Becoming part of the tradition

Bad decisions make the best stories, and in the Scuttlebutt series of grounding stories, George Harvey shares his tale from the Pacific Northwest:

Many years ago, I was racing aboard Snake Oil, a Tripp 40 owned and skippered by Jim Marta of the Seattle Yacht Club, in one of Seattle’s classic sailboat races—the Blakely Rock Race.

Blakely Rock has always had a certain reputation. It sits there looking innocent enough, but every sailor in Seattle knows that boats have been running aground on it for generations. The trick is to get as close as you possibly can without becoming part of the tradition.

It was a beautiful day, with a southerly breeze of about ten knots, and we were having a terrific race. As we approached Blakely Rock, we were the second boat there. Just ahead of us was Shrek, a boat that drew about seven and a half feet.

That seemed like valuable information. Jim looked at Shrek and essentially said, “If they can go through there, so can we. Just follow their line.” Perfectly logical.

We bore off toward the rock, broad reaching near hull speed under the number-one jib. Up on the foredeck we were getting the spinnaker ready so that we could make a sharp rounding, pop the chute, and head off looking like we knew exactly what we were doing.

Then we noticed the photography boat. It was sitting right there beside the rock, perfectly positioned to photograph each boat as it rounded and set its spinnaker. Naturally, this changed everything.

Suddenly it wasn’t enough just to round the mark properly. We had to look good doing it.

As we approached, everybody became very conscious of the photographer. Backs straightened. People tucked in their shirts and stood a little taller. The foredeck crew tried to look particularly competent.

We were about to round Blakely Rock near the front of the fleet, set the chute, and provide this fellow with what we were sure would be a magnificent photograph of Snake Oil charging away and winning the race. And then we hit. Hard.

The boat stopped. We didn’t. Every one of us went flat on our asses.

One moment we were a proud racing crew, standing tall and looking magnificent for the camera. The next moment the entire crew was scattered across the deck in a heap like a bunch of drunks.

And the photography boat was right there. Of all the places in Puget Sound to run aground, we had managed to do it directly in front of a man whose sole purpose that afternoon was to photograph sailboats.

Once we got ourselves upright, there was really only one question on anybody’s mind: “Did he get the picture?”

We eventually got Snake Oil off the rock and continued racing, but from that point on, the race itself became almost irrelevant.

Normally, on the long sail back to the finish, a racing crew would be talking about sail trim, tactics, wind shifts, what the other boats were doing, and whether we could pick somebody off before the line.

We talked about none of that. For the entire trip back, the conversation was:

“Do you think he got it?”

“He must have gotten it.”

“Maybe he was looking the other way.”

“He was ten yards away. Of course he got it.”

“Do you think he got the exact moment everybody fell down?”

And then came the really frightening possibility:

“What if it ends up on the cover of Northwesting Magazine?”

That became the great concern of the day. Not our finishing position. Not the time we had lost. Not whether we had made a tactical mistake.

We were worried that somewhere there was a perfectly focused photograph showing Snake Oil planted firmly on Blakely Rock, with the entire crew flat on their asses.

By the time we reached the finish, I think most of us had accepted that our sailing reputations were about to be destroyed on the front page of Northwesting Magazine.

I don’t remember where we finished that day. But I certainly remember running aground. And I remember the photographer. And I also remember, to my everlasting gratitude, that we were NOT on the cover of the magazine.