The Toliva Shoal Race was held on Saturday, February 16. The Olympia Yacht Club and the South Sound Sailing Society cosponsored the Toliva Shoal Race.
The Friday night welcoming party was, “Almost like Whidbey Island Race week!”, said one crewmember racing aboard Attitude. Sailors sported their new Toliva Shoal Race t-shirts, savored the locally-brewed-Fish Tale Ale, and enjoyed good old-fashioned-sailor-oriented cheer!! The wonderful Baron of Beef dinner gave us an opportunity to support the local youth sailing; it seems that a lot of folks did just that. The Corvettes with George Barner entertained us with tunes ranging from smooth blues to the rocking 50’s music. George Barner night-capped the dance crowd with his trade mark song, “Louie-Louie”. (George Barner is a former Thurston County Commissioner that supported a state initiative to make “Louie Louie” the Washington State song in the 1980’s).
Light winds welcomed the racers to the Olympia Shoal on race day morning. Of the 80 registered boats only 4 decided not to start. The first start was at 10:00 AM. The racers hoisted their spinnakers with a light Southeasterly. After the entire fleet had started the race, the wind faded and the ebb continued. By 11:35 a 7-knot Northerly filled in and invited the racers to proceed out of Budd Inlet. The wind on the course, especially in Dana Passage, looked promising until approximately 3 PM, then the wind faded and the tide turned. At 3:25 and 54 seconds, off of Lyle Point, after 13.2 nautical miles, the Toliva Shoal Race Committee recorded the First to Finish racer, Ripple, a Riptide 35 owned by Victor Viets from Portland, Oregon. It appears that Ripple will be awarded the Governor’s Perpetual Trophy for being the First to Finish racer and the Toliva Shoal PHRF Perpetual Trophy for being the first overall on handicap. In the next eight hours 34 boats followed her across the finish line.
Back at Olympia Yacht Club, scores of tales were exchanged describing the tough challenges of the strong currents and thick fog located at the finish line. Bill Wilmovsky, the skipper of Courageous and a member of both OYC and SSSS, said he was within 10 feet of the finish line before the adverse current swept him back ¼ mile at which time he opted to retire. The skipper, Rob Webster, on High Flyer, an Olson 30, gets the Sheer Determination Award. Three and a half hours after his first attempt to finish, High Flyer was a few feet from finishing before the adverse current swept his boat away for the twelth time! As he drifted away, the race committee heard Rob calmly say, “Well, that was frustrating.” Thirty minutes later the race committee scored High Flyer’s finishing time at 21:35:49.
I extend a huge thank you to the Race Manager, Joe Neel, for his fine management of the 2002 Toliva Shoal Race. He and his crew were very dedicated to managing a fair race for the fleet. I want to especially thank the OYC skippers who ran the RC boats.
Thank you, to Jan Visser for the fantastic dinner and breakfast! Thank you to the City of Olympia for the moorage fee waiver. Thank you Department of Corrections for the parking privileges. Thank you to all the enthusiastic volunteers that supported the Toliva Shoal Race event. Thank you Olympia Yacht Club and South Sound Sailing Society for cosponsoring this 32nd annual event!
Above all, thank you racers for competing in the 2002 Toliva Shoal Race! Please race with us next year!
We are looking forward to seeing you next month in Gig Harbor for the fourth and final race of the Southern Sound Series!
Judi Kruller
2002 Toliva Shoal Race Committee Chair
While there are too many people to list by name here, the Race would not have been a success without the help of those who manned the registration desk and the bar Friday night, those who fixed and served food Friday night and Saturday morning, those on the RC boats, and everyone who helped clean up.
The race committee boats were:Thank you all for helping with an other successfull Toliva Shoal Race!!
This year I was racing on a boat at the fast end of the fleet, on Synergy. It has been a while since I have raced with the fast crowd. There is something to be said for this view of the world. I did like looking back at the fleet the brief time we were ahead of everyone. And we were the slow boat in our Class, so I did not feel totally out of place.
I put on my rain gear for the trip down the dock, but the rain had stopped by the time we were out of the marina. We were the first boat out. There was a nice Force 3 southerly, so we took some practice tacks. We met our competition, Silverheels, on her way out and she went to weather with us. We were fast. When it was time to head to the line, we set the chute for practice. We got the time from the ten minute gun. The chute was repacked. We had our wind. We were ready to go.
But the wind was dying. We started under spinnaker, but despite the forecast, the southerly was not to last. The sky showed some blue. The wind went very light. Well before we were out of Budd Inlet the jib was up and a northerly was filling in. We had a good beat all the way out to Johnson Point, crossing tacks with our competition several times. We rounded the point and put the chute up. We lead the fleet, until the wind went light again.
It was a struggle to get from Johnson Point to Lyle Point. That is where the race was shortened. The light wind slowed us, but our real problem at that time was that the current was turning against us. The speedo told us that we averaged, over the day, almost two knots through the water. But speed over the ground was another story.
As we closed on the point we hugged the Anderson Island shore. We got a little too close several times and had to put the whole crew on the rail to heel us off, but off we came. The tide was coming in for insurance. I do not think we were the only ones to touch. There is a protest accusing one boat of using her engine to get off. At least one boat touched on the falling tide. A single boat failed to get off in time and spent the night on the hard.
Getting across the finish line was a real challenge. I do not think that the RC will shorten the course here again. Most of those who made it across made multiple attempts. Those who anchored to wait out the current change had it little better. Many got swept to the wrong side of the RC boat and past the line.
Or so I was told. We attempted to hug Anderson Island, sailing between the mark and shore, till we were above the line. Then we planned to reach for the line and hope to poke our nose across. However the boat ahead anchored blocking our progress. There was an other boat anchored between us and the line. We could not see a safe way through the anchored boats. We opted not to anchor and wait with them. Instead we powered home.
Boats did finish however. All most half the fleet did. There were finishers in all classes, even one in the Cruising Class, Sea Mist. Bodaciuos was the last to finish and the only boat in her class, F, to do so. High Flyer worked the hardest to finish; the RC Chair tells you her story. Releaf and Rushwind were noted for hanging in there, though at a distance.
It seems Power Surge stuck it out the longest before giving up. She was the only boat left on the course when the RC boat got knocked off her station. A boat trying to finish tangled in the RC boat’s anchor line, causing her to drag anchor. Between the current and the fog, they could not get back to the same spot.
At night the fog came in. It was dense. Some had adventurous trips back. Mark Swartout told me he needed his radar coming back. We came back early enough that was no problem. It was dark for much of our trip home, but clear. It was a pretty night with a bright quarter moon, a good night to be on the water.
All in all it was a fun day on the water. Sunglasses were more useful than rain gear. There was at least a little wind most of the time. And we got in a lot more sailing than the 14 mile race distance would imply.
Steve Worcester, Sugar Magnolia
There are some minor misstatements in the following: some of the statements about Races past and the Series are not supported by the facts. But far be it from me to make corrections. I do not want to interfere with the subjective truth.
Early Saturday morning as we tacked and jibed back and forth near the start, enjoying the huge fleet jockeying for space and free air, someone in the crew mentioned a local racing enthusiast and wondered where his boat was. Breezin’s skipper laughed and said that he had taken up fishing. The crew bantered back and forth scorning the commitment of a sailor who would abandon sailboat racing for fishing.
For this race I was assigned to the foredeck aboard Breezin, a C & C 35. Being a devoted wooden boat aficionado, I reflected on the irony of being aboard this huge piece of plastic as the rest of the crew reflected on the irony of a fellow sailor turned fisherman. We were out this morning awaiting the start of the longest and most popular race of the South Sound Series.
The Toliva Shoal Race attracts boats from the entire Puget Sound and the inner basin of Perceival Landing is plug full of boats by Friday evening every year. There is a similarly popular annual bicycle ride on Bainbridge Island in late winter called the Chilly Hilly, a miserable ride if there ever was one. Consequently it attracts an increasing number of masochists. The Toliva Shoal Race is like that. Every year I have driven by the inner harbor on my way home from work on the Friday evening before the race and it has always been a rainy, miserable scene, people in yellow, red, and blue rain gear scurrying about, standing around dripping, glistening in the streetlights in the gathering dusk. Not for me, I told myself. They can have it.
Toliva Shoal is located between McNeal Island and Steilacoom. The race starts at the Olympia Shoal, about two miles out from the inner harbor and the round trip to Toliva Shoal, if the race were ever completed, is about forty miles. I learned that since 1989, the year Breezin’s skipper first raced Toliva Shoal, they have completed the long course only once! I was soon to find out why. Besides being cold and rainy, that particular day of every year, for reasons known only to higher powers, is virtually windless. Mark it on your calendar!
For the first six miles we had breezes of 5-10 knots and the sailing was fine, the light muted and dappled in the morning drizzle. We also had the current with us. Both were soon to end. The wind died and the tide changed before we were through Dana Passage, an area of strong currents where all the water of Puget Sound tries to squeeze between Dofflemeyer and Johnson Points and Hartstene and Squaxin Islands. We inched our way East and then South for the entire next tide. Having finally clearing Johnson Point, we were making good roughly 1/2 mile per hour, a feat accomplished only by constant vigilance and focused attention, sail changes, balance, and adjustments.
Meanwhile, we got wetter and we got colder. But hey! We were out on the water weren’t we? And ain’t we fine? By mid-afternoon we could see that the committee boat had shortened the course considerably as they anchored off Lyle Point on Anderson Island, some 15 miles from Olympia, 12-13 miles from the starting line and short of Toliva Shoal by 5-7 miles, which of course, is the half-way point of the race. We could see the committee boat for hours, as the afternoon swelled and waned, and the light grew first bright as the sun blew through the clouds periodically and then again for a lovely fall over the horizon at sunset. After that it got cold, the lights on the shoreline twinkled and the committee boat turned on its strobe.
And there they sat, hour after hour, patiently waiting for us. We ate some terrible canned stew for dinner out of paper bowls. The stew gave me the worst case of heartburn I’ve had in years. It hurt. It ached. It pained and pinched. I couldn’t get comfortable no matter how I turned my torso. My gloves were soaked. I would have taken them off to wring them out but they are ever so hard to get back on again when you do that. So we sat in our stoic misery and watched fascinated as the committee boat refused to get any closer. In fact, by the time the tide changed, we had inched our way to within a mile of the finish line, now situated between the Lyle Point light and the committee boat with its flashing strobe light. We knew the tide was about to change but could not prove it. Well, as it turned out, it had changed. It held us in its grip and we failed to notice, even with the complicated figures coming out of the GPS.
We could see the faster class of boats, the ones that started before us that got there first, and also a few boats that shouldn’t have been there ahead of us from a slower class (it was one of those days), all showing us their port lights and appearing for all the world to be past the mark and trying to come back up to it. Before we knew it we were among them. And they were trying to get back. The finish line was set parallel to the current and in the negligible to non-existent wind we were all just flushed on by the committee boat like driftwood, unable to make the left turn and cross the line. Boats were bumping, boots were thumping, people were fending off, men were swearing and big flashlights were playing cat’s cradle on white sails as the current took control. People were lee-bowing or ferrying back and forth, no sooner fending off a boat on their starboard side when another on the port side came rushing over. A few would edge ahead only to drift back into the pile-up. Oh my! What a scene!
We struggled along with a mess of other boats to make the line for the next hour and failed every time. More boats joined us. It was a brand new start. The wind would get up a bit and slowly we would overcome the tide and approach the line only to be defeated as the wind died away completely. Once we were within five feet of the line. We seemed locked in time as the committee boat crew shined their light on their anchor line. We inched towards it; all we needed was a stray vesper, but it was not to be. Whatever wind there was died, the current gripped our keel and we were swept downstream, past the committee boat and out into Nisqually Reach. The fog rolled in.
At that, frustrated, tired and cold, we gave it up, started the engine and began the three-hour motor back home. Making the run home in complete fog, navigating solely by GPS and radar we tied up at 0100, dripping wet, cold, hungry and disheartened.
I think I’ll take up fishing.
Aho’i Mench