West Van YC Celebrates 50 Years of Southern Straits – with Hedrick Stories!

The Southern Straits Race is celebrating its 50th anniversary with Saturday’s start! Many happy returns to our brethren north of the border. We’re giddy to have Peter Salusbury, owner of the Bieker Riptide 35 II Longboard, give us a little history primer, and of course Bruce Hedrick is going to looking into his magic weather crystal ball tomorrow with a Bruce’s Brief right here on sailish.com.

By Peter Salusbury

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Southern Straits of Georgia Race this year, Sandy Huntingford and I were asked if we’d put together an historical retrospective of the race for one of our club’s regular pub nights. We gave our presentation this past Friday at the club to a packed house and we had a lot of fun over the course of the evening. In preparing our presentation, we dug into the club archives, documented our own personal experiences (combined we’ve done 89 races), and then reached out to a few notable Straits race veterans particularly those who were regulars in the 1970’s.

One of those contacted was Bruce Hedrick, an old friend I got to know in the 1976 SORC, who with his father, Lang, campaigned both their Columbia 50 Six Pack and Chance 50 Warrior to line honors, divisional, and overall wins in the early days of the race.  Bruce has always spoken fondly of his memories of the races and the club volunteers who organized the race and helped them out in times of need. Bruce kindly responded to my request for his sea stories from his Straits Race days with some wonderful stories that we incorporated into our pub night presentation to a warm reception from the participants.

I’ve included excerpts from Bruce’s stories below to illustrate how attached and committed the Hedrick family was to this great PNW race and to highlight key themes we included in our presentation. One of the key themes we wanted to celebrate was the incredible commitment of our US sailing community to make the difficult and long delivery up to West Vancouver and return during the early spring to attend the race. Here’s an excerpt from Bruce on his memory of delivering the boat north in 1970……

As they say, you never forget your first…..Straits Race and the 1970 one is still indelibly printed in my mind. We were getting ready to do the Vic-Maui Race and wanted some more overnight racing experience besides Swiftsure. Besides, it perfectly coincided with spring break at the University of Washington which meant I could take the entire week to get the boat up to West Van YC from Seattle. Why go south to California when you could sail and fish for salmon the first part of the day, find an anchorage and then go scuba diving for scallops and abalone for appetizers followed by salmon, rockfish or ling cod for dinner. Those were the days.

And here’s Bruce’s story of an epic delivery home in 1975 after the race…..one of the points we made last Friday evening is that frequently the delivery legs are much harder than the race itself……

In 1975, the real story was the delivery back to Seattle. The forecast in the Strait of Georgia was for 25-40 from the NW which should have been perfect for a downhill run to Seattle. We decided to use the storm jib and no main. The problem was that once we got out there, there was a lot more wind than that. The anemometer was the analog B&G which only went to 60 and it was spending a lot of time pegged.

We made great time past Pt. Grey and about ½ way to Sand Heads, when we realized we were being set onto Sturgeon Bank and we weren’t going to clear Sand Heads. We couldn’t go back so we decided to hoist the storm trysail to see if that would help drive the bow up. In addition, we dropped the storm jib, unhanked it and moved it aft to the staysail stay. That combination worked and we were able to sail up enough to clear Sand Heads.

Back then, Six Pack had an ingenious way to get a flat main using roller reefing…..from the 1970 Straits Race….

By the time we went by Pt. Roberts, it was cranking and we decided to get the 150% down and go with a short hoist 110% with a reef in the main. This wasn’t easy as those were the days we had hanks on the headsails and used roller reefing for the main. We did, however, have the secret weapon for reefing and ending up with a reasonably shaped mainsail: we took the cushions off the berths and placed them in the foot of the main so they would flatten the main as you rolled the reef into the sail. It was really cold and since we almost never used the small headsail the hanks were tough to open, especially with gloves on. Then there was the problem of keeping the wind from blowing the cushions out of the foot of the main while slowly rolling the reef in. And all it did from there was get colder and colder and windier and windier.

And one more gem found in the club archives was this handwritten letter from Lang Hedrick to race chairman, Jim Page, at the height of the 1973/1974 OPEC oil embargo asking if the club could provide 50 gallons of #2 diesel to get the boat home after the race. What a commitment to bring Six Pack all the way up to Vancouver given the diesel shortages at the time.

As for the racing itself, one of the funny parts of our evening was reading Fred Russell’s log on Solquest (multiple overall race winner) during the 1972 race when Six Pack roared up from astern off Merry Island under full canvas with marginal helm control (it seems)…..

1749 – Six Pack abeam – much shouting – appears to be slightly out of control – Six Pack crew warn about her broaching tendencies – then proceeds to demonstrate – very thrilling!

And then Sandy discovered a series of black and white photos he snapped from the cockpit of Solquest with his Kodak Instamatic, which captured perfectly a fully pressed Six Pack and the seconds before they gloriously broached out of control!  Epic!

And then there was their perfect race on Warrior in 1977 where the clean sweep was performed…..one of our themes was how much different coastal navigation was back in the 1970’s and this describes it perfectly……

This was one of my favorite South Straits Races. The start was once again downwind in moderate breeze which was just perfect for us plus it was a long run up to Sisters which put Warrior right into her favorite conditions. We got steadily away from Weatherly and the rest of fleet, rounding Sisters right around sunset in 20-30 knots of southeasterly breeze, choppy and lumpy seas.

This was where my dad was really in his element. Keeping a running DR plot going on the chart table, navigating with the hand-held compass, repeatedly asking for bearings to different lights. Then he would set the RDF shrouded in a plastic bag on top of the companionway hatch, get a bearing and then disappear below to do the plot. He kept us off the rocks and took us inside of the Ballenas, Gerald, and Amelia Islands. It was when we tacked to go inside the Winchelsea Islands that things got interesting; we were introduced to Whiskey Gulf. All of sudden there were flashing lights, flares, big spotlights, horns, and guys in rubber boats with big outboards, guns, and bullhorns telling us to exit the area immediately.

We crossed the finish line just after 1:00 am Saturday morning which I think may still be the fastest elapsed time ever for a Straits Race. In the end, it had been a clean sweep for Warrior: First to finish, First in Class, First Overall and a course record.  We flew the broom for a week.

All of these stories from Bruce illustrate so perfectly the dedication of Bruce, Lang, and their crews to repeatedly make the trek north each year to participate in Straits Race, a commitment we highlighted last Friday that all US entries do each and every year.  All of us at West Vancouver Yacht Club truly appreciate and are thankful for that commitment and look forward to welcoming those US crews who are entered this year on Thursday evening at the club. And thanks, Bruce, for sharing your personal history of the race – you added a lot of color to our presentation last Friday!