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My left arm gave out fairly quickly, and I handed the mainsheet over to Oriol. Oriol was the man. He worked the mainsheet for the next two hours straight. The mainsheet adjustments were almost constant. The puffs would hit, and Oriol would ease the main to keep the hull from flying too high. When the hull started to come down, he would crank the sheet back in again. As the hull came down, I would bear off to power the boat up again. I was making constant heading changes to mirror the wind shifts. We were working as a team in concert to squeezing every knot of speed out of the beast. We blasted through a couple of light rain showers about fifteen minutes into the race. The sky was overcast, and I was feeling a slight chill despite wearing a shorty wetsuit and a spray top. But there was no time to worry about a chill, we were working hard. I had it fairly easy. I was just dangling in the harness and making slight inputs to the rudders through the tiller extension in my right hand. I tried to minimize the rudder deflections as that puts the brakes on the boat. Oriol was doing all the heavy lifting on the mainsheet. It is wonderful to have a crew you totally trust. Oriol and I have been sailing together off and on for over twenty years. He has learned to read my mind when it comes to sailing.
It is amazing to me how sailing on the verge of disaster becomes routine after you do it for over two hours. We were in our rhythm. We checked the GPS a couple of times, and we were right on the mark for the Featherbeds Channel. Some boats around us were going high and a couple of Hobie 16s were going well below the rhumb line to the channel. Bill Stolberg, on his Hobie 16, looked like he was heading for the infamous Midnight Pass. Midnight Pass is an extremely shallow short cut between the mainland and the Arsenicker Islands. If the tide is low, you might end up walking your boat through knee deep mud. Not fast! If the tide is high enough, you can cut a half mile off the course. Taking Midnight Pass is a big gamble. We were just cruising, keeping the Roberts' RC-30 dead ahead. I find that they are a very stable beacon to follow down the bay. They are usually in the lead, and they know where they are going after sailing this race for many years. The two M-20s looked like they were running neck and neck down the bay from my perspective. Mike Phillips was trying out his new curved daggerboards. I was wondering how the new boards were working as I watched the much faster M-20s disappear out of sight into the haze.
We were having fun dicing with the other boats around us. The Prindle 19MX sailed by Mike Kennedy and Nelson Eads was right with us the whole way. They would pull ahead, and then we would pull ahead. It was the same with Clive Mayo on his A-Cat. We passed him, he passed us. When Clive put his 220 pounds on the wire, he could pull away from us. When he came in off the wire, we gained on him. He eventually got ahead of us and stayed there to the finish. Dennis Green, on his Nacra 6.0, rolled us, but we caught back up in Card Sound. Even Scot and Tracee Corson passed us on their Hobie 16. Normally the Hobie 20 would be faster than a Hobie 16, but that was not necessarily the case this day. It was the perfect point of sail for a Hobie 16. We were dumping wind all day, and I guess the Hobie 16s were harnessing most the wind all day. They evidently had the right size sail for the windy conditions. We eventually caught the H-16s boat for boat for, but they killed us and everybody else on corrected time.
We zipped across Card Sound, and came up on the next choke point, the Card Sound Bridge. The bridge is 65 feet tall at the center span. You don't have to go through the center span. You can go to the left of the center, but of course the bridge height diminishes the closer you go to the end of the bridge. The question always comes to mind, how far to the left can you go with out banging your mast into the bridge. Hitting the bridge can be very embarrassing, not to mention both dangerous and slow. Not good! My technique is to count the spans, and hit the middle opening on the east side of the bridge. Another way to know where you can fit under is to look for the lone figure standing on the bridge taking pictures. Rick White is always up there collecting pictures for Cat Sailor Magazine. I just figure that Rick is standing were the previous boats made it under the bridge. That has worked for me year after year. Wave to Rick as you go under the bridge. You might make the cover of Cat Sailor next month.
After the Card Sound Bridge, the race is a straight shot, seven miles across Barnes Sound. I don't know why, but the wind always seems to pick up in Barnes Sound. It did again this year. We were way overpowered and dumping air off the top of the sail. We were doing well. We had passed a number of boats in Card Sound, and we were feeling real good. We were able to roll Dennis Green on his bright red Nacra 6.0. We were trying our hardest to catch Clive, who was just a few hundred feet in front of us at times. Oriol was working the main for all he was worth. We were trying hard, but we didn't want to flip. We throttled back just a hair to make sure we did not blow our lead in our class with a capsize. In the end, we were the 9th boat overall to cross the finish line. I think that is the best we have done in 30 years of doing this race. We won our Portsmouth 20 class in a hard fought battle with some great sailors. I thought we did very well for a couple of older guys, each of us being newly minted grandfathers in recent months. I thought for sure that Mike Kennedy and Nelson Eads, on their P-19MX, were going to get us this year. They are relentless and good. They came in second in our class. Dennis Green, on his N-60, rounded out the top three in the Portsmouth 20 class.
The amazing story in this year's race was the Hobie 16 fleet. The H-16 sailors from the Ft. Lauderdale fleet are just awesome. They kicked butt. It was their conditions, and they capitalized on the opportunity. The top five boats to finish, on corrected time, were all the venerable Hobie 16. What a show of sailing skills! These guys were all sailing flat out, and they beat a multitude of boats with faster ratings. It was like the David and Goliath story; the Hobie 16s were flinging stones and killing the giants. It was Bill Stolberg's day to shine. He was the first Hobie 16 to finish. He gambled on the short cut through the risky Midnight Pass, and his gamble paid off in spades. Bill won the perpetual Mark Albury Trophy for first beach cat to finish on corrected time. Congratulations Bill! Scot and Tracee Corson were second in the H-16 class, and Doug Russell was third.
In the four boat Stray Cat class, Kenny Pierce, on his Stiletto 23, easily won. He was the sixth boat to cross the finish line. I would love to know how he makes that boat fly, but Kenny doesn't give away his secrets. Kenny did tell me later that he had his relatively inexperienced sister on the tiller, and he worked the mainsheet the whole race. Clive Mayo, solo on his A-Cat, corrected into second place. If I am not mistaken, he was the only solo boat in the whole race. Teenager wonder boys Taylor Palmer and Mac Agnese took third on their Nacra F-18. They can fly! Taylor told me that they were slowed down when they ran aground on a shoal in Card Sound.
In the Fast Cat class, it was Mike Phillips and Mike Siau bringing home all the marbles. Mike had just recently installed the latest high tech curved daggerboard on his Marstrom 20. That, or something else, was working for them, because they won their class narrowly beating the perennial winners, the RC-30, Dream On. The RC-30, sailed by Eric Roberts, Bill Roberts, and Dave Weir took second place behind the M-20. But, Dream On was the first boat to finish once again this year. They finished almost 11 minutes ahead of the Phillip's boat. Bret Moss and Mark Jones took third place on Bret's Marstrom 20.
The 2010 Miami Key Largo Race was another awesome adventure this year. Everyone was grinning from ear to ear after the race. Stories were embellished, and trophies were presented at the awards dinner on Saturday, April 24, at the Miami Yacht Club. A good time was had by all in the 55th annual MKL Race. Thanks again to the good folks at the Miami Yacht Club for another great race.
Footnote: I found it interesting that many of the top finishers in the MKL Race are also RC-27 radio controlled sailboat racers. I don't know for sure if this is a cause and effect situation or simply that the top finishers like to sail anything that floats, and that practice makes perfect. Of the seven multihull classes, five of the classes were won by boats with RC-27 sailors onboard. Mike Phillips won the Fast Cat class. I won the Ports 20 class. Kenny Pierce won the Stray Cats class. Robert Onsgard won the MASF-R class. John Sherry helped Andy Roedig win the MASF-24 class. Mike Powers took second in the MASF-C class. Even Chris Lones, the creator and builder of the RC-27, helped his brothers in being the third monohull to finish the race, beating many faster rated boats. So there is definitely some correlation between sailing the radio controlled boats and doing well on real boat, but it is probably a debatable question of which came first, the chicken or the egg.
John McKnight
Commodore, Catamaran Association of Biscayne Bay (CABB)
Crew: John McKnight and Oriol Cruzeta
Boat: Hobie 20
Boat Name: Mango Tango
Articles: 55th Annual Miami to Key Largo Race Report
April 17, 2010: It was a windy, wet, and wild Miami Key Largo Race this year. The race started at 8 AM just south of the William Powell Bridge in Biscayne Bay with the downtown skyline of Miami as a backdrop. When the gun went off, over 100 boats took off like a herd of leaping gazelles. We had a left quartering headwind at about 15 knots. Everyone was bounding headlong down the bay, going south toward Key Largo. Oriol and I had our hands full the whole race.
Oriol and I immediately went out on the trapeze wires at the start. When I sheeted in, the port hull popped out of the water despite having all our weight on the wires. We were way overpowered. We started tweaking the control lines to tame the beast boat. Oriol pulled on a little downhaul. We dropped the main traveler down a couple of inches. That seemed to work. Our Hobie 20 was now in trim and scooting down the bay with all the big boys. We were right where we were supposed to be, amongst the Inter 20s, the P-19s, and the Nacra 6.0s. Everything was good. Everybody was ripping down the bay in formation like a flight of jet fighters heading for the target. One boat would inch ahead and then another would drop back a few boat lengths. All the crews were adjusting their control lines to optimize their speed through the water. Everyone was jostling for position.My left arm gave out fairly quickly, and I handed the mainsheet over to Oriol. Oriol was the man. He worked the mainsheet for the next two hours straight. The mainsheet adjustments were almost constant. The puffs would hit, and Oriol would ease the main to keep the hull from flying too high. When the hull started to come down, he would crank the sheet back in again. As the hull came down, I would bear off to power the boat up again. I was making constant heading changes to mirror the wind shifts. We were working as a team in concert to squeezing every knot of speed out of the beast. We blasted through a couple of light rain showers about fifteen minutes into the race. The sky was overcast, and I was feeling a slight chill despite wearing a shorty wetsuit and a spray top. But there was no time to worry about a chill, we were working hard. I had it fairly easy. I was just dangling in the harness and making slight inputs to the rudders through the tiller extension in my right hand. I tried to minimize the rudder deflections as that puts the brakes on the boat. Oriol was doing all the heavy lifting on the mainsheet. It is wonderful to have a crew you totally trust. Oriol and I have been sailing together off and on for over twenty years. He has learned to read my mind when it comes to sailing.
It is amazing to me how sailing on the verge of disaster becomes routine after you do it for over two hours. We were in our rhythm. We checked the GPS a couple of times, and we were right on the mark for the Featherbeds Channel. Some boats around us were going high and a couple of Hobie 16s were going well below the rhumb line to the channel. Bill Stolberg, on his Hobie 16, looked like he was heading for the infamous Midnight Pass. Midnight Pass is an extremely shallow short cut between the mainland and the Arsenicker Islands. If the tide is low, you might end up walking your boat through knee deep mud. Not fast! If the tide is high enough, you can cut a half mile off the course. Taking Midnight Pass is a big gamble. We were just cruising, keeping the Roberts' RC-30 dead ahead. I find that they are a very stable beacon to follow down the bay. They are usually in the lead, and they know where they are going after sailing this race for many years. The two M-20s looked like they were running neck and neck down the bay from my perspective. Mike Phillips was trying out his new curved daggerboards. I was wondering how the new boards were working as I watched the much faster M-20s disappear out of sight into the haze.
We were having fun dicing with the other boats around us. The Prindle 19MX sailed by Mike Kennedy and Nelson Eads was right with us the whole way. They would pull ahead, and then we would pull ahead. It was the same with Clive Mayo on his A-Cat. We passed him, he passed us. When Clive put his 220 pounds on the wire, he could pull away from us. When he came in off the wire, we gained on him. He eventually got ahead of us and stayed there to the finish. Dennis Green, on his Nacra 6.0, rolled us, but we caught back up in Card Sound. Even Scot and Tracee Corson passed us on their Hobie 16. Normally the Hobie 20 would be faster than a Hobie 16, but that was not necessarily the case this day. It was the perfect point of sail for a Hobie 16. We were dumping wind all day, and I guess the Hobie 16s were harnessing most the wind all day. They evidently had the right size sail for the windy conditions. We eventually caught the H-16s boat for boat for, but they killed us and everybody else on corrected time.
We zipped across Card Sound, and came up on the next choke point, the Card Sound Bridge. The bridge is 65 feet tall at the center span. You don't have to go through the center span. You can go to the left of the center, but of course the bridge height diminishes the closer you go to the end of the bridge. The question always comes to mind, how far to the left can you go with out banging your mast into the bridge. Hitting the bridge can be very embarrassing, not to mention both dangerous and slow. Not good! My technique is to count the spans, and hit the middle opening on the east side of the bridge. Another way to know where you can fit under is to look for the lone figure standing on the bridge taking pictures. Rick White is always up there collecting pictures for Cat Sailor Magazine. I just figure that Rick is standing were the previous boats made it under the bridge. That has worked for me year after year. Wave to Rick as you go under the bridge. You might make the cover of Cat Sailor next month.
After the Card Sound Bridge, the race is a straight shot, seven miles across Barnes Sound. I don't know why, but the wind always seems to pick up in Barnes Sound. It did again this year. We were way overpowered and dumping air off the top of the sail. We were doing well. We had passed a number of boats in Card Sound, and we were feeling real good. We were able to roll Dennis Green on his bright red Nacra 6.0. We were trying our hardest to catch Clive, who was just a few hundred feet in front of us at times. Oriol was working the main for all he was worth. We were trying hard, but we didn't want to flip. We throttled back just a hair to make sure we did not blow our lead in our class with a capsize. In the end, we were the 9th boat overall to cross the finish line. I think that is the best we have done in 30 years of doing this race. We won our Portsmouth 20 class in a hard fought battle with some great sailors. I thought we did very well for a couple of older guys, each of us being newly minted grandfathers in recent months. I thought for sure that Mike Kennedy and Nelson Eads, on their P-19MX, were going to get us this year. They are relentless and good. They came in second in our class. Dennis Green, on his N-60, rounded out the top three in the Portsmouth 20 class.
The amazing story in this year's race was the Hobie 16 fleet. The H-16 sailors from the Ft. Lauderdale fleet are just awesome. They kicked butt. It was their conditions, and they capitalized on the opportunity. The top five boats to finish, on corrected time, were all the venerable Hobie 16. What a show of sailing skills! These guys were all sailing flat out, and they beat a multitude of boats with faster ratings. It was like the David and Goliath story; the Hobie 16s were flinging stones and killing the giants. It was Bill Stolberg's day to shine. He was the first Hobie 16 to finish. He gambled on the short cut through the risky Midnight Pass, and his gamble paid off in spades. Bill won the perpetual Mark Albury Trophy for first beach cat to finish on corrected time. Congratulations Bill! Scot and Tracee Corson were second in the H-16 class, and Doug Russell was third.
In the four boat Stray Cat class, Kenny Pierce, on his Stiletto 23, easily won. He was the sixth boat to cross the finish line. I would love to know how he makes that boat fly, but Kenny doesn't give away his secrets. Kenny did tell me later that he had his relatively inexperienced sister on the tiller, and he worked the mainsheet the whole race. Clive Mayo, solo on his A-Cat, corrected into second place. If I am not mistaken, he was the only solo boat in the whole race. Teenager wonder boys Taylor Palmer and Mac Agnese took third on their Nacra F-18. They can fly! Taylor told me that they were slowed down when they ran aground on a shoal in Card Sound.
In the Fast Cat class, it was Mike Phillips and Mike Siau bringing home all the marbles. Mike had just recently installed the latest high tech curved daggerboard on his Marstrom 20. That, or something else, was working for them, because they won their class narrowly beating the perennial winners, the RC-30, Dream On. The RC-30, sailed by Eric Roberts, Bill Roberts, and Dave Weir took second place behind the M-20. But, Dream On was the first boat to finish once again this year. They finished almost 11 minutes ahead of the Phillip's boat. Bret Moss and Mark Jones took third place on Bret's Marstrom 20.
The 2010 Miami Key Largo Race was another awesome adventure this year. Everyone was grinning from ear to ear after the race. Stories were embellished, and trophies were presented at the awards dinner on Saturday, April 24, at the Miami Yacht Club. A good time was had by all in the 55th annual MKL Race. Thanks again to the good folks at the Miami Yacht Club for another great race.
Footnote: I found it interesting that many of the top finishers in the MKL Race are also RC-27 radio controlled sailboat racers. I don't know for sure if this is a cause and effect situation or simply that the top finishers like to sail anything that floats, and that practice makes perfect. Of the seven multihull classes, five of the classes were won by boats with RC-27 sailors onboard. Mike Phillips won the Fast Cat class. I won the Ports 20 class. Kenny Pierce won the Stray Cats class. Robert Onsgard won the MASF-R class. John Sherry helped Andy Roedig win the MASF-24 class. Mike Powers took second in the MASF-C class. Even Chris Lones, the creator and builder of the RC-27, helped his brothers in being the third monohull to finish the race, beating many faster rated boats. So there is definitely some correlation between sailing the radio controlled boats and doing well on real boat, but it is probably a debatable question of which came first, the chicken or the egg.
John McKnight
Commodore, Catamaran Association of Biscayne Bay (CABB)
Crew: John McKnight and Oriol Cruzeta
Boat: Hobie 20
Boat Name: Mango Tango
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