Dauphin Island Race '05
With 188 registered sailboats and the inevitable Racer Chasers in their little southern bikinis converging on Mobile, how the heck could we not be there? So, we loaded up on moon pies, crewed up in Pascagoula and Cash Bar headed east.
Our headquarters for the long weekend was to be at a friend of a friends place out on Ono Island. Sweet digs, but I don’t think they knew what was coming. We docked up on the Thursday before and almost immediately Doc went to work. It generally takes something to set him off, and this time it was hearing that the Flora-Bama, even though destroyed in Hurricane Ivan, was still going to be holding the Mullett Toss on Sunday.
By that evening, he had procured several flounders, and was holding practices on the lawn with some of the neighbor’s kids. Calling them ‘skipjacks’, he developed a handicap system that he described as being based loosely on the IRC handicap system in order that he could compete with the kids while sitting in a lawn chair sipping cocktails.
A couple of hours later, Doc declined our invitation to go to dinner and left on the back of a moped driven by some late middle-aged woman in a green sarong. He wore a backpack that suspiciously had the tail fins of a few flounders hanging out the zipper.
We didn’t see him again until much later that evening as we were walking up to the Tiki Bar, when a flounder was launched from the back of a loud moped cruising by, obviously straining under a heavy weight, and landed at our feet.
Lawrence turned to me and simply said, “Skipjack.” We left the fish and wandered into the bar.
By the start of the race on Saturday, things had already deteriorated, with Doc being the first one voted off the island. Lawrence had come in a close second, after leading us into a fancy condo party where he claimed to know the owners, and simply raided their freezer, grabbing a bag of tater tots and telling the hostess, “I gotta’ have these bra.”
The coup de gras for our hosts was when Doc thought it would be hilarious to throw a bunch of jellyfish into their hot tub. Disenchanted with our company, we were politely asked to leave.
The race start was typically frenetic with all 188 sailboats and innumerable spectator boats cruising around. Doc added to it by demanding that he be bowman, although easily 150lbs. overweight for the job. He was attempting, rather obviously, to show off for the sarong woman, whom he had invited onboard and who said her name was some indecipherable gibberish that meant ‘green sarong’ in Mandarin Chinese or something. She was not hot and Trudy hated her after they compared breast tattoos and everyone pretty much decided that ‘green sarong’s’ tattoo of Mao Tse Tung was better than her Che Guevara.
Doc added, “I never wanted to say anything, but that thing just looks like a bearded clam to me.”
Our ‘D’ class non-spinnaker start was fine; there were only four boats in our class with one not even bothering to start up. It was hard to screw that up. Our biggest competition turned out to be a boat named Shogun, which riled up ‘green sarong’ a fair amount. She kept yelling crap about the Rape of Nanking and then would shotgun a beer. Lawrence kept asking about who the heck this Nancy was that was sexually assaulted by the people on that sailboat.
Naturally she was steadily getting blitzed and beginning to worry all of us about the beer reserves after we learned that Doc had left two cases of beer on the dock.
Inevitably, several hours into the 17.5 mile course, we ran out of beer leading Doc to keep trying to hang up the protest flag from the backstay. Finally deterred from this course of action, he and ‘green sarong’ vanished down into the V-birth for awhile leaving us in relative peace. I say relative because we did have to put up with some nasally voice attempting to be sexy, which carried up to the cockpit. It sounded a little like, “Dim took bot doc dong, ummmm.”
A little later they emerged with ‘green sarong’ trying to wear my spinnaker with most of it draping behind her. I was non-plussed to say the least, and Doc all sweaty began demanding a DNF. “We are OUT of beer.”
What finally did it for me though, was Doc screaming “Man Overboard” and jumping off the boat trying to swim towards a boat named Blue Moon that he was convinced had cold beer.
Par for the course, and having never even rounded the Middle Bay Light, we dropped out. We did make it over to the Mullett Toss on Sunday where Doc came in 28th. We also decided to make plans to hit Challenge Cup in Gulfport the weekend before Gulfport to Pensacola.
___________
Our headquarters for the long weekend was to be at a friend of a friends place out on Ono Island. Sweet digs, but I don’t think they knew what was coming. We docked up on the Thursday before and almost immediately Doc went to work. It generally takes something to set him off, and this time it was hearing that the Flora-Bama, even though destroyed in Hurricane Ivan, was still going to be holding the Mullett Toss on Sunday.
By that evening, he had procured several flounders, and was holding practices on the lawn with some of the neighbor’s kids. Calling them ‘skipjacks’, he developed a handicap system that he described as being based loosely on the IRC handicap system in order that he could compete with the kids while sitting in a lawn chair sipping cocktails.
A couple of hours later, Doc declined our invitation to go to dinner and left on the back of a moped driven by some late middle-aged woman in a green sarong. He wore a backpack that suspiciously had the tail fins of a few flounders hanging out the zipper.
We didn’t see him again until much later that evening as we were walking up to the Tiki Bar, when a flounder was launched from the back of a loud moped cruising by, obviously straining under a heavy weight, and landed at our feet.
Lawrence turned to me and simply said, “Skipjack.” We left the fish and wandered into the bar.
By the start of the race on Saturday, things had already deteriorated, with Doc being the first one voted off the island. Lawrence had come in a close second, after leading us into a fancy condo party where he claimed to know the owners, and simply raided their freezer, grabbing a bag of tater tots and telling the hostess, “I gotta’ have these bra.”
The coup de gras for our hosts was when Doc thought it would be hilarious to throw a bunch of jellyfish into their hot tub. Disenchanted with our company, we were politely asked to leave.
The race start was typically frenetic with all 188 sailboats and innumerable spectator boats cruising around. Doc added to it by demanding that he be bowman, although easily 150lbs. overweight for the job. He was attempting, rather obviously, to show off for the sarong woman, whom he had invited onboard and who said her name was some indecipherable gibberish that meant ‘green sarong’ in Mandarin Chinese or something. She was not hot and Trudy hated her after they compared breast tattoos and everyone pretty much decided that ‘green sarong’s’ tattoo of Mao Tse Tung was better than her Che Guevara.
Doc added, “I never wanted to say anything, but that thing just looks like a bearded clam to me.”
Our ‘D’ class non-spinnaker start was fine; there were only four boats in our class with one not even bothering to start up. It was hard to screw that up. Our biggest competition turned out to be a boat named Shogun, which riled up ‘green sarong’ a fair amount. She kept yelling crap about the Rape of Nanking and then would shotgun a beer. Lawrence kept asking about who the heck this Nancy was that was sexually assaulted by the people on that sailboat.
Naturally she was steadily getting blitzed and beginning to worry all of us about the beer reserves after we learned that Doc had left two cases of beer on the dock.
Inevitably, several hours into the 17.5 mile course, we ran out of beer leading Doc to keep trying to hang up the protest flag from the backstay. Finally deterred from this course of action, he and ‘green sarong’ vanished down into the V-birth for awhile leaving us in relative peace. I say relative because we did have to put up with some nasally voice attempting to be sexy, which carried up to the cockpit. It sounded a little like, “Dim took bot doc dong, ummmm.”
A little later they emerged with ‘green sarong’ trying to wear my spinnaker with most of it draping behind her. I was non-plussed to say the least, and Doc all sweaty began demanding a DNF. “We are OUT of beer.”
What finally did it for me though, was Doc screaming “Man Overboard” and jumping off the boat trying to swim towards a boat named Blue Moon that he was convinced had cold beer.
Par for the course, and having never even rounded the Middle Bay Light, we dropped out. We did make it over to the Mullett Toss on Sunday where Doc came in 28th. We also decided to make plans to hit Challenge Cup in Gulfport the weekend before Gulfport to Pensacola.
___________
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posted by HL at 11:06 PM
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