The
GulfStreamer Race News
Tales of the GulfStreamer,
November Binnacle Article
by Bev Hanson
It’s only natural that we should begin our tales
with Mac Smith, the man who championed this race and is its founder.
A native of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, Mac grew up by the shores of Lake
Michigan but it was not until he came to this area in 1960 that he
really became interested in boats. He started with a 17 foot Boston
Whaler. A veteran of the U.S. Army’s Third Armored Division,
Mac was comfortable with large, heavy equipment so, he soon upped
that to a Bertram sport fisherman. When that became too expensive
to operate in the gas crunch of the 70s, Mac began to look at an alternative
means of propulsion. The late Don Shaw put him onto a “nice
sail boat” that was available in Jacksonville. Smith snapped
it up.
“Didn’t know a thing about sailing,” he laughs.
“And here I was with this 38 foot Columbia. I loved sailing though—from
the first time I was on the boat, I loved it. I practically gave away
that Bertram.”
This is a man who takes big bites and chews them thoroughly for however
long they need chewing. The Columbia was a pleasant, if somewhat intimidating,
school space and Smith (who never took lessons) spent hours and hours
on it learning to sail.
“We didn’t have all this fancy electronic equipment then,
-- so I set about learning celestial navigation.”
“Don’t tell me you read a book for that,” I said.
He grins and nods. “I read a book -- three books actually.”
Then, of course, racing came into the scenario. The Columbia went
away in favor of Quailo (pronounced Kwy-low) a Swan 44 footer that was
a real racing machine. “Quailo drafted eight feet and she had
a tall mast. I couldn't get down the channel when the tide was out and
I couldn’t get under the bridge when the tide was in,” he
says. He solved that dilemma by berthing her in the municipal marina
in New Smyrna Beach. From there, he sailed and raced her all over the
world.
The GulfStreamer idea
came about back in the 1980s when Mac bumped into a sailor from
Charleston one day at the marina. “We were running the
TransAt then, (the HRYC race to Bermuda, a journey
of 865 nautical miles one way) and he asked me about it which led to
conversation about a race between our Club and CORA
(Charleston Ocean Racing Association) from Daytona
Beach to Charleston Harbor.”
With the TransAt running every other year, there wasn’t a lot
of interest in another long distance race on the off years. Efforts
to establish the Charleston race were abandoned until
the TransAt came to an end in the late 1990s. Talk with Charleston’s
sailors was renewed and CORA came on board as a sponsor.
Mac is a member of the Storm Trysail Club, which is a group not a
location. Membership is comprised of sailors who have sailed in “extreme
heavy weather” when you run out of reefs on the Main and have
to take it down altogether to be replaced with a small, sturdy triangular
sail. to become a member, you submit an application and documentation
of where you were when.
The Storm Trysail Club (STC) was really the first sponsor of the GulfStreamer
Race. No money was involved. It wasn’t until 1998
that then HRYC Commodore Paul Adameck’s support
of a Charleston race brought the Yacht Club aboard
as the third sponsor. STC and CORA sanctioned the race
and helped spread the word for that first competition. Politics and
egos got in the way on the next race and STC split off to run its own
race to Charleston which sails from Ft. Lauderdale.
Perhaps if STC had remained involved with this race, more long distance
sailors would pay attention to it. At any rate, we’re coming up
on the seventh race next May so the rest is history.
Mac has a lot of hairy sailing stories to tell, but he says”
I survived them all and that kind of takes the edge off the story.”
For first-time sailors of the Gulf Streamer,
Mac says, “This race is a good opportunity for sailors who don’t
have any experience or a lot of experience in sailing the open sea.
It’s not that long a race and, if you sail the rhumb line (a French
term denoting the shortest distance between two points – It is
possible to sail a straight line from Daytona Beach
to Charleston Harbor because of their longitudinal
juxtaposition on the east coast.) you’re not that far offshore.
And you have the company of other boats that are going where you’re
going. You may not see them, but they’re out there and if you
need help, it’s available. Of course, you’d be disqualified,”
he smiles, “but that’s better than some of the alternatives.”
Mac will be racing in the GS 2010, but Quailo was
replaced a few years ago by Twilight, a 44 foot LaFitte. “Quailo
was a very nice racing boat, but her interior was somewhat Spartan––a
nice Spartan, but Spartan all the same,” he says. “Sonja
(Mrs. Smith) is the most noncompetitive person I have ever known. She
enjoys sailing but just isn’t interested in racing.”
Apparently, Mac decided that Sonja had paid her dues through the years
roughing it on Quailo because Twilight is “. . .a very nice .
. .” cruising boat. “She drafts only six and a half feet
and has a really beautiful interior.”
She’s just the kind of boat a couple can spend
time on in comfort, as they cruise around in their twilight years of
sailing and . . . he can dock her in the yacht club basin.
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