Towhee Finishes First in its class! First hand account from The Sam Wetherill Trophy Race.
This past weekend’s The Sam Wetherill Trophy Race is TOWHEE’s second preparation race before Bermuda!
All the crew that will be on the Bermuda Race were there.
The Wetherill as it is known, is a 140-mile overnight race from New London CT to Gay Head at Martha’s Vineyard, and island off the Massachusetts shoreline.
It is considered an ocean race as the start is in Long Island Sound (LIS), out a narrows what is known as The Race between Little Gull Island and Fishers Island into the Atlantic Ocean to Gay Head buoy.
Weather predictions early in the week were for SW winds at 10-15, typical LIS weather for this time of the year.
However, this was not a typical year and by mid-week the weather report started to deteriorate, now wind now 20-30 out of the NW. By Thursday, predictions were for gale warnings out to Gay Head and back.
Thursday at the captains’ meeting the weather update was now a steady 30-35 with gusts up to over 50!
We had already made our minds up on TOWHEE that if they didn’t do the short course to go around Block Island (about 80 miles) then we would do that anyway, the 50+ predicted winds were to be at Gay Head give or take about the time we would be there. Not to mention 6–9-foot waves, not sea swells.
We were not interested in breaking the boat or someone just before Bermuda.
As it turns out, the Race Committee made the prudent decision and sent us on the 80-mile Block Island course.
Our start was at 1115 hours and with the wind shifts before the start, it went from a port spinnaker pole to starboard pole to a close reach with the #1 jib. Our foredeck crew was very busy in the 15 minutes before our start!
We got off to a decent start at the pin end of the start line, only 2 boats ahead of us in our 8-boat class.
We got to the first mark, Bell “8” turned to our new course to “1BI”, set the spinnaker and were on our way.
Fortunately, we had an ebb tide out of The Race, at times our Speed Over Ground (SOG) exceeding 10 knots, in a Cal 40!
Wind was rather benign at 12-15 knots; sea state was 1-2 feet and 2 ½ hours later we were approaching “1BI”.
The wind was noticeably increasing, and we opted for the #3 jib at 1BI as we rounded and came up almost hard on the wind. Wind was now up into the low 20’s and along the south shore of Block, the bluffs were inducing some interesting wind patterns as it swirled down on the fleet. It was very obvious approaching Old Harbor that the velocity would increase as we could see the change on the water. As we crossed the entrance to Old Harbor, we eased the traveller down to reduce the weather helm and had Mohegan Bluffs lighthouse in sight.
The lighthouse in 1993 was moved inland on the island 300’ due to erosion. Had this not been done, it would have toppled into the ocean due to the erosion.
The waves and wind had picked up, waves now in the 4-5/6’ range, we sailed hard on the wind on port tack about 1 ½-2 miles past the bluffs before tacking over for the long slog back to The Race. Our waypoint was set for the buoy off Little Gull island, 13 miles ahead.
With the wind now consistently in the mid to upper 20’s, wave height was 5-7’, period was no more than 3 seconds, very rough. Dinner was served and we all sat on deck with most of us sitting on the rail, rail meat as it is known.
The boat was pounding as we clawed our way towards Little Gull, it was full foul weather gear with spray coming over the bow more often than not.
We were once again lucky as we had caught the ebb out of The Race, we caught the flood back in. This time the “washing machine” was on full cycle, there 1-2’ wavelets everywhere and it makes a very distinctive roaring sound. If you get caught in a back eddy, you could sit for a very long time going nowhere! We got through with no back eddy issues and were back into Long Island Sound.
On to the finish!
Per the Sailing Instructions (SIs) we called the Race Committee as we rounded Bell 8 and headed for the finish line.
Our finish was at 23:52:17 completing the course in just under 12 hours.
We checked the water to make sure there were no lines in the water and fired up the iron jib.
Got the #3 down and turned west to head back to Branford CT, our home port about 3 hours away. Yes, Dark and Stormy’s were made, and we settled in for the soggy 3-hour ride home.
Top wind speed we saw was around 30 knots, never heard if the 50 predicted at Gay Head was ever realized, but we were all happy.
We learned on the way back that in the fleet of 41 boats that started, on corrected time (meaning adjusting for handicaps) we were #2! The US Coast Guard team beat us by 7 minutes on corrected time! Congrats to the Coasties!
And the best part, out of 8 boats in our class, we got 1st!
Not too shabby for a boat built in 1967.
Next up, Newport to Bermuda!
Start is June 19th, follow us at:
Bermudarace.com
Boat name: TOWHEE