision.   The third finisher was almost three hours back.  Finishing first was a thrill. Spotting Decision an hour head start and still finishing first made us giddy.  Who cannot be in awe of a boat like Decision?  She's beautiful, fast, and sailed by pro's.  We then spent about two hours getting into Pensacola Yacht Club, but were met on the dock with a cold pitcher of Bushwackers and an offer of a slip for our own.  Every race should end this way.

Though multihulls are not included in published fleet results, by the numbers all the Corsairs did well.  Besides Tribology, two F-28's and one F-24 competed, and all finished.  The lead F-28 was about three hours back, right up there with the top-tier monohulls.  This was a good race for us -- plenty of wind and mostly reaches.  And in a twelve-hour race, it's nice to just lounge around on the nets and never have to hike through the lifelines. Besides being fast and comfortable in those conditions, another advantage of folding trimarans was evident with the tropical storm two days later.  My boat was safe at home on its trailer while many of the boats that raced were sitting double or triple rafted in temporary accommodations.  Not a good place to be in a storm.  A local J-30 in temporary moorings was destroyed against the pier that day.