The Oregon Offshore Race
(Part II)

Sitting in the mini-van on the way back to Astoria where we had left M’Lady the week before I was scared to death. Oh, I didn’t let anybody know about it of course. But all I could think about was those huge waves that had chased us into port just five days before. Now we were going to climb back on board and attempt to race in those same waters. I kept thinking, "we have really bitten off a lot to chew this time".

As we drove into the Astoria marina I could see that M’Lady was resting on her lines right where we had left her. She was tranquil and still. Nothing like the rough waters that awaited us just outside the Columbia River Bar. I had to keep putting the thoughts of the delivery out of my mind. This was the night before the start of the Oregon Offshore Race and we had a lot of work to do. Once again we had brought everything we owned along for the race. I thought that we might have learned our lesson on the delivery. There is only so much room on a small vessel like M’lady. This time I was determined to stow everything in it’s place. We were going to be racing and would need all the room we could get.

There would be 18 boats in the race this year, most of them veterans from passed offshore races. Some from California, some from as far away as Hawaii. This race is one of a three part series of races. The first being the Oregon Offshore Race which would take us from Astoria Oregon to Victoria Canada. The next race would be the Swiftsure Race which runs from Victoria Canada to the Swiftsure Banks in the Pacific off the coast of Vancouver Island and back. We were planning on doing the Swiftsure race this year providing we lived through the race in front of us first. The last of these three races is called the Vic-Maui Race. This race is really the big one. It will go from Victoria Canada to Maui in the Hawaiian Islands. For us on board M’Lady The Oregon Offshore race would be our triumph. We would had loved to go to Hawaii but that would have to wait for another year. Besides we were so proud to be taking part in the Oregon Offshore Race that we didn’t even think about heading off over the horizon to Hawaii. One race at a time. If we finish this race alive, we would all sit around with a beer in our hands, chests puffed out, talking about the next big race to prepare for. Who knows maybe it’ll be the Vic-Maui. But for now we had a lot of rough water to get through. We still had to get to Victoria Canada.

As we put the last of the stores on M’Lady a woman from the race committee came on board to do our courtesy offshore inspection. Each of the yachts are inspected before leaving port in order to assure that all the safety gear is on board and in good working conditions. We had been in contact with the hosting yacht club for the last few months making sure that we would have all the required equipment on board. As it was we passed the inspection with flying colors. There was a lot of excitement on the docks that evening, a flurry of activity as everyone was preparing their boats for the time at sea. As I laid in my bunk on board M’Lady that evening I could see in my mind those enormous waves that were waiting just offshore. I started to wonder why I hadn’t taken up bowling or tennis. It was too late now. In the morning we would be heading for the Columbia River Bar and what ever lay beyond.

It was a cool and damp morning in Astoria as we motored out of the marina. We had awaken rather early. Although I don’t think many of the crew had slept much that night. The thoughts of the race and what lye on the other side of the bar weighed heavy on our minds. It was quite a long way to the start line from the marina. We would be motoring for a good hour or more. The start line was off the coast of Oregon on the ocean side of the Columbia River Bar. Approaching the bar we could see large breaking waves on both sides of the channel. We would be leaving the Columbia river on an outgoing tide. This made for steep breaking waves on the outside. The large amount of river water pushing up against the pressure of the incoming tide can make it rough getting across the bar. I kept thinking of the delivery. Would we be rolling through the same size waves heading back to Canada? I hated to think about it. The water was rolling over the bow as we cross through the extreme western end of the bar. Once again M’Lady was rocking and rolling through the surf.

Once across the bar I couldn’t believe my eyes. The water on the outside was just like glass, very little sea roll. I thought we would be in the thick of it out here, but there was nothing in the way of rough seas. This was an unbelievable contrast from just a week before. In this very spot the Coast Guard had met up with us to provide an escort across the bar. Here we were just about a half hour until the starting gun and it was as calm as an inland lake. Now we had a new problem,. NO WIND! M’Lady was popping back and forth without enough wind to even keep her main sail full. I didn’t know it at the time but this was going to be the story for the entire race. At the start gun M’Lady barely had enough wind to keep her spinnaker full. With just light puffs of air we goasted across the start line. I was just sure that by now we would be hanging on for dear life, but instead we didn’t have enough wind to even get a couple of knots out of M’Lady.

There seem to be several different strategies on this race. One was to stay close to the shoreline, short tacking up the beach. This would minimize the south bound sea current. The other approach was to head out off shore to take advantage of the better winds. On board M’Lady we chose the latter. With the winds as light as they were and M’Lady being a fairly heavy boat we needed the wind. So we turned toward the horizon and went out offshore. On board M’Lady we kept a close watch on our position, plotting a fix about once an hour and making log entries. We kept track of our Latitude and Longitude with the use of a Global Positioning System (G.P.S.). Getting the numbers off the screen that was out on deck and taking them below to the chart table were we would plot them on the navigational chart. With a crew of four we would always have two people on watch at all times. When it was time to take a positional fix one would stay out on deck to keep watch while the other would go below to do the plotting. With four hour watches your never on watch very long. However your never off watch that long either. It made for a lot of short naps instead of good nights sleep, but after awhile you get adjusted to it. At night when it was time to relieve the watch we always made sure that the oncoming watch was awaken in plenty of time to let them get something to eat or a cup of coffee before taking over. The off going watch was responsible for making sure that there was plenty of boiled water for the oncoming watch. When coming on watch at night it is also important that off going watch stay out on deck with there relief until the new watch has his night vision. This would usually take about 10 minutes. So once again we settled into our routine. Four hours on, four hours off.

By evening M’Lady had made very little progress. The winds had been light most of the day. I was starting to think that this was going to be a very long race. We seemed to be making about two knots. The weather was a long way from what we had expected. Not much in the way of big seas, at least not like we had seen on the delivery. You would think that with little to no wind and smooth seas that there would never be a problem with sea sickness. Well, think again. You see we have this tradition on board M’Lady. If you are the first person on board to get sick, "God Help You". Not only do you get your name entered into the ships logbook but you have to put up with the rest of the crew making fun. Now I don’t want you to think that I’m making excuses for Jim Oud, but he wasn’t on board for the delivery and there for didn’t get a chance to get his sea legs, at least that is the way he tells the story. Poor Jim, he spent most of the first day and on into the evening hanging over the side trying to decided why he didn’t take up bowling or tennis. He did manage to lift his head once in awhile, at least long enough to have one of the crew offer him something to eat, like some greasy cheese on crackers or some of those fishy kipper snack things that Mike Willaims was always eating. I think those things make me sick on dry land. Jim had a pretty hard go of it for the first 24 hours. On board M’Lady we only had four people to stand watch and you stand your watch sick or not. Now I don’t want you to think that we have a mean spirited crew but I did catch Ralph Heinze and Bill Schneider mixing this concoction of leftovers from a previous meal into a pan and coming up on deck with it. I wasn’t sure what they had up their sleeve until I heard Ralph yell, "Hey Jim watch this". As he poor the goo into the sea along side of the boat he made a sound to simulate someone throwing up. Of course Bill was right there with the camera to get it all on film. Just another Kodak moment on board M’Lady.

We goasted along through out the night never really seeing much wind. There would be a puff once in a while that would help, but most of the time we were doing only two knots. Progress was slow. As we would place another plot on our navigational chart it would land right on top of the plot taken the hour before. There are a lot of things that can get on your nerves while living on board a small sailboat with three other crewmates, but the one thing that can really get the crew down is no wind. One sailor in particular on our crew that had the most trouble dealing with no wind was Ralph. Now you have to understand that we are dealing with a guy here that got so tired on watch one night that he thought he was talking to Elvis. So it’s not really that hard to believe that Ralph would be the one to go wacko when there was no wind. We knew when our situation was starting to get to Ralph when he would start saying, "God, this is a stupid sport". Ralph really had a sense for the movement for the boat. In the early hours of the morning while Jim and myself were on watch we spotted a large green glass ball floating on the horizon. It was a glass float that was used in the orient to hold fishing nets above water. Now this was a real treasure to Jim and I. So we immediately turned the boat towards this floating glass ball. As the boat changed directions we heard this cry come from below where Ralph was sleeping, "What the hell is going on up there, why are we changing direction". "Never mind Ralph, we have everything under control". As we picked up this glass ball with the boat hook and placed in on deck we heard Ralph once again yell, "consider that your race trophy". I guess Ralph didn’t appreciate the fact that we had turned the boat almost completely around to pick this thing up while racing. Now that I think of it, I guess I don’t blame him. Was Ralph a little touchy when there was no wind? I tend to think so. We decided that we should hide the flair gun just in case he really lost it.

It was just before day break on the morning of the thrid day we realized that with out wind we were not going to make it to the finish.. Since the start of the race M’Lady had covered less than 50 nautical miles. At this pace it was going to be a long way to Canada. In the past I always had trouble when it came to making the decision to drop out of a race. I just didn’t like to do it. As long as there is any way we could still making the finish line I would hang in there. But when we were looking at the start of the third day and still no wind we had to do it. We had to start the diesel and motor to the north. All I could think of was all the preparation we had gone through for this race. All the months of working on M’Lady to make her capable of doing an offshore race. I wanted to think that we would come back, we would finish the race another year. What I didn’t know at the time is that a lot of the other boats in the race had already dropped out. There were very few boats still in the race. When your racing a race of this distance once you leave the start line you don’t see any of the other boats. We started the diesel and motored towards the north.

It felt good to be moving again. At least with the diesel we would be in Canada within a couple days. You would thing that after dropping out of a race that we had work so hard to get ready for the morel on board would be low. But that wasn’t the case. At least not with the rest of the crew. I was the only one that was moping around. I‘m the one that didn’t want to give it up. Everyone on board had been telling me to call it quits for the last 24 hours. I was the last one to fold. I think if I had kept the crew there any longer looking for wind they would have thrown me overboard anyway. The whole crew was glad to have the boat moving again, at least making headway in the right direction.

As we approach the Washington states Cape Flattery we received a call on the radio from one of the other sailboats that were in the race. They too had dropped out of the race and were having trouble with their engine. The arrangements were made for us to give them a tow. There coordinates were passed to us over the radio and we headed in their direction. Once we approached the other boat we could see that it was called Magic Carpet. This was the all women sailing team that had entered the race this year. Once we had them in tow the crew of M’Lady had fun with the crew on board Magic Carpet. We took pictures, and passed things back and forth. Ralph kept asking if we could keep them. Magic Carpet was one of the boats that was scheduled to take part in the Vic-Maui race that year. They were a seasoned crew and had plenty of experience in offshore racing. I guess if this crew had dropped out of the Oregon Offshore Race and had to be towed in, maybe for us on M’Lady we didn’t look that bad after all. We kept Magic Carpet in tow for the better part of that day. Late in the afternoon the wind finally started to build. We released Magic Carpet and we both hoisted our spinnakers and sailed off toward Victoria Canada. Shortly after releasing Magic Carpet another boat named RAGE motored up along side of M’Lady. It seems that the skipper of RAGE was the husband of one of the crew of Magic Carpet. They slid their sleek 60 foot hull up along side M’lady and passed a case of Canadian beer over the rail. It was a thank you for helping out the Magic Carpet. With a quick salute they turned off and headed toward Canada. As I passed a cold Canadian beer to the crew I herd Ralph say "First we find a boat load of women. Then we find a beer boat. So when does the Swedish Bikini team get here?"

I would have liked to claim that we finished the Oregon Offshore race that year. I would like to have said that we had won. Although we all knew that was a long shot even from the beginning. Looking back at the whole experience of how we took on the challenge of preparing for the Oregon Offshore Race, how we delivered the boat through some of the roughest waters on the west coast, and how we entered and participated in the race, I am proud to say we did it. It had been a long road from the day we had decided to do this race until we were home, tying M’Lady back in her slip at Tyee marina. One might say that it was all in vain, or that it was a waste of time since we didn’t finish the race. For us, the crew of M’Lady we had set out to sail to Astioria Oregon and to participate in the Oregon Offshore Race. For us, on board M’Lady we had completed what we set out to do. For us, we were all winners.

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