Old
lady Martha takes the Northwest Schooner Cup
By Jack Kintner
Though
at first the idea of talking about sailing in a magazine
devoted to Mt. Baker may seem like a bit of a stretch,
it’s certainly appropriate from a sailor’s
point of view. Baker, like Olympus and Rainier, has been
a landmark for northwest sailors since time immemorial,
and was even named from sailboats in 1790 (by the Spanish)
and 1792 (by the English, whose name stuck). There are
more ways to claim the peak than climbing up it or boarding
back down, and for sailors it’s been a trusted friend
and guide since time immemorial.
One
place where it’s
prominently in view if weather permits is from the beach
at Port Townsend, which sits on Admiralty Inlet just
inside the entrance to the inland complex of waterways
usually referred to as Puget Sound.
The
boisterous Pacific swell, usually driven by a prevailing
westerly gale, charges 100 miles down the Juan de Fuca
Strait to meet Whidbey Island head on and create some of
the most interesting and dangerous boating on the coast,
but just inside the inlet, like a doorway, the water calms
down considerably. This makes Port Townsend one of the
more pleasant places to sail, work and live within sight
of Mt. Baker.
The
once prosperous “Key City” that
boomed and faded in the 1890s later became home to a
counter-cultural group of people who brought an artistic
flair and a fondness for the hand-made, with the result
that these days the annual Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival
is the acknowledged late summer gathering spot for those
who appreciate boats made of wood. For old sailboats, Port
Townsend is also one of the places they come to race, and
like racing sailors anywhere they hate to lose.
The
big event is always the Northwest Schooner Cup held on
Saturday afternoon, and between spectators on shore and
in the anchored fleet of visiting boats, there are thousands
of spectators to watch the big boat action. Schooner races
are as old as the boats themselves, the dominant form of
transportation for lumber and fish on both coasts for nearly
three centuries, and races are as serious as any annual
competition can be.
This
year’s race was one of the
most exciting in recent years as two local hot-shots, John “Sugar” Flanagan
and Robert d’Arcy, went head-to-head. Both
are experienced captains married to experienced captains
whose kids are at home on a boat as a barnacle.
Both
had probably twice the normal complement of crew aboard
with extra friends and media visitors and both wanted to
win this race above all, held as it is in front of a knowledgeable
home-town crowd.
The weather cooperated as sunshine poured down like melted
butter on popcorn, and the wind came up to a just right
10 knots just as the race began.
Captain
Flanagan, his face covered by a thick, tangled beard, was
in his 85-foot gaff-rigged topmast schooner, Alcyone. It
was built 51 years ago by Seattle master shipwright Frank
Prothero, who later became a fixture in Port Townsend teaching
wooden boatbuilding skills.
Alcyone’s
complex array of 11 sails are raised in varying combinations
to suit the demands of weather and the boat, and includes
an unusual combination of a “raffee”,
a sail that hangs from a yard or course,
and a triangular sail that sits on top of it called a stunsail,
used downwind to great advantage especially in the long hours
of trade wind sailing. In around-the-buoys racing their ability
to set it quickly would prove to be an almost insurmountable
weapon. The basic crew, Flanagan’s
family of four who has lived board for
many years, honed their skills several
years ago when Flanagan and his wife Leslie
McNish took their two daughters (who have
known no other home than the schooner)
to Ireland and back via the Panama Canal
and the South Pacific.
Captain
Robert d’Arcy,
his wife Holly and their daughter Mary
were in their beautiful 100-year-old
84-foot topsail schooner Martha which they operate
on behalf of the Schooner Martha foundation.
It’s also a west coast
boat, built by the Stone Yard in San
Francisco for the commodore of the San
Francisco Yacht Club, J.R. Hanify. It
was designed by the same naval architect,
B.B. Crowninshield, who designed the
Adventuress, also at the show.
The
beautiful old boat was once owned by James Cagney,
and served a summer camp in the San
Juan Islands until a yard accident almost
destroyed the hull in 1976. It was
rescued and restored by Del Edgbert of Olympia,
then 20 years later was sold to the
Schooner Martha sail training foundation where
the staff works to change lives while
cruising in the San Juans. It’s
the oldest working sailboat in the
state.
The
course was set to take the boats to windward near Point
Wilson, then back downwind close to the Point
Hudson shoreline to show off the
big 45-ton boats with enough canvass to
start their own circus. The best
view, and much better than they anticipated,
was to be had by the spectator boats
anchored just offshore.
Alcyone
won the start with a picture perfect effort, running the
line and then rounding up onto the favored
port tack while Martha found herself more than two boat lengths
off the line and with no momentum. She gradually
rounded up onto a starboard tack and worked her way up to the
windward mark in pursuit. She showed greater speed, sometimes
in bursts as the shore lift filled in from wind
blowing around Point Wilson. Her speed and responsiveness
came in part due to a suit of sails designed and built by
Holly d’Arcy
at the Port Townsend Sails loft,
and by the time the boats reached the weather mark Alcyone’s lead
was down to less than a minute.
Both
boats rounded the weather mark and set downwind sails, Alcyone
hoisting her raffee and stunsail
while those on Martha fiddled with
what they call a “gollicker,” a
hybrid spinnaker/golliwobbler
that flies between the two masts. A sudden gust of wind
convinced Holly to stow the thing rather than get into
a tangle. That decision saved the race for Martha, because
the two boats were on the wrong heading, and had Martha
been flying the big gollicker she would not have had time
to get it down again and stay with Alcyone, who saw the
mistake first and suddenly veered back up onto a broad
reach, accelerating away from the confused Martha crew.
“The
Mark!” someone shouted, pointing out that
the first downwind turning mark
was well inshore from where the skippers expected it to
be. Martha rounded up as well and chased hot on Alcyone’s
heels around the turning mark and then fell off to pass
by the spectators on shore and the anchored fleet
on their way to the downwind
mark.
By this time Martha was making
way on Alcyone ever so slightly,
and the more she blanketed from
behind the closer she came.
Flanagan,
looking nervously over his shoulder
while trying to keep his boat in
the lead, changed course slightly
to starboard to sail close by an
anchored sloop and thereby “scrape” Martha
off his tail.
“My choice was to either go left to go out around him,
and lose gobs of time and
momentum, or just go for it straight through the fleet,” said d’Arcy,
so that’s
exactly what he did, continuing
to close on Alcyone from behind while both dodged anchored boats
like racing school buses
in the parking lot of a mall.
When
Alcyone rounded up slightly to starboard, Martha followed
suit and like the thoroughbred she is
she accelerated over the top and
around Alcyone’s starboard side, and by
the time the boats were
through the fleet Martha had a one-boat-length lead she never relinquished,
sailing the rest of the 8.8-mile course and winning by about three minutes.
Normally
Martha, with a performance handicap racing formula (PHRF) rating of 177,
would give time to Alcyone. Martha, a staysail schooner,
is marconi rigged like modern boats, doing with
one sail what Alcyone, with her gaff-rigged main
and fore (which puts a spar, like a smaller boom,
on the top as well as the bottom of the sail),
does with two. The Flanagans more than make up
for the speed discrepancy with their superior
boat-handling skills. So the two boats were a
fairly close match which is good in this kind
of winner-take-all format. D’Arcy certainly did, with
a broad grin and the hip-hip-hoorays
from several of the competing boats.
Both
boats accept paying passengers for various kinds of trips,
and volunteers and donations are always welcome. The Martha
is in the midst of a centennial fundraiser,
for example, to re-plank the bottom.
For
more information on either boat go to www.woodenboat.org
/festival/index.htm, or visit the Martha website at www.schoonermartha.org,
www.nwmaritime.org, or www.schoonerlinks.com. |
