Thread: PDRacers - 200 mile event up the Texas Coast - Texas200 2009

Picture of Andrew Linn in Salem Electron.

Very nice. Kudos to Chuck. Did he have any more info on the fate of Bryan's Raid 41? I still haven't heard anything definitive.

Chuck didn't want to spoil Bryans fun. Wants to "let Bryan tell his story to me". I think that unless Bryan will endeavour to tell me what is happening by knocking a table in a dark room with his ghostly fists, then he is very much alive.

Weren't the Ducks magnificent!

MIK

Well, whatever the story that eventually emerges from Bryan, it is just great to see a RAID41 on the water. All hints of awkward boxiness just fade away and she looks both graceful and really quite potent. The acceleration in those puffs looked rather startling!

I wonder if the boat was built with the provision for the water ballast? I think even that short video shows that the original intent for a bit of weight to 'calm things down a bit' was spot on.

I watched Brian putting water into the ballast tanks right after he put it in the water. Keep in mind that the weather was really boisterous all week with high wind and some big chop in the bays. Here is a letter that I just posted to Michael:

Michael:

I talked to Bryan today and told him I had sent you some pictures. He did not seem to mind that his story was getting out so I can tell you what I know. The weather that day was quite intense. Wind gusts had to be 20-25 mph and the waves in Corpus Christi Bay were 4-5 feet. Sandra and I had just finished towing one of the proas out of deep water up into the lee of Mustang Island when we saw Bryan waving a red cushion in four foot deep water near Shamrock Island. So we sailed over to him and took him aboard. He had been in the water for about 30 minutes. He told us that the boat had capsized once in the high wind and waves and that he had been able to easily right it and get back in. But he had seen a piece of gear (that red cushion) floating just a few feet away and reached for it. At that point, he fell out of the boat and it sailed away without him. It headed up some distance away in the direction of a large bay and started moving away slowly. He looked in the other direction and saw Shamrock island not too far away and decided that chasing the boat was a losing proposition so he headed for the island. Meanwhile he kept an eye on the boat for a while and got bearings on where it had gone.

As soon as he had told us this, we decided to go in search of the boat. A quick check of the chart told us that there was a large curving area of shoreline in the direction that the boat had gone in so we headed that way. At that point a professional towboat intercepted us and asked if we needed help. We said "no" and headed off.

At some point, someone had reported the boat found without a sailor and got the Coast Guard involved. I think they had sent the tow boat guy. We talked to the Coast Guard and informed them that we had the stranded sailor aboard and were looking for the boat. Then we got a report that the boat was in "Shamrock Cove" which we interpreted to be the cove in Shamrock Island. So we turned around and motored over to the island we had left some time earlier to see if we could find it there. Then we got news that the Tow Boat guy had the boat in tow, having found it in the direction that we had been going in the first place. Unfortunately, the law says that when someone finds an abandoned boat, he can claim salvage which means he basically owns the boat.

At that point we decided we had to drop Bryan off at the nearest place he could get access to a phone and road and that was a place called Fin and Feather - a bait store and bar. On the way there we spotted his boat in tow. He had to pay quite a bit to satisfy the tow boat guy who said he could have charged as much as $150 per foot of boat. Bryan called his father, who was in the area, to pick him up so he could get his trailer and retrieve the boat.

One thing Bryan told us on the way to the fin and feather was that his father had given him a tether to tie himself to the boat with just before the launch that morning but that he had not taken the time to use it. Bryan is a very experienced sailor but had rushed to finish the boat in time and had not been able to get non-skid decks or hiking straps done. The boat itself looks like a really fun one that would have been great for this event. I hope he comes back next year.

Chuck

Thanks Chuck,

It's good to get the story. It's even better to know for sure that Bryan is ok, and the boat survived intact.

Cheers,
David

Wow, thanks for dropping by Chuck!!! I was wondering whether to post it. So great!

On other comments:

As far as Taming the RAID ... we will see. It is nice to have the option to add water and maybe that is why the boat is down on its lines a bit.

There are some items on the other side of the equation though.

1. There is plenty of wind - a lot though not many waves
2. The boat doesn't do anything stupid
3. The crew is only sitting inside the cockpit
4. True wind is about 60 degrees.

Lots of boats would be uncontrollable in those conditions without the crew making strenuous efforts to hold the thing up. So I don't think it qualifies as flighty ... yet. Need to know about the water ballast configuration in those shots.

This probably reflects that I calculated the lateral stability to match the PDRacer. The PDR has an outrageous amount of stability - of the dozens (by now) of beginner sailors that Biting Midge has lent the boats to ... often in conditions I feel nervous about ... there have only been a couple of capsizes.

One was when a very experience yacht sailor decided to steer from the leeward side of the cockpit ...ooops. I've done the same once (a long time ago) ... so I am not sneering. Come to think of it ... the other capsize was an experienced dinghy sailor too!

Michael

Here is a report from Proa sailor Kevin on the Wikiproa blog. Wow .. what a variety of boats!!! And what stories!

Some of them might even be true!

From Kevin

TEXAS 200: Post game report:

This is Kevin. It's Saturday afternoon, I'm back home. Had a great trip. I have a few details to add, in no particular order:

There was a lot of wind, over 20 knots by 11 am every day but Friday. It was nice for fast sailing, but it sure did a job on the fleet, there was quite a bit of carnage every night.

Once again, every single Puddle Duck that started the thing finished. Amazing. Laurent and I pulled up on the beach at Stingray Hole, the entrance to the Corpus Ship Channel, we wanted to sort a few things out and I'd heard something on the radio, I wasn't sure what, so I wanted to stop and see what was up. There were the five Puddle Ducks there, and the Bolger Folding Schooner. While we were there, the Bolger Cartopper rowed and dragged his boat over the point. He had capsized in the bay and lost his rig. The Puddleduckers built him a rig out of spare spars and a small lugsail they were carrying, trimmed the bottom of the mast with an axe so it would fit in his mast step, and had it up and ready to go in ten minutes. Seriously, ten minutes. He was planning to sail to Fin&Feathers across the channel and drop out, but in the middle of the channel he turned upwind and headed on. I guess it felt ok to him. He finished the whole 200 miles under that rig. Ten minutes, out of spare parts carried in 8 foot boats.

Laurent sheared a rudder pin in the Upper Laguna Madre on Day 1. Then, as he was sitting sideways to the 2' to 3' swell, his mast bounced off the mast step and the rig fell down. Dan and Brian were behind him, stopped to make sure he was ok, and said he was using French words they were not familiar with from their high school French classes. He said he was ok, that he had plenty of water, and that he was going to paddle to the shore, beach the boat and walk back across the King Ranch to Port Mansfield. They went on to Camp 1 and reported this. We were all sad. The next morning, I heard behind me "Good morning, Kevin!", and there he was. He had paddled the boat a couple of miles to shore, landed, spent six hours building a jury rig and re-stepping the mast, taken off in the dark, and sailed 20 miles up the intercoastal in the company of some barges the size of my high school to arrive at 2 am. He sailed it on Day 2 to Padre Island Yacht Club, we hauled it up the bank to the parking lot and left it there, and he joined me on my boat. I was happy to have him, sailing my boat by myself was a chore.

John Lucius, pictured below with the Tie Fighter looking Raider dinghy, had a funny story. He went over in San Antonio Bay and lost a big waterproof drybag. A shrimp boat was passing by, towing another shrimp boat. "Hey, get my bag!" Ok, the shrimp boat got the bag. Then they took off with it. John was mad, he told me this about three or four hours after it happened and he was still mad. So he got his sail up and chased them all the way into Rockprort, about ten miles. The shrimp boat dropped off the other shrimp boat and then came back out and gave John the bag. Hey, thanks man. John said, "I could see it right there on the back deck the whole way. Just kick it off and I'll pick it up!"

My best day was Day 2, from the Land Cut to the Yot Club. The ICW is always a little like sailing on a street, you don't have to navigate, you just sail from buoy to buoy. This time it was like being in a parade. I took off at 8:30, after most of the fleet, and I didn't reef because I didn't feel like it, I guess. I had up both mains and no jib. It was blowing like stink. All day long I just sailed at the next sail I saw. Dan and Brian were behind me on the Hobie 18/Tamanu, but not gaining very fast. Unknown to me, David, the kid on the Hobie 14 Turbo, was behind them and was gaining. We ran the whole fleet down, there were 40-odd boats ahead of us and we passed them all. About five miles from the Yot club I saw two more sails; Traveller, Charlie and Laura's little trimaran, and John on the Tie Fighter dinghy, planing down waves. I was very surprised to catch him downwind. Then ahead of me was one more sail, the Bolger Folding Schooner, at the head of the fleet, walloping along on a reach. And then Dan and Brian passed me, dammit. And then the kid on the 14. But he dropped his hat, went back for it, hit a shoal and kicked his rudders up and spun out, and sat there for a little bit, he was out of it. The schooner was messing around at the mouth of the Yot club entry, Dan sailed right by him. Then I sailed past him, centered the leeboard and shunted up the channel, about 1/4 mile up a 200' wide channel to windward. That was the best bit of sailing I've done in that boat. I'll let Dan tell you what it looked like from shore, but from the boat it felt pretty good. I should have a gps track to post here in a bit, that will be nice to see. It turns out the folding schooner had a broken leeboard, so they left the boat at the mouth of the channel.

Skip on his P-52 proa was going well, but broke his mast off in the middle of Corpus Christi Bay. We talked about his plans for the boat a bit today, but I'll let him post any details he wants. The boat was sailing well from what I saw, moving easily and looked easy to sail even downwind. Here's a video of him:



The entry to Ayres Dugout was not at all clear on the approach, and lots of people ended up to lee of the channel in 3" of water and then thigh deep mud and sharp oyster shells, or to windward of the island where you had to tack back out, or go through about a mile of thigh deep mud and sharp oyster shells... Even the locals got fooled, Charlie and Laura went out to far to lee in the tri and had to haul it out, and Yves on his pretty Selway Fischer boat got stuck out there and cut his finger really badly on a shell getting out. After I left John apparently rolled his Potter 15 Tetra out there, and gave the hull to Andrew on the spot.

There was a lot of breakage, on both homebuilt and commercial boats. The Tie Figher dinghy broke his carbon rudder housing on Day 1 and was fixing it every night after that. The Hobie Adventure Islands must have sheared about ten rudder pins, and sheared off the roller furling gear on one of them. The Windrider tri had some trouble with his amas' attachment points coming loose, I'm not sure of details. Several broken masts, lots of broken rudders. Lots of wind and 2' to 3' following seas are hard on rudders, I guess. A Sea Pearl capsized in the Laguna Madre on Day 1 and lost the rig, but got a tow back to Port M. The last day Dan discovered his front beam was coming apart, that was a bummer. Luckily the last day was short and downwind, and less wind than we'd had the rest of the week. All in all, lots of carnage.

So we had fun, but I have to confess it was marred a bit in the middle of the week wondering if someone had gotten badly hurt or something, it was not clear that everyone was ok until we all met up on the beach at the finish. I was really worried about the guy who got washed off his brand new varnished soap-slick no-straps no-antiskid dinghy, it's worrying to hear on the radio that a boat's been found upside down and the driver is nowhere around. He turned up, but man, that's scary stuff, and I don't like the fact that the Coasties got called on us, I was hoping we could not have that happen. I'm not sure what anyone can do about this, it's not really an organized 'event' as much as it is just a bunch of people who decided to get together and sail up the coast and camp. There were clearly some people who shouldn't have taken off in those conditions, either due to inadequate boats or poor sailing skill. Some people with great boats and skills, like Laurent and the guy on the Tie Fighter and Dan on the Tamanu/H18, had breakages too, but it was the people who didn't seem to have the sailing skills that I worried about getting hurt.

Anyway, we had fun. Here we are at the finish:




both of which were taken by my lovely wife Joy, who met us at the finish. Hurray! She looked good, too.

That's all, folks! If you have a post-race account, please email it to me uaneill AT gmail DOT com and I'll post it here, I think Marie has done her bit for the sailing community. Thanks Marie!

Now I think I'll go eat a big burger.

You can see the other pic and the cool footage of the other proa creaming along
Here http://wikiproa.pbworks.com/2009-Texas-200-blog

That was a great report from Kevin but no one knows all the details. Briefly, it was the ducks with a bit of help that saved John's Potter 15. They flagged down a passing power boat and went out to where the boat had capsized. John said that he was leaving the boat right there, but they did not accept that and righted and bailed it so that he could sail to Ayres Dugout where he gave the boat away. Then they went on to rescue another grounded boat and get it on its way. That boat, "Reflections", went on to finish in spite of the fact that the captain was ready to abandon the boat moments earlier. The Ducks are heroes!

Chuck

Really seem to be great all rounders, it takes cojones to undertake those 200 miles and being "underpowered" means they deserve extra accolades for the grit...

Seems that the camaraderie rules the day (FTW)...
Envious, and impressed.
Cheers,
PDJ

Here is a picture of the boats at Magnolia beach - the end point.



And the fleet and boats there for the day

What strange collection of boat types - wonderful!



Jason and Tenacious Turtle in the foreground.



287 came for the messabout.

But here is another shot for the variety of styles. See the cool oar storage



Jason makes a very interesting point. His boat much be a bit lighter than I thought it would be. Good Job Jason!



Even with the convex sheer you can see the OZ PDR hiding inside Andrew's Salem Electron.



Few more pics including the last one of a sunfish owned by the same person for over 50 years. http://www.flickr.com/photos/happyfu...7619663640459/

Wonderful that such events get people to bring their boats out.

MIK

It occurs to me that, unless my geography is severely muddled, that Andrew's
Salem Electron must surely be the most widely travelled PDR.

IIRC, isn't Salem (I assume that's where Andrew lives) in Massachusetts in
north-eastern USA?

Mid-April, Salem Electron is featured rowing out to a buoy a mile off Depoe Bay,
Oregon in north-western USA.

Now here he is on the far south-east extreme of the USA.

The lad gets around !! One day soon there'll be a pic of him sailing into
Sydney harbour.

A slight correction, if I might - Andrew is from Salem Oregon, not Massachusetts. Still, he does get around.

As much as I like my duck, I like the way it looks, sails everything I just cannot see myself sailing it for 5 days and as far as the Texas 200 these guys are seriously committed or should that be just committed.

Well done, I tips me lid.

Mike