Around The Isle Of Texel Race 1980 by Bill Roberts

[Bill Roberts]

The Round Texel Race In Holland, North Sea
Bill Robets Experience Sailing a SC20

Hello Tom/Matt,
I tried to log on to the forum but it did not work. Since the Round Texel Race is coming soon, I thought I would write about my experience sailing that Race. The year was either 1980 or 1981, the year I won the race, first boat to finish, sailing a standard SC20. This is the most highly attended sailboat race in the world. Top sailors from all over the world attend. Max number of entrants is limited to 1,000. Any sail powered boat 15ft or longer may enter.
The race started, morning, in the worst conditions it has ever been sailed in and the forecast was for things to get even worse during the day. I was sailing with Henry, a member of the Dutch Olympic Boxing Team. Henry had never sailed and he did not speak English and I did not speak Dutch but we managed to communicate with lots of arm and hand signals. The winds were 20 to 30 knots plus with white squalls coming through about every 20 minutes. The North Sea was big, 6 to 8ft waves, short and steep and very cold water. .
The race started sailing to windward, I will call that direction North. Traffic was heavy at first, 500 boats on the line. The current was tending to push boats over the line, one mile long, early and in the last 30 seconds so many boats were over that it was impossible to see them all and call them back. The starting gun goes off and the, "Helo", Dutch for Helicopter, flew down the line at low altitude, 100ft, with colorful flares burning. The race was on! Shortly after the start I heard a cracking/ripping sound close by and I looked back to see a Tornado with the foredeck standing straight up and folding back like the hood of a car flying up at 100mph. The early boats made traffic heavy immediately after the start. We were passing boats to windward and to leeward, dodging boats sometimes to avoid collisions. Those tall elliptical SC foredecks/bows were paying off big! The flat foredeck boats were hurting, digging and plowing through the waves and being stopped at times. The elliptical SC foredecks were cutting through the big waves like a double edged sword. The visibility was so poor that I quickly decided to sail 10 minutes on each tack by my watch as we worked our way Northward sailing to windward.
It wasn't long until we could see no boats with us, no boats in sight behind us, no boats anywhere. We were slamming our way to windward in a big gray room that got bigger in-between squalls and smaller in the squalls. On our tacks back toward shore we could hear the waves breaking on the beach at the same time the 10 minute tacking time was up. We were looking for a lighthouse on the end of the island that we had been told about at the skippers' meeting. (Skippers' Meeting was given at four different locations in four different languages.) We were lucky. On a tack toward shore the squall cleared somewhat and there was the LIGHTHOUSE. Boy, were we glad to see that. Now we could "let her down a little" on a reach and head East and go parallel to the waves and the beach on the North end of the island. This was much better sailing, not so much slam bang, and faster. Soon we saw a Dredge and some bright orange drums supporting a large pipe curving out from the Dredge several hundred yards ahead of us and offshore about the same distance. The orange drums and pipe seemed to stop a few hundred yards from shore so I decided to "go for it" and try to sail through the apparent gap. As we got closer, we saw that the bright orange drums stopped but the big rusty pipe did not. It continued to shore. At this point we had sailed into a box canyon and the only way out was to turn around. (Why was a Dredge left in the middle of a race course?) So we did, and we reached back for about half a mile and then tightened up to windward to get North of the Dredge. When we had clearance above the Dredge, we tacked again and headed East along the race course, still no other boats in sight, looking for the VC Buoy, the second mark of the race course. .
We were told at the skippers' meeting that this mark was an anchored Hobie 14 with a large red flag flying. We continued sailing East looking for this large marker. We sailed well past the next corner of the island, more than half a mile and finally reluctantly gave up on finding the H14 with the big red flag. We decided the H14 must have pulled/slipped its anchor and so we turned South and started sailing down the third side of the island of Texel all the while glancing back for the big red flag. For a moment the weather cleared and I thought I got a glimpse of the red flag. Again we turned around, no other boats in sight, and started sailing back to windward, North, in the general direction of the red flag. Finally the red flag and H14 came into view. The anchor line coming off the bow was almost horizontal, very long scope, and the H14 looked like a bucking horse coming completely out of the water at times. The anchor line situation required passing the H14 at least 100 yrds to windward. There was a PHOTO BOAT standing off the H14 about 100 yrds to windward also. Henry and I sailed North past the H14 to give plenty of room for the anchor line. We tacked and headed East again to pass above and well in front of the H14 and just below the Photo Boat. This was going to take us close to the bow of the Photo Boat. As we approached the Photo Boat, people on the boat began to wave at us and come to our side of the boat and take pictures. We were sailing at them at about 90 mph and much spray flying. As we got closer to the Photo Boat, people began to wave at us differently, crossing their arms in front as if trying to get our attention. As we came even closer to the Photo Boat, sometimes probably straight at it, people began to leave/step back from the side of their boat while observing the rapidly approaching SC20. All this time we had been waving at the Photo Boat to back up, give us more room. They did not realize the shallow slope of the H14 anchor line. Just as I could see down the H14 anchor line, see that we were clear, I started bearing off to head South. At the same time I heard the growl/roar of the Photo Boat's engines and the Photo Boat began moving forward shuttling off our passage and room to turn. I was heading for the gap between the bow of the Photo Boat and the H14 anchor line. I heard the engines of the Photo Boat roar and accelerate as it came forward. I bore off hard but our two boats still collided side to side. I thought it was all over for us and we had a broken hull, broken off at the main beam. Well, again I guess luck was with us and we were still floating and in one piece after the collision. We headed South for the second time and thought we were in for some faster and easier sailing. But, that wasn't the case. As we slid down the face of a large wave and the bows of our boat reached the valley between waves, the bow spray became filled with sand and shells and in an instant the tramp looked like a child's sand box. The boat had jerked and bounced violently a few times as the bows hit the sea floor and the dagger boards slid down about a foot. The bows were so low and the transom so high that I thought we were going to pitchpole. I grabbed the windward board and Henry went for the leeward board to raise them. About the time we got things straightened out, we are flying down the face of another wave and the bows hit bottom again and the boat jerks and bounces and we get a fresh load of sand and shells, same thing all over again. We knew we were in shallow water but did not know which way to go to get into deeper water. We were a mile off shore and waves were breaking all around us. This shooting down the face of a wave and running aground and jerking and bouncing and getting a fresh load of sand and near pitchpole repeated itself four times. Finally it stopped happening as we sailed into deeper water. We must have sailed off the end of the sandbar. But the day wasn't over yet. There was a little pop and the jib slid down the forestay. We were tacking downwind at this point and should have been going very fast and deep but without the jib our speed was significantly reduced and tacking angle was made more shallow. About this time we saw another boat. It was a H16 sailing in close to shore. We thought he must be a spectator because he had not gone around the VC buoy, the H14 marker. We shallow jibed/tacked going South along the Eastern shore of the island and reached the next mark. We rounded it and came up on a close reach sailing West now across the South end of the island, many sandbars and big waves breaking near shore. This was the shortest leg of the course and we were going fast on a close reach unirig, no boats in sight, and the H16 was gone. There was one more mark to round and then back to windward and finish at the red ball. We rounded the last mark and now we were sailing to windward headed North on the West side of the island, the same side we started on. We were sailing with a unirig sail plan and a wrinkled up jib slid down the forestay. After a few miles sailing to windward, the red ball came in sight. At the skippers'meeting we had been told that the finish line was between a red ball and a dock. We saw the red ball and sailed inside of this marker but there was no dock. I did not think we had properly finished. Where was the dock with judges and a flag that I thought we were looking for? Then I saw a large group of people running down to the shore past the red ball and making alot of noise, yelling and waving. Henry stood up and patted me on the shoulder and pointed to the shore and the crowd with a big smile on his face. I took all of this to mean that "we had finished", still no other boats in sight. When we were on shore, I asked about the dock and a Dutch friend told me that in the Dutch language the word dock means dike in English. There was a large pile of rocks on the shore roughly opposite the red ball but there were no race officals there or flagman..
After we had put the boat away a race official came to us and told us that our elapsed time around the island was a new record of 2 hours and 56 minutes. I'm sure we wasted 30 to 40 minutes with our turnarounds/backtracking to find marks and the sailing downwind, the longest leg, without a jib. We could have easily finished in 2 hours and 30 minutes or less without our problems.
The second boat crossed the finish line 20 minutes after we had finished the race. That was the biggest margin the race had ever been won by. We were sailing against other SC20s and several National and European Champions in the Tornado class.
Later that day a race committee person told me that there were at least 50 catamarans all broken up on the beach just South of the VC buoy. We were lucky that one of those boats was not us. The VC buoy had been put in the wrong place by misunderstood instructions.

Enjoy,

Bill Roberts

PS An excellent safety note. The Royal Dutch Navy was there with about 10 inflatable power boats ready to help any boat in trouble in a heartbeat. The sailors in these power boats had been trained in "how to right an overturned catamaran".

[Kevin Keller]

Pretty exciting!

Are you doing any racing these days? The last I heard, your son had broken the mast going under that bridge.

Kevin

[Bill Roberts]

Hi Kevin,
The mast on the 22 was fixed a few weeks after it was broken. We sailed the Miami to Key Largo and Mug Races 2012 and were first to finish in both, RC30. We missed the Steeplechase race 2012 because of a sea wall structural problem emergency at home. Again 2013, RC30, we were first to finish Miami to Key Largo and we were third in the Mug Race. We plan to be at the 2013 Steeplechase Race in December.
Good sailing,
Bill

[havliii]

Bill, first, welcome back to this forum. Thanks for the great read about 'Round Texel!' Looking forward to more of your insightful and informative posts about sailing the Supercats and Arcs.

Andy

[Bill Roberts]

Hello Sailors,
I ran across an abbreviated video of the 1985 Round Texel race where the person describing the race mentioned the ET record that I set sailing a standard SC20 in 1980 or 81. No other American product has ever come across the finish line first in this race and set an ET record for the race. Only the SC20, designed and built in Florida, has ever done this. Why is that?
See the video at:
Round Texel Race - YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UibbKRMBAk
Oct 7, 2006 ... This is a short version of the 1985 version of annual Round Texel Regatta for beach catamarans

[havliii]

I have been doing some reading on the 'Round Texel' an interesting factoid is that there are two routes around the island. The shortest route is now closed to sailing as a portion of the route has been declared a protected area. I have not been able to find the actual 'shortest possible distance' of each of the routes.

During Texel week sailors may sign up for a record attempts at rounding the island in the shortest elapsed time. The long lap record is 2:07:07 set during Texel #32 by Dercksen and Bulkeley but better still the short lap record is to this day and for all ETERNITY held by a Supercat 20 at 2:09:07!!!

Here's the link http://www.roundtexel.com/en/content.as ... rt&pid=155

The page is in dutch, the google chrome browser will translate it.

[Bill Roberts]

Thanks for your input on the Texel Race, Devloping. I have been at Texel twice and I heard the short course mentioned but I never knew what the shortcut was or where it was. It sounds like if you don't round the second mark of the course, the VC buoy, and stay close to the island shore and follow the island shoreline to make the second corner of the course, that is the short course. This could save maybe a mile or so. At 20mph the time savings might be 3 or 4 minutes. The biggest factors in setting records in distance races are the boat design of course and the wind and sea conditions. This short course record or setting a record on a non race day leaves me kinda cold.

[havliii]

The biggest factors in setting records in distance races are the boat design of course and the wind and sea conditions. This short course record or setting a record on a non race day leaves me kinda cold.

Bill, I agree. In most any sport 'absolute record attempts' are always set up in conditions that are ideal for 'breaking the existing record' The single handed north Atlantic record was recently shattered and also the absolute speed record (vestas sail rocket) These boats are single purpose record attempt boats, not good for much else.

But........... I still like the fact that a SUPERCAT holds the 'Round Texel' short course record that WILL NEVER EVER BE ERASED!!!! SUPERCATS ROCK!

Andy Lundstrom