This Side Up

Following the wind to a win

John Howell
Posted 9/22/15

Sailing can be a guessing game. Some skippers put their money on instruments that measure everything from the speed of the wind to the depth of the water, boat speed, angle of the wind, the course …

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This Side Up

Following the wind to a win

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Sailing can be a guessing game. Some skippers put their money on instruments that measure everything from the speed of the wind to the depth of the water, boat speed, angle of the wind, the course made good and a lot more stuff. Then there are skippers who work off of experience, local knowledge and faith that if something has happened more than once, it’s likely to happen again. They’re the people who work off intuition and sometimes confound the technological wizard who must have a scientific explanation. The techies don’t like taking guesses.

Saturday was a day for both the risk taker and the calculator. It was the Twenty Hundred Club fall race around Prudence Island.

The Twenty Hundred Club is a collection of bay sailors without a home. The club doesn’t have a yacht club, and its purpose is to hold a series of races for racers of all abilities from across the bay. The races have different classes so that the faster boats and those who want the challenge of flying spinnakers compete against one another. Then there’s the cruising fleet for those who also love competing, but maybe not so obsessively.

It’s only appropriate that the club have such a name, for the story behind it captures how club members really don’t take themselves seriously, yet are serious when it comes to their passion for sailing.

The tale is that on Labor Day weekend 1946, a group of sailors from Edgewood and Rhode Island Yacht Clubs, who all owned Herreshoff-designed S Boats, decided it would be a test of seamanship and safety at sea to race from Newport to Onset on Buzzard’s Bay. The race was to start fishermen’s style, meaning all five boats were all at anchor when the gun was sounded. It’s likely this scheme was cooked up over more than one beer in a watering hole in Newport. This would give you some idea of the impetuous nature and ingenuity of these sailors and their sobriety. So they agreed to race to Onset, starting that evening and sailing throughout the night.

As club folklore has it, the race was to start at 8 p.m. So this contingent of S Boat sailors raised sails, gathering in Newport harbor for the appointed hour. As the war was fresh in the minds of many and there was still a high level of coastline security, a flotilla of S Boats on a summer’s eve raised the curiosity of the Coast Guard. They sent out a vessel to see what was going on.

As the story goes, the Coast Guard officer requested an explanation, and Ty Cobb – not the baseball player, but a local sailor with the same name – said they were racing to Onset.

“By whose authority?” demanded the officer.

Cobb didn’t hesitate, which apparently lent credence to his reply. But the real gift was his choice of military time in his response that provided that element of authenticity.

“By the authority of the Twenty Hundred Club,” he answered.

The Coast Guard bought it, and the name of the club was born.

The race, on the other hand, reportedly was somewhat of a disaster. The fleet ended up scattered around Buzzard’s Bay, with only one boat – Cobb’s Dilemma – making it to Onset first.

Saturday’s Twenty Hundred Club race would have gotten a better start had it been later in the day. The fog was still lifting as boats gathered off Prudence Island’s Pine Hill Point. The bay was flat except for rippled circles of schools of feeding menhaden, a positive sign of the bay’s vitality. The wind came in gentle puffs from differing quadrants. It was a great morning for water skiing, not for sailing.

In the true spirit of Twenty Hundred Club volunteerism, the club’s commodore, EC Helme, who would have rather been racing had his boat on the line, was playing the role of race committee. The start was postponed until finally there was the hint of a breeze.

This was going to be the last race of the season for Bill Riggs. His boat, Rigadoon, was hauled for the season yesterday. He had pulled together a few of his regulars for crew, including Andy Droitcour, Jeff Gooding and Jack Henriques. One of Andy’s friends, Bill – who lives aboard his catamaran and considers the East Coast from Maine to Florida his home – and I rounded out the crew.

From Pine Hill Point, the course took us south to Quonset and then across the bay, up the east passage and back.

The first leg was a test of guesswork. All the technological devices couldn’t have forecast a 15-minute puff from the west off Allen’s Harbor or a zephyr from the southwest that backed around to the east only to die as a whisper. We delighted in those moments when the knot meter climbed over two knots and we actually saw ripples in our glassy reflection. And we bemoaned those moments when the sail went limp and the rest of the fleet found air and silently went by.

Bill followed the wind, rather than the course. At least we were moving. We kept moving south rather than east after leaving Quonset, and at one point set the spinnaker. It filled briefly as he headed back for the mark, then collapsed. In a drastic move, we lowered the main sail in hopes there would be enough air to lift the spinnaker. It fluttered, and then in one of those situations that can only be attributed to being at the right place and the right time, the sea breeze started to fill in and we were the first to get it. Rigadoon was now moving and the knot meter was climbing. We were up to six knots and gaining speed. We were in the lead, a position we held until the final minutes when we rounded the can at Providence Point, where Helme chose to shorten course. As Coconut, the boat that beat us across the line, owes Rigadoon time, we figure we won. We did.

Bill looked pleased to end the season in such fashion. It was time for a beer.

Surely like those S Boat sailors who came up with such a unique name for a club, we concluded no matter the finish it was great to be on the water…and we were sober.

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