What a Blast for a Buck
As a delivery skipper, I get the opportunity to deliver everything from tricked out private yachts to clapped out charter boats, and just about everything in between. Once in awhile something radical comes my way. A few years ago, I was hired to help a seventy-something gentleman sail his Newick designed go-fast trimaran to the Dominican Republic. Unfortunately, there was very little wind, so I didn’t get the thrill of sailing at warp speed. Instead, I earned my keep by coaxing the twin outboard engines to life. They had different ideas!
Recently, I received a call from Julie at ‘The Workbench’, owned and run by Geoff Cook in Virgin Gorda. They had an owner who wanted his Chris White-designed 40’ trimaran delivered to Grenada. I was keen. I rendezvoused with the Trimaran Skyhook in Savannah Bay so that I could meet the owners and discuss terms. They pulled in and dropped hook beside us, and I dinghied over to meet owners Sir Philip Beck and his wife, Lady Bridget. I gave him a quote and contract, and he gave me the 10-cent tour, and the deal was done.
The Mad Russian and I set off from Virgin Gorda with weather chart in hand. It didn’t look very promising with three tropical waves coming our way, but the owner was jumping up and down, eager to get his boat to Grenada in time for his arrival. Against better judgment, off we went. We rounded Pajero Point, Virgin Gorda, and set a course for Grenada. As Murphy will have it, the wind was on the nose, but we managed to crank out speeds of 12-14 kts when we eased off the wind a little. Now this was sailing! The water was relatively flat and we were having a fantastic sail, loving the acceleration and speed of this tri.
That night things turned to s%*t. The first squall hit and we screamed along under double-reefed main, going faster and faster. This was a foreshadowing of things to come. After the third squall, the tiller-pilot shat itself. It’s little brains probably got scrambled by going so fast. After a sleepless night launching ourselves off waves like a skipping stone, being fire-hosed by flying spray off the bows and through the tramps, trying to keep at least two hulls in the water at a time, and trying to catch some shut eye inside a spastic washing machine on acid, it stopped being as much fun.
We retained our sense of humor, though, gamely taking the tiller-pilot apart. Finding it full of salt water, we washed it down with Vodka (the Russian’s remedy for everything!), and let it dry out. But the AA cure didn’t work. It refused to think straight, so we were left to hand-steer 12 hours into the delivery until the end.
The next day dawned with a nasty looking horizon, and it never improved. The squalls continued to march through at regular intervals, and we continued to remain soaked to the skin. I didn’t bother wearing more than a bathing suit during the day, throwing on some foulies at night, just to keep me warmer, because they didn’t keep me dry worth a damn. As every squall approached I’d say ‘be a good idea to take a reef or two’ to which the Mad Russian would counter with ‘it does not look so bad’. OK, by Southern Ocean standards it may not look bad, but this was a tri, and Julie’s parting words of ‘don’t flip it and end up drifting off to oblivion’ seemed like a foreboding thought I didn’t want to fulfill.
My instincts were right on, when in one particular squall the rained hosed down, and the wind suddenly wailed. The Mad Russian was being pelted at the helm for this one. He stuck his head down below and calmly said ‘we drop the main... NOW’. I didn’t even have a chance to zip up my jacket, but jumped into the cockpit and released the halyard. It was blowing so hard he couldn’t take his hands off the tiller or mainsheet. We still screamed along at 16 kts under working jib, trying to slow it down.
When it was my watch a few squalls later, the wind started howling through the rigging once again, and we were screaming into the black hole on the edge of control. With mainsheet in one hand and tiller in the other, under double-reefed mainsail, it was my turn to wake up my comrade.
‘It’s getting pretty hectic up here, could you just stand by down there in case I need another pair of hands?’ At this point I was thinking to myself...if my mother could see me now, she would wring my neck.
We made it from Virgin Gorda to Grenada in 50 hours, with the first day clocking in 240 miles. We both agreed that the speed was awesome, but that when it came to driving to windward it was frustrating. Pointing as high as possible so we didn’t miss the island, our speed would drop to 6-8 kts. After such adrenalin rushes of 16 kts, this was a drag. And pounding to weather in a washing machine was not my idea of a good time. I was sure the boat was going to break apart more than a few times, and sleep was non-existent for me. My Russian comrade, on the other hand, could sleep through an invasion of Cossacks. I envied him his sleep, and admired his tenacity.
Skyhook sailed around the last headland and bore off the wind and blasted into Prickly Bay with one more great burst of speed. My crew thought I had swallowed too much salt water and had become delirious, but I wanted one more adrenaline rush before dropping sail. We screamed in at warp speed and just before reaching the first anchored boat, rounded up, dropped sail, and motored sedately through the anchorage.Heads popped out of hatches like gophers out of their holes, to check out the radical go-fast sailing machine. Now that was definitely “In Your Face Sailing, Offshore Where Nobody Can Hear You Scream!!!”
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