Well, We sailed our Ultimate 20 "Too Tuff" in the Benicia Yacht Club beer can race tonight and things did not go according to plan, The setup of the boat went pretty well, but it went downhill from there. The winds were blowing a steady 20 knots with gusts up to about 29 knots!

Our first bit of excitement came as we were sailing out of the marina, We got a full fledged knock down right in the middle of the turning basin in front of the fuel dock. We blew the main and the jib right away, but we still stayed on our side with the mast in the water until two of the crew climbed up over to side to get the boat back on its feet. When the boat snapped back up Rosanne (my wife) was still in the water! After Tom (with a little help from me) pulled her back on board, we luffed the sails and were being blown down toward the docks, I quickly selected a spot at the end of a dock finger to "crash" land and re-group. We made sure everyone was ok, put a reef in the main and continued on our way.

We had several more round ups and crashes on the way to the start. One of the more exciting ones was when I did not release the main during a tack -- as soon as we tacked, over we went , I blew the main and said "my bad" and we were back on or feet in a couple of seconds.

We got a decent start for the actual race, crossing the line maybe 15 seconds after the lead boat and on the edge of the course with less flood coming at us.



By this time my confidence was building as I was getting a better feel for how Too Tuff was going to behave in this much wind. Silly me. About 4 minutes into the race we hit bottom and then 1/2 a second later we hit bottom again and stopped cold. We had found the "rock" -- the rock that has cost many thousands in keel repair for the Benicia Yacht Club fleet. The irony is that I have been helping Joe Marra (the Race Committee Chairman) assemble the parts and pieces to put a "Danger Rock" hazard mark at the very spot where we hit. Of course, I placed the order with ShipStore.com ;)

Well, extracting Too Tuff from this situation was not at all easy. We tried to float off (heal the boat way over and it only draws about a foot of water) but that just pushed us in shallower. Tom slipped off the boat during one of these attempts and since he was only standing in 2 feet of water, I had him stay in the water and attempt to push us back to deeper water. That was ineffective. We finally decided to crank up the keel and pull the rudder, with the idea of motoring out to deep water (We have a little 2HP Honda). About the time we were getting that organized, a man with a dingy showed up and helped tow us back to deep water and then back to the marina.


Crew damage was minimal (3 wet crew and the usual bumps and bruises)
Boat damage seems to be minimal too. The Keel has a couple small gouges at the trailing edge where it passes through the bottom of the keel box. A full inspection will have to wait until we get good light tomorrow. I believe we had less damage than I expected because during the last repair we had done, Ron Moore of Moore Sailboats made the keel fit very tightly in the keel box, so tight that we have to work the keel for and aft just to raise or lower it. I think that tightness made it so there was less movement of the keel relative to the keel box, resulting in less damage.

It seems like the Ultimate 20 is not really a perfect boat when the winds are near 30 knots, but it can be sailed in those conditions if you work at it and have quick efficient crew. We had 4 people total. I think we learned a lot :)

Photo Credit: Laurie Merrill / Tout Suite