By Michael Quirk

Normally a report on a local weekend’s racing is of little interest to 505 sailors at large but did you hear the one about…

A group of Sydney and Lake Macquarie 505’s went to Port Stephens (north of Newcastle) for the annual Salamander Bay regatta on 17th and 18th November. The racing was great. Two races Saturday and two on Sunday. I had just arrived back at the beach after the last race on Sunday when the shit hit the fan. Some boats had already been lifted onto trailers in the lovely tree covered, grassy reserve that hosted us for the weekend. Others were on dollies on the beach with sails in various stages of being dropped and rolled. A few others were still heading back to the beach.

Personally I was holding onto my 2-month old boat waiting for a hand to lift it onto the trailer. As it turns out I was in the best spot of the lot. Geoff, my crew, yelled at me to hurry up and furl the jib because there was 40 of breeze coming. Geoff has been known to exaggerate at times but this time he had badly underestimated. No one will ever know exactly how windy it was but the papers the next day suggested winds reached 130 knots. The storm was apparently about 1 kilometer wide and was moving at 120 miles an hour. I thought one of those smart bombs had missed its mark.

When an eski (an icebox for you northern hemisphere folks) full of beer and ice took off and flew away I began to worry whether Geoff and I were going to be able to hold onto the boat. I felt like one of those cartoon characters losing a tug of war as I was being dragged along leaving two big furrows in the sand. I looked around and saw people trying to stop their boat cart wheeling along the beach. Ian Dunn was sitting in his boat up in the park itself while his crew managed to tie the boat to the dolly. It didn’t make any difference because the wind kicked in a bit more and Ian, boat and dolly all took off sideways down the beach. Just at that moment every tree in the park (about half a dozen of them) just snapped. I’m talking about trees that were two or three feet in trunk diameter). One of them came down on top of poor old Dunny and Longy who was also de-rigging at that time. Geoff and I were just considering leaving our boat to its fate and rushing to help when Dunny crawled out from under the tree with a look on his face that I can’t describe - but then that is not all that unusual for Dunny. I say rushing but I suspect that may not have been possible. I’m not sure whether I was holding my boat down or it was holding me.

I have never seen anything like it. It was like a bomb had gone off. All the trees broke at once and everything that wasn’t firmly bolted down simply blew away including the bloody beer. Two boats were destroyed and many sails damaged.
The poor bastards that were still on the water found themselves very definitely on the wrong side of the shift. Christopher Quirk and Geoff Holden both had similar and almost unbelievable experiences. They had both capsized their boats and were sitting on the bottom with their crews. Christopher recounts how at one point he could not see his crew who by this time had been blown of the boat and was hanging onto the bow. Then the wind picked up further and his fully capsized boat was simply picked up and flung away.
There was no rescue as the committee vessel, a large yacht, was lying on its side and the rubber ducks were in trouble themselves.

The whole thing lasted about ten minutes. The really heavy breeze only lasted about 60 seconds but it did an incredible amount of damage. When I finally sorted myself out and managed to get the boat on the trailer I found out that a sizeable potion of the roof and the verandah of the rental house we were staying in had been blown away.
Ten minutes later the sun was shining. No one had been badly hurt. The boats that had been on the water were all spotted limping back to the beach (without masts), the eski was recovered and most of the beer was found. It was a beautiful afternoon and a ten knot sea breeze was blowing. If it were not for the broken masts, boats and trees you would not have believed it had all happened.

SALAMANDER TURNS IT ON!
By Geoff Lange

The annual Salamander Bay regatta is cherished among 505 sailors who want to escape the big smoke and have a weekend of sailing and fun in an idyllic environment. Salamander always turns on wind and sun. This years regatta will be remembered not for the fantastic conditions and great racing, but the unbelievable events that unfolded as the fleet was returning to shore on Sunday afternoon.
The last race was concluded as a thunderstorm approached with threatening clouds building in the west. Winds were all over the place but conditions held long enough for all the fleet to finish. Everyone then made a quick dash for the beach, some got there, some didn’t. As it turned out, those on shore were in just as much danger (if not more) than those still on the bay.

Within seconds there was more wind the I have ever seen before. It was like watching hurricane footage on the TV. The wind only lasted for 10 minutes and for about 2 minutes of that time the wind must have been 60 or maybe 80 knots. I’ve heard one official recording was 140 kph!
Mike and I were fairly lucky. We had made it to shore and in knee deep water with the mainsail down when the big wind hit. We were immediately knocked over and quickly losing the battle to hold onto the boat. We managed to survive apart from a shredded jib. We watched in horror as one gust took out 4 sixty foot high coral trees on the beach. The trees fell on the people and boats who had made it to shore. Neil Long, Ian Dunn and crews were under one as it came down. Somehow they weren’t injured (or killed). Unfortunately Neil’s boat took the full impact. Just up the beach a coral tree fell on an OK dinghy and sailor. Apparently nobody knew he or the boat was under the mountain of branches and debris until he crawled out some 5 minutes later. How this guy walked away with only a few scratches is amazing. You couldn’t see the boat under the branches, some of which were a foot in diameter. It too six guys with saws an hour to cut out what was left of the boat.

Boats that were tied down to dollies were capsized and bounced across the rigging area like paper in the wind. I didn’t see personally, but other people saw the roofs of houses picked up and deposited in the bay. The roof of the holiday house we were staying at partly went with my terrified family inside and not knowing to be more worried about their own survival or mine.
I thought those still at sea would have been OK. Surely just sit on the capsized boat and wait for the wind to pass. As it turned out these guys were in big trouble as well. The wind was so strong it managed to get under the gunwale of the upturned 505’s with crews trying to hold them down. The boats were lifted out of the water and catapulted away, breaking masts in the process. Boats and sailors were separated, luckily it is only a smallish bay and when the hurricane died all boats and sailors were soon accounted for.

I’m sure others will be able to add to this extraordinary tale.
By the way, the racing was great. Saturday was utopia, with a steady 15 knot ENE breeze and a great course. I think Justin managed to get up overall, closely followed by ourselves and Neil Long.

Hope everyone can make it next year. There will be plenty more room on the rigging area as the coral trees are no longer there!