The Miami to Key Largo Race, April 26, 2006, Miami, Florida
Hobie 20, John McKnight, Oriol Cruzeta
The wind is blowing out of the southeast a 15 plus. The boat is hopping around like a hyper kangaroo. My red spray suit is covered with salt water. Salt water is everywhere. I taste it in my mouth. It stings my eyes. It is up my nose. It spots my sunglasses. All this and we haven't even started the race. I am just trying to get out to the start line. In these conditions I know we are in for a wet and wild Miami to Key Largo Race.
The Miami to Key Largo Race is put on each year by the Miami Yacht Club. This was the 51st running of this classic race. I have made just about every one of these races since I moved to Miami in 1979. Every race has been the same and every race has been different. The course is always the same. It starts just south of the Rickenbacker Causeway in Miami and proceeds 43 some odd miles down Biscayne Bay to Key Largo. There are no mandatory marks, just the start line and the finish line. How you go the distance is your choice. And there are choices to be made when it comes to staying in the channels or cutting over the flats. You can cut between the Arsenicker Islands and risk running aground or you can stay in the deeper inter-coastal waterway, your choice. The race is also different each year. The weather is different. The boats are often different. The crew may be different. The competition may be different. There are so many variables that each race is unique.
The participation was down this year. There were only 142 boats registered. Of these boats, 61 were multihulls, and of these 43 were beach cats. There is one start at 8:00 AM for all the boats. It can be interesting and intimidating being on the start line with 142 boats. It gets a bit crowded. The race committee wisely splits the start line in half. The multihulls start to the west of the committee boat and all the monohulls start to the east of the committee boat. This is my favorite part of the race because you get to see all the other boats up close and personal. You wave to your friends and wonder who all these other people are who you have never seen before. Where do they come from? Five minutes before the start, the countdown begins and everybody gets serious. Boats are weaving and jostling every which way for position at the gun. It is a chaotic boat ballet with a dip here and a pirouette there. Everyone is trying to pick their own sweet spot on the long line. There is not enough room on the line for everyone to be side by side, so there are rows of boats vying for the best positions. When the gun goes off, it signals the start of the mad dash for Key Largo. Everyone is on a port tack. The course is due south and the winds are southeast. Oriol and I quickly hop out on our trapeze wires and fight to break free of the pack. We are being smothered by an F-24, but we quickly break free of her lee. My Hobie 20 is fully powered up now, and we are flying. I quickly make a mental note of the fastest boats immediately in front of us. I know from experience, that If I don't take an inventory now, they will be too far gone to identify in a few minutes. The usual suspects are out there; The tough Tornados, Team Castrol's 3 Inter 20s, Mike Phillips and Carla Schiefer each on their own high tech Marstrom 20s, Clive Mayo on his all white A-Cat, and, of course, there are the rocket men on their agile Aquarius boats led by Bill Roberts. The boats are all flying. These are perfect conditions for the wild cats. Every cat is double or triple trapezed, if they have it. Everyone is overpowered and working all the lines to harness all that power and convert it in to speed.
With these conditions things are bound to break. The first breakdown I saw was Mike Phillips' Marstrom 20. He was fifty yard ahead of me, and suddenly he went dead in the water. I figured he had probably broken something. I made a gesture asking what had happened. He drew his hand across his throat, and I knew it was terminal. They were out of the race in less than 5 minutes. I learned later that their carbon mast had split open at the base. They had to be towed in. The next boat to succumb to the stresses of the race was Mark Baker's Nacra 5.5. Shortly after the start, they heard a loud bang. Their dolphin striker lateral support rod had broken loose from the under side of the front crossbar. They retired from the race and were limping back to the beach. They didn't make it. When they sheeted in just a little bit, the compression forces from the mast snapped the front crossbar right at the center. When that failed, the rear crossbeam couldn't handle the loads and it failed right at the inside edge of the starboard hull. The rig collapsed and they were thrown into the chilly gray green waters. They clung to the boat parts and caught their breath. No one came to their rescue, and they drifted all the way back north to the Rickenbacker Causeway. They dragged their harpooned whale onto the beach and collapsed. Fortunately, no one was injured.
The rest of us were having the time of our lives. I told Oriol that we would probably be in the harnesses the next three hours straight. We were still on a port tack, and we would be that way the whole race. After a half hour of pumping the main, I turned the main sheet duties over to Oriol so I could concentrate on driving and keeping us right side up. As we blasted down the bay, all the boats slowly grouped by their relative Portsmouth rating numbers. It became numerous small races with boats of the same approximate speed. Our group filtered out to be two Nacra 6.0s, one sailed by Marc Newlyn, the Orca, sailed by Victor Poqrebnov, Eric Arborgast's ARC 21, and Wilder Robles on his F-16 Blade. These six boats hung together all the way down the bay. We would swap positions and gain and lose distance on each other all morning. Occasionally, when we hit a bit of a lull, I would sneak a peek at the GPS. It read between 12 and 13 mph. At times we were going much faster, but I just didn't dare look down at those times for fear of losing concentration and flipping. Our group was able to hang just back from the Inter 20 and Tornado crowd. I knew we should be able to beat them on corrected time because they would never be able to use their chutes. We were not necessarily sailing any better, it's just that the unis and sloops can correct out over the spinnaker boats when it is all upwind. The venerable Hobie 16s were not too far behind. I kept seeing them to the leeward. They always do extremely well upwind on corrected time. The fastest boat owed the Hobie 16s 23 minutes per hour. I owed them about 12 minutes per hour. That makes them tough to beat upwind. It looked like Clive Mayo, on his A-Cat, was keeping up with the big boys. Clive is a big guy, and he can keep the light weight A-Cat powered up in this kind of blow.
We zipped through the West Featherbed Channel and headed south toward the four Arsenicker Islands. There are Arsenicker Key, East Arsenicker, West Arsenicker, and Long Arsenicker Islands. You would think they could have been a little more original with the names. Here there are choices to be made. Do you go between the islands and run aground, or do you go around the islands and run aground? Unless you stay in the narrow channel, you are just about assured of running aground. Oriol and I ran aground by Arsenicker Key. We did the drill of pulling everything up and fighting the incredible weather helm, created by trailing rudders, until we were back in deep water.
The next obstacle is Card Sound and it's shallow spots followed by the 70 ft tall Card Sound Bridge. The bridge has about 14 spans on either side of the center channel. You can short cut and save some time by going under one of the spans to the east of the center channel. Picking the right span can be tricky. If you go too far east, where the clearance decreases, you risk hitting the bridge with the top of your mast. This has happened in the past, just ask Eric Arborgast. Over the years, I have figured out that the seventh span from the center is safe. You could probably get under number 8 and maybe even number 9, but depending on the tide, it is risky. This year instead of counting, you could just look for where Rick White was standing taking pictures. He was standing where most of the boats were getting through safely.
After the Card Sound Bridge, it is a straight shot across Barnes Sound to the finish line at the entrance to Jewfish Creek. The winds had died a bit by now, and we were only occasionally single trapezed. We played with the two Nacra 6.0s all the way across the sound. They beat us by a few yards boat for boat, but I knew we had them on corrected time. We crossed the finish line and showed the race committee our plastic covered registration number. I was glad to see most of the fast boats just a hundred yards ahead going into Jewfish Creek. I knew we could correct out ahead of some of them. We finished in 3 hours and 14 minutes. We won our, 10 boat, High Portsmouth class and corrected out to 9th beach cat overall out of 43.
It was yet another fun Miami to Key Largo Race. You can see the complete results on the Miami Yacht Club's website at miamiyachtclub.net. Come out for next year's race. I can guarantee it will be the same and I can guarantee it will be unique.
John McKnight
2. Miami – Key Largo 2006
F-24 Mark 2, By Raul A. Lopez
This past Saturday I sailed the race we have been dreaming of for years. Sailing to Key Largo with our 16 year old daughter, her boyfriend and my 9 year old son. We race a Corsair 24 and part of why we bought this boat 9 years ago was the opportunity to race as a family. We missed Joanne (My wife) and Mari (My 13 year old daughter) but they met us in Key Largo with supplies and we still had a family getaway.
The race started with smile… John McKnight sailed by us just before the start and said hello to my daughter, which would not be a big deal except that he called her by her mother’s name. This gave us all an extra smile and slightly traumatized my daughter.
This year six Corsair 24’s participated, I think we had the 3rd largest One Design Multihull fleet. Several of the new owners are racers and I knew the class was going to be tight. From past racing experience, Andy Roedig was going to be the boat to beat. This year Andy sailed with his 6 year old son Alec and Brother In-Law Ralph.
At the start, we where thrilled to see we had wind, we tried to achieve a few things at the start. Avoid a pile up at the committee boat, find a clean lane and start in front of Andy. In looking for all this we spotted Jamie Livingston and Jarod Sonnenklair (I-20) in the high middle of the line with room on either side. We lined up right behind them assuming the I-20 would pull away quickly and we would have a lane. Andy was behind us battling some boat traffic. The gun went of and we where happy. Most of the 24’s where close by, but we had the lead. Now we needed to sail smart and fast for 43 miles and we could take it…
For a while, it looked like the race was a lock, we where pulling away and simply kept our boat between Andy and the next mark. For a while we had the kind of lead that starts to make you think. We have it… but sure enough somewhere around Feather Beds Andy started to real us in. We probably sailed within 5 boat lengths of each other for 20 + miles. Hitting speeds up to 14 knots.
As we approached Rubicon, he passed us. We stayed calm and talked about how in a basketball game; both teams are likely to have the lead for a while. On the way to the last channel before the bridge we saw our opening. The wind angle gave us the opportunity to fly the chute. Andy, sailing with a novice Brother In-Law and his 6 year old son decided to fly the screacher. The speed difference was just enough that we where gaining and knew we would catch him in the channel just before the bridge. At that point… we would have to handle a tricky spinnaker drop and both boats would fight to the finish.
We are in the channel, it’s blowing! We are in the 12 knot range of speed. Andy is only 30 yards away now. We are about to pass him!… deciding whether we will pass above or below him… we decide that we will go below.
We are carrying the spinnaker. We are looking at Andy and smiling… He runs aground!!! We think “Good” Then we think Oh Sh_t! pull up the centerboard!!!! The moment we start to raise the board we come to a solid stop. Both boats are aground. 30 yards from each other. We try to raise the board… thinking all sails are streaming… we can take him. No luck.. it’s solid. We drop the chute (this was exciting) Not enough to let us go… we have to turn the boat back…
Andy is free… gets the gust of a lifetime. It’s over. We try a few more things on the way to the finish… but mid way past the bridge… we break out the watermelon and simply enjoy the sail t to the finish.
All the Corsairs seemed to finish within 20 minutes of each other, all had a huge smile on their face. Life is good. Man I am tired… but it’s a really good tired. Can hardly wait to sail again!
Raul, Anthony (The boyfriend), Raquel, Raul “Coqui”
If you want to see more about the Corsair 24 Florida Series click below:
http://spaces.msn.com/FlCorsair24/ 
