(Written for STYC Anchorline)
After a winter's worth of hard work getting Ishtar ready to race, we thought we would take her up to Canada and shake her down at the Southern Straits. As you might have heard, the race dished out more than most people bargained for.
The delivery ride up was a beautiful, calm cruise through the San Juans and Gulf Islands. But by the time the crew arrived in full at the WVYC there was a fair amount of concern about the weather forecast. Originally, it looked pretty good, with even a possibility of a spinnaker ride both ways, at least for the short course boats. By Thursday, that forecast was gone and they were calling for a gale. The WVYC brought in a top notch weather guy from Weather Canada and he pulled no punches in his briefing, saying that the system had developed into a closed low (reminded me of tropical storm gribs in the South Pacific with the low in the 975mB range) and that "this was the most dangerous weather system we could see for a race." He also stated clearly that winds over 50 knots, and likely over 60 we probable, with seas (square waves) to 5-6 meters. There were long moments of silence in the packed room as we all absorbed this.
Ishtar is a 30 year old boat, with 25' of waterline. I've spent some time offshore, and have made my share of poor decisions when it comes to weather, at least according to my wife. But even on bigger boats that were purpose built for offshore work we never contemplated going out in a forecast like this one, with so much certainty of misery.
Still, there I was Friday morning, talking to the Race Committee Chair (intending to withdraw), when he said "it looks like the system may move over a little faster than expected, might not be as bad as forecast, and that he might postpone the start to allow the weather to pass through." Well, OK, let's go have a quick look, I thought. After a brief discussion with the crew (Stu, Scott, Brandon, Eli, John) we threw off the lines and headed out.
We didn't get very far. We rounded the corner at Point Atkinson and the wind was cranking 35 gusting 40. It was all we could do to beat in towards the starting line, and our engine (who doesn't care for bad weather) wasn't able to provide much help. After we heard on the radio about a boat losing part of its mast and watching another right in front of us blow up her mainsail, we thought that there was little glory to be had by us that day. So we chucked our pride, spun her around and scooted home at 8 knots with just the storm jib up. We were the first boat back to the bar, with zero damage aside from the ego bruises, and we medicated ourselves accordingly.
Throughout the day we sat in the bar and watched the carnage roll in. A 40'er came in to be met at the dock by EMT, carrying someone off on a backboard (sheet caught round his neck?). Not long after, they came back to get a different guy on a different boat (broken leg?). We heard that two masts were lost, windows were blown out, and over 50 sails destroyed in a fleet of 40 or so boats that went out. Worst of all, last year's winner in our class, Incisor, was rolled and sunk. The crew were pulled off by the J-30 Radiant Heat, and taken to Nanaimo for treatment. In all, 11 or 12 people overboard, 9 hospitalized before the race was finally abandoned at 3:45PM and boats were advised to seek shelter.
Sometimes that tendency to head off to the bar early isn't such a bad thing.
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