The race is unique because each boat has its own start time based on its rating. The slowest boat started before 8:00 a.m., but Terremoto, with a PHRF rating of 39, started at 9:46 a.m. Bill Weinstein drove the boat and Mark Brink fulfilled the critical roles of flying the kite and preparing the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Because Terremoto was one of the last boats to start, Team Moto decided that to win that it needed to adopt a tactical theme: desperate recklessness.

Terremoto had a clean start and avoided boat collisions, a result assisted by there being no other boats in its start. Brink scanned the horizon with his binoculars, picked out the magnified colored specks of the leading boat spinnakers, and mumbled: “We’ve got to really heat up this boat’s speed.” Weinstein immediately associated hot coal walker Anthony Robbins, who said “In life you need either inspiration or desperation.” Devoid of inspiration, Terremoto desperately chased the puffs with its “Grapeade” kite in light air of six to eight knots and a flushing ebb tide. Most of the fleet headed east and hugged the shore offKingston. Rather than “follow the pack” Team Moto thought there would be a stronger breeze and a “river” of current in the middle of Puget Sound. Terremoto sailed “hot” in the light air, but was able to “soak” in the puffs that periodically blew down the Sound from the south. It was rewarded by passing at least forty boats by the time it passed the Bush Point mark near the south end of Whidbey Island at 12:17 p.m.

The majority of leaders continued down the east shore of Whidbey Island as the tide slackened. However, Team Moto, inspired by the raspy bark of a dog on one of the other sail boats that sounded like the word “idiots,” remembered the Chinese proverb: “A dog of desperation will leap over a wall.” Team Moto reasoned that the new tide could be neutralized by hugging the “wall” or cliffs of Marrowstone Island.

Terremoto reached to Morrowstone Island , and then became engaged in a jibing duel with several of the race leaders in the lee of the Marrowstone Island lighthouse. Rounding the lighthouse point, Terremoto was in fourth place and could see the finish line off Port Townsend in the distance. The wind continued to die and the negative current continued to build. The other boats headed into Port Townsend Bay, but Team Moto, realizing it couldn’t win the race by following the leaders, made an inspirationally desperate or desperately inspirational jibe to the east and was rewarded by collapsing its kite. Terremoto fought to finish in a half knot of air against a very strong negative current. Team Moto feared it would be pushed past the finish line and not finish at all. Fortunately, the leaders sailed in to a hole and Terremoto was able to drift to a weak puff that carried the boat across the finish line first.

Terremoto won the overall title for Leg On and won the cherished CSR Marine First to Finish Prize: A Free Haulout.(Steve, put reference to scanned shot of certificate, which will also crossreference to CSR sponsorship. The Saturday race was sunny and fun, although the unique race start bred desperate times and more desperate measures and left Team Moto frazzled and on the brink of the brink of insanity.

Desperate for a solution to win again, Team Moto reasoned that two Brinks on the brink were better than one, and Weinstein was beached in favor of Mark’s son, David. Terremoto had a late Sunday morning start and barely missed being stranded by a long ebb tide that left several larger boats stranded in the Port Townsend harbor. The wind was so light and the current so strong that most of the fleet was either anchored inshore off Marrowstone Point or sailing northeast.

Rather than raft up with the fleet at Marrowstone Point, Terremoto played the wind shifts and made a wide circle around Marrowstone Point. There was heavy current and very little wind. Fortunately, the tide changed to a flood and the wind came in from the north. Terremoto chose wind over current and stayed in the middle of Puget Sound. . As the wind pressure came more from the west, Terremotoacquired the pressure first and managed to sail directly toward the finish line. This proved to be the deciding factor for the day as Terremoto finished first again. According to blogger “Ballard Sailor” in Pressure Drop, this was the first time that any boat had finished first both days in the Race to the Straits’ eleven year history.

This was Terremoto’s first long distance race under new management. The boat fielded a crew of Canadians and Americans that were divided by a common language. The Canadians were Paul Henderson and Paul Hansen, who will be sailing on Terremoto to Maui, and their close friend and former head of the Vic-Maui race, Greg Harms. The usual suspect Americans, Steve Brockway, Mark Brink, and Bill Weinstein completed the crew. This was the first opportunity for Team Moto to work together on navigation, sail in the dark (literally and figuratively), and learn how devoid of creature comforts Terremoto could be.

Terremoto crossed the line at 9:05 a.m. Saturday, April 28, 2012, with its purple kite on starboard in approximately ten knots of wind. Team Moto promptly demonstrated its boat handling skills by jibing to port, and corkscrewing its spinnaker. After traditional race start pandemonium, Terremoto built speed towards Jefferson Head on the Kitsap Peninsula. Team Moto worked hard at keeping the boat moving and attempting to find advantaged current. While Terremoto initially favored the west side of Puget Sound it became clear that sailing further east was a better choice. The ebb tide was very strong, and Terremoto’s course was dictated by maximizing the ebb tide that it found could be positive by as much as two knots. Terremoto observed that it was rewarded by sailing farther east than most of the other boats. SOG (speed over ground) was checked ever ten minutes and several crew members were always checking tide lines and signs of tidal back-eddies off the many points that jutted into the main Puget Sound channel. The entire fleet moved up Puget Sound quickly dragged by the huge ebb tide that was flushing out of Puget Sound.

As Terremoto passed Port Townsend and Point Wilson around 1:00 p.m., the wind lightened and the race became much more tactical. Reading off the bigger boats in front of Terremoto and the boats around and behind the Mighty T, Terremoto managed an efficient run to the nearly submerged sand spit called Minor Island. It helped that Terremoto was able to identify a little pressure from North Northwest that allowed it to glide in very light and variable wind to the channel between Minor Island and Smith Island. The last twenty minutes Terremoto dropped its kite and beat into and around Minor and Smith Island. We passed the half-way mark at 3:14 p.m. Six boats were ahead of Terremoto, but on a corrected time basis Terremoto appeared to be leading.

When Terremoto cleared Smith Island a major tactical decision arose. The tide was becoming slack, the wind was very light and had shifted to the Northwest, and the four big boats were sailing due East. In these light and variable conditions current became the dominating factor over wind. This explained the tactical decision of why the four leaders were heading to Whidbey Island. However, we noted that Strider and Double Take were sailing due west on starboard pole either hoping that something else would work or they were daydreaming. Team Moto split on national lines between going East or West. They turned to Weinstein, who was daydreaming, and headed West.

This arbitrary decision caused further dissension on the boat and resulted in splitting the difference by sailing directly down the shipping lane between the two separate flotillas. After an hour of very light wind, the westerly arising from the beginning of the flood tidal change started to build and pushed Terremoto into Admiralty Inlet. The wind stayed west but showed signs of veering as Terremoto sailed further into the Sound. To this point Terremoto had managed despite itself to catch the wind shifts and tidal activity, but then its luck changed. Terremoto at this point was ahead of Strider and Tachyon and within a half mile of Double Take when it decided to take destiny in its hands, and again fumble it.

Double Take brilliantly sailed across to the western shore of Whidbey Island and then caught the flood current with a westerly wind shift that launched them. It was extraordinary and incredibly demoralizing to watch them sail so elegantly away from us and actually catch up with the top four boats that were at point nearly two hours ahead of us. Tachyon and Strider decided that Double Take knew what it was doing, ignored Terremoto, and were rewarded by sailing away from the chastened T.

The tide at this point was flooding and pushing everyone rapidly toward home. With both Strider and Tachyon to the right of Terremoto, we all head toward Point-No-Point. Both these boats jibed soon after passing the Point. By this time darkness had descended and Terremoto adopted a stealth mode (in dousing the kite someone knocked out the electronics system, which created an intense discussion as to what happened. If no electronics was not enough,  Brink was seen climbing over the edge of the boat to get a branch wedged between the rudder and hull (something we never did fix in the race).

Terremoto, its steering compromised, stayed more in the middle of the shipping channel. It continued in favorable current on port tack and finally jibed, staying wide of Point-No-Point. dark, Terremoto worked hard at staying in visual and physical contact with Strider and Tachyon. Team Moto felt that being more in the middle was a big advantage as we headed down the Sound towards Shilshole. Strider, sick of having Terremoto bite at its heals, jibed out of Kingston heading toward Edmonds. Strider disappeared and finished twenty minutes ahead of Terremoto.

Terremoto seemed to be gaining on Tachyon. Terremoto jibed often attempting to keep on the favored jibe. As Terremoto and Tachyon approached the mid-channel marker off Jefferson Head, Terremoto had closed to within 200 yards of Tachyon. Terremoto jibed onto port at Jefferson Head, and was rewarded with strong pressure and a huge port header as the wind shifted east. The wind continued going east as Terremoto sailed towards Shilshole and the finish line.

With the increased pressure and easterly direction, Terremoto was able to sail a very fast angle directly to Meadow Point. Team Moto believed it had smoked Tachyon, but the jibe back toward the finish was excruciatingly painful as Tachyon came out of the dark like Washington Irving’s Headless Horseman. Tachyon continued to close on port, but Terremoto managed an ugly  jibe 50 or 100 yards in front heading for the finish. Terremoto lurched across the line at Terremoto lurched across the finish line at 10:57 p. m.PM. It was a relief to finish before midnight thanks to the favorable tides and wind shifts, but Team Moto believed that the many mistakes it made in Admiralty Inlet caused it to lose the race to Double Take and to the bigger boats. The darkness failed to reveal that the other boats had experienced similar difficulties and that Terremoto only finished less than an hour behind most of the other boats. It also helped that the other boats behind Terremoto experienced diminishing favorable current and wind. Stated differently, Terremoto had the worst luck on the Smith Island Race, except perhaps for all the others. Stated differently, Terremoto was more lucky than all of the other lucky boats that sailed in a largely downwind race with favorable currents.

Paul Hansen learned the navigation equipment on board and providing valuable information as Team Moto sailed up and down Puget Sound. Paul Henderson worked the boat speed and perfected the jibes. At one point Bill Weinstein was found on the foredeck, in the dark, solving a staysail problem. Mark Brink wondered loudly if this was a good idea, but when you have only four sailing to Hawaii, it was great to see Bill upfront solving problems. Terremoto looks forward to sailing the Summer Vashon Race and the fact it won’t have to sail Smith Island for two years.

Bill Weinstein, a Bellevue, Washington, Etchells sailor, bought Terremoto at the urging of Mark Brink.  Brink, a Northwest sailing legend, is known by many as “Dr. Speed” for his uncanny ability to diagnose and discover a boat’s swiftness.  He knew that Terremoto was a Riptide 35,  one of two  fabled boats designed by Paul Bieker. Bieker helped design the BMW Oracle Racing Trimaran that won the 33rd America’s Cup. “The Riptide 35,” Bieker noted, “was my first design for Jonathan and Libby McKee of Seattle. . . . [Mckee] conceived . . .a high performance racer/cruiser capable of blistering speed on the race course (Jonathan is an Olympic gold medalist in the FD class and a silver medalist in the 49er). [T]he boat also needed to have reasonable accommodations for family cruising with standing headroom, galley and enclosed head. She is capable of being sailed to a large percentage of her potential with a crew of two or three persons.”   History.

The boat’s prior owners, Scott and Susan Burbank, had achieved line honors with Terremoto in the 2010 Vic-Maui race, and had created a vibrant and arresting website describing Terremoto sailing experiences in their Team-Moto website.Please click here to visit their Team-Moto website.. Brink understood Terremoto’s potential, and in a mystically seismic craze cajoled and hectored Weinstein, who has only been sailing for seven years, to buy the boat. As Scott Burbank drolly noted: “we sold Terremoto to a good sailor and a great team.”

After Weinstein bought the boat in early November, like a good owner, he disappeared.  Brink gave the boat a nautical proctologic examination.  “ Although the boat was in relatively good shape,” Brink observed, “there was a lot of work to do to get it ready for the first race in early December, just 25 days away.  It was a challenge getting used to the spars as they looked like moose antlers.”  The boat  only had sails that showed the effects of years of sailing to Hawaii and Alaska. The crew, who was press ganged off the Shilshole waterfront, had never sailed on the boat together.  Two crewman, Bron Miller (hereinafter “Bron”) and David Brink (hereinafter “David”), were veteran sailors from Mark Brink’s Peterson 30 Half Tonner, Lady Bug. Steve Brockway and Weinstein had sailed Etchells together with Brink as part of Newport Shores’ Etchells Fleet 32.  Kirk Utter was invaluable in using his skills as a salesman of remote satellite systems to communicate between the crew and the often cosmic Brink.

The Winter Vashon Race is sponsored by the Tacoma Yacht Club and involves boats from all over Puget Sound circumnavigating  Vashon Island. December 3, 2011 found 85 boats maneuvering in the fog of Commencement Bay.  Brink continued to work feverishly on repairing Terremoto as the first classes started the race.  With ten minutes to Terremoto’s Class C start, Brink yelled “Terremoto” and Utter translated the order to the crew:  “seismic chaos.”  Bron was immediately hoisted up the mast to pull the clevis pin for an unused innerheadstay.    As Weinstein maneuvered the boat into Terremoto’s five minute start sequence, Bronwas still40 feet above the deck, and the jib still rested below deck.

At that point Weintein asked Brink if he intended to race that day. Brink circled the stern and then roared to the crew: “Just do your jobs.”  Utter translated that order as “just do your jobs” and the crew sprung into action.  Terremoto was able to lower Braun and hoist the jib and 43 seconds after all the other Class C boats started, Terremoto limped past the start line.  “Well . . . at least we weren’t over early,” Brockway noted.

The navigation committee of Terremoto -  Brockway, Brink, Utter, and Weinstein – decided that the committee boat, located at the south end of a long start line near the Tacoma Yacht Club breakwater, was favored.  The wind was building from the south-east, and the navigators felt that any wind shifts would be channeled off Commencement Bay.  The wind did begin to build, and seemed to favor those boats which stayed out in the channel as compared to closer in to Vashon Island.

Terremoto pursued two larger boats, Strider and Free Byrd.  It headed off in the general direction of Point Robinson on a close reach. The wind quickly built to between 7 and 8 knots, and then dropped just as suddenly.

Roughly half way to Point Robinson, the wind died completely. The navigation committee assembled on the stern again, and replicated congressional deadlock. It was observed that many of the best sailors in the fleet were heading toward Vashon with the ideal of either closing the geometry to Point Robinson or hoping for lifts off the island. However, Weinstein observed that unpredictable and erratic pressure cells were still coming from the southeast.  A strategic and metaphysical decision was reached for Terremoto to always follow the unpredictable and erratic.

Terremoto separated from the rest of the fleet and headed northeast toward the mainland. In the next hour boats that headed  toward Vashon or were simply closer to Vashon did not fair well. Staying to the east allowed four class B and C boats to escape on a few zephyrs. Terremoto was able to acquire a  south-easterly wind emanating  from Poverty Bay, The four  class B and C boats in this breeze were able to separate from the fleet

As the lead boats approached Point Robinson the wind again lightened. Brink sent his son, David, below to find a patented Brink “Puff Card,” but David did not return and was found sleeping in the bow sail storage locker near the end of the race.

Terremoto continued on a starboard heading almost due east past Point Robinson. Point Robinson became the major separator between the four leaders and the rest of the fleet. While sailing past Point Robinson in a southeaster (maybe more south than east) it was clear the lead boats were sailing on a true easterly close reaching due north on the rum line to the northern mark. Terremoto found itself  in a  southerly breeze  in another tactical transitional moment.

The navigation committee again assembled on the stern. Were we sailing into a corner? Why was the wind so localized?  Why hadn’t David returned with the Puff Card we badly needed to play?  After a heated discussion, we concluded that Terremoto needed to acquire a new breeze.

Bruan and Brockway did a nice job of setting our Welsh GrapeAde colored kite. Terremoto sailed at a very hot angle towards a patch of rough water. It was difficult sailing the boat for the first time in race conditions because the boat tended to accelerate quickly, would generate apparent wind, and then Weinstein would head down too quickly.  Through trial and error, Utter, who was flying the kite, and driver Weinstein, were able to work more smoothly together to keep the boat moving and to slowly build boat speed. It was a very difficult transition north of Point Robinson, but Terremoto was able to continue to separate from the fleet and still keep in touch with the faster and bigger boats in the lead.

The transition was further complicated by a contrasted tide line that extended across the Sound just north of Three Tree Point. The tide had been behind Terremoto and had pushed it at about .8 of a knot, but the new tide line appeared to demonstrate the end of the ebb more than any flood current. The wind died as Terremoto crossed this unfavorable current line. The navigation committee assembled on the stern again.

The committee took turns with the binoculars to scan for wind.  In the interim, Utter and Weinstein were effective in keeping the boat moving while all of the other boats appeared to stop. Sailing at glacial speed, Terremoto was able to close with and then pass Strider, a very well sailed and crewed Nelm 55.Terremoto was now in second place on the race course, but the formidable Free Byrd, a Swan 45, remained far in the lead.

The breeze oscillated considerably, and the wind was very localized. Terremoto jibed at least six times during this period, which appeared to accomplish very little, but kept the foredeck crew of Braun and Brockway active and warm. The jibes were messy as the kite had to be carried around the forestay. After a more few jibes and patiently biding its time, Terremoto was rewarded with a nurturing southerly wind. Team Moto then acquired the top mark. Only one boat, Free Byrd,  stood between Terremoto and that northern mark.  At that point it appeared that the Race Committee made the decision to shorten the finish line due to light wind and make the north end mark the finish.

Terremoto  jibed on what Brink and Weinstein thought was  the lay line to the finish. Assuming that no further jibe was required, geometry suggested that  Terremoto could beat Free Byrd to the finish line. Weinstein and Utter tried hard to stay on the lay line, but the wind continued to lighten and the boat kept falling off. Two jibes more were required to finish, and these jibes cut Terremoto’s boat speed to nothing.  Terremoto faltered and “fell” across the finish line seven minutes but a very short physical distance behind  Free Byrd.

Team Moto was relieved that, ignoring its start, it had sailed its first race cleanly with no boat collisions, protests, or significant errors. The boat clearly had tired sails.  Its main sail system created a Gordian knot every time a roll tack or jib happened.  The boat didn’t point efficiently. A number of important changes need to be evaluated.

The boat also needs to be sailed differently from other boats. When Terremoto becomes connected to the wind, the boat leaps forward while the wind rapidly moves forward as well, allowing the boat to sail deeper. The key is to not sail too deep or respond too rapidly as this tends to stall boat speed.  The crew also needs to practice mark roundings, efficient roll tacking, and numerous other coordinated efforts.  Finally, navigation by committee creates terremoto.

Jim Marta’s Eye Candy was very gracious to allow Weinstein, Braun, Brockway, and David Brink  to jump ship while Brink and Utter could sail directly back to Seattle. Eye Candy’s crew was very kind to allow four of Team Moto to hitch a ride back to Tacoma.  Eye Candy’s cabin was posh compared to Terremoto’s “meat locker.”  It was warm, inviting, had a big screen TV and epicurean home baked goodies, and its crew had at least one piece of eye candy.

Thank you to the Tacoma Yacht Club for a great race. And, oh, Terremoto was stunned to learn that somehow it had come in first overall.