Lake Canyon is a really pretty lake in central Texas that has been nothing but grief for me. It is located outside New Braunfels on the Guadalupe river. This is a great part of the state with a large German tradition including the best Oktoberfest in Texas. It’s less than four hours from my home, but probably my least favorite place in the world to sail. The following should give you an idea of why I don’t like Lake Canyon.
First Oktoberfest
I think my first trip to Lake Canyon was in 1970 or 1971. The idea of having a regatta and a beer festival on the same weekend sounded like a good idea to me. I didn’t have a crew available, so I borrowed my dad’s Finn and headed south. I woke up Saturday morning, rigged the boat, and headed down what I believed to be the longest launch ramp in the world. There was dock space for maybe four or five boats to give you a place to tie the boat while you parked your car. As soon as you’d parked your car and hiked back down the hill, you had to paddle out to the break water. The Yacht club does not have a natural harbor, so they had built a break water by chaining telephone poles end to end and anchoring them in place as a break water. There was plenty of space and the club ran a shuttle boat to get you back to the shore. So far so good. How was I to know that it was going to be down hill from there?
The first problem was the racing. The lakes in this part of the state are really rivers with steep sides. Lake Canyon is reasonably deep, so the race committee set courses with marks up in coves where they could reach the bottom. This also was the only way they had a chance to have anything like a triangle. The problem was that the wind was heavily deflected by the hills, and some of the legs actually bent around points of land. Let’s just say the courses made typical sailing strategy useless.
The second problem is what I really remember about my first trip. When I returned to the harbor after a day of sailing, I discovered that no one was allowed to take their boats out of the water. I pleaded my case that this requirement should have been noted in the notice of regatta, but was informed they always did it this way. I didn’t have any bolt cutters to remove the pad lock that was holding the chain across the launch ramp, so I was stuck. My problem was that my boat had leaky bailers, and I knew it would be awash by morning. My challenge Sunday morning was to bail out a boat when the decks were even with the surface of the water. Not fun.
Second Oktoberfest
A couple years later I had built an OK Dinghy and decided to try the Oktoberfest regatta again. At least I knew to make sure the bailers did not leak. The racing started out in drifting to to maybe 2 knots of wind. The OK Dinghy was light with lots of sail, so I was doing pretty well against the variety of boats in the handicap fleet. I was in great position approaching the first mark until the anchor line on the mark came untied. With the mark drifting down wind and all the boats trying to round it the race was scrapped. There went the first half day.
The second race didn’t have any more wind and took forever. Then the race committee decide the wind was building and they wanted to run a third race to have two races in the books. Every boat was trying to tell them there wasn’t time, but they started a race anyway.
The wind was maybe 5 to 8 knots at the start and built steadily throughout the race. I finished the race in probably 20 knots of wind, on the far side of the lake, and about 15 minutes after dark. You have to have sailed an OK Dinghy down wind in 20 knots to know how little control you have and how much spray it can throw to block your vision. Here I was on a strange lake at night looking for a harbor made of floating telephone poles. Actually, I was looking for the rather small gap in the black poles floating on the black water under the black sky. I got to sail about a mile on the ragged edge of control visualizing my newly built boat being destroyed on the break water. I made it, but it was a stupid thing to have done.
I thought the racing was bad on Saturday, but Sunday added a new twist. The race committee had a downwind finish in puffy conditions. What could go wrong? You guessed it, a puff came in and compressed the fleet right at the finish line. Boats were having trouble physically finding room to cross the line.
Back on land it all became a big joke when an announcement was made that the race committee needed help in assigning finishes. They wanted every boat to make a list of the boats ahead and behind, so they could reconstruct the finish. That was when I decided racing on Lake Canyon was a joke.
JY15
It was over 10 years before I found myself on Lake Canyon again. My first two experiences had convinced me that life was too short to waste time trying to race on Lake Canyon. However, I now owned a JY15 and was contending for our Texas series championship. The last race was to be at Lake Canyon. I didn’t want to go, but that would mean giving up my shot at the championship, so I went. For some reason I no longer remember, one of my J24 crew members (Fred) was going to crew for me for the first time on the JY15.
Saturday went as well as I could have hoped for. Fred and I were a good 50 to 75 pounds heavier than ideal, but at least the winds were blowing. By the end of the day we had figured out how to get around in the boat and had some decent finishes. We went into the race Sunday morning with the championship in our pocket. As long as we finished within two places of the second place boat, we’d win the championship.
Sunday was cold and windy after a northerly front had come through. Fred and I now had the weight advantage in the strong wind, so I was thinking it was going to be an easy day. Everything went as planned until the last downwind leg. The JY15 is pretty stable and relatively easy to gybe, and we had enough of a lead to give us time to recover from a capsize. However, the JY15 also has a design flaw that that shows up downwind in a blow. To make the boat easy to transport, the JY15 has a two part mast with no spreaders. This works great until you get too much forward load on the rig and the mast inverts. I was being careful to avoid the dead run to keep some side load on the rig. Our last gybe was one too many and the mast inverted and bent. It didn’t break, but it bent so far that the top of the mast was parallel with the water when I tried to run. We could go to windward or beam reach, but we couldn’t run. That was a problem since we were about a half mile above the leeward mark. I spent the rest of the leg trying to keep enough load on the main to keep the mast up and sailing as deep as I could. One by one the boats sailed by as we struggled.
We made it to the finish line having lost the championship, but we were proud of our seamanship in keeping the mast up. Oh well. Back at the dock my opinion of the Lake Canyon Yacht Club went lower than I thought it could. There was a youth regatta going on at the same time, and they were asking for volunteers to help with crash boats. There were kids scattered all over the lake and not near enough crash boats to pull them in. Fred and I hoped on a ski boat with one of the club members and headed out. We had one Laser in tow and came across another that was obviously getting too cold to make it home. We got the kid in our boat while I sailed his Laser back to the club. Fred and I were feeling better about our day as we headed up to the club for lunch. The regatta included lunch (two hot dogs) for each sailor, and they had given you tickets for the hot dogs. We are soaking wet, cold, and hungry as we waited in line. At least most people had already eaten, so the line was short. We got our dogs. The kid behind us was looked really spent, and the lady at the counter refused to give him any food. It seems his tickets had washed out of his pockets while he was swimming waiting for someone to help him. We tried reasoning with the lady that he had obviously been sailing as a part of the regatta, but she wasn’t budging. Fred and I gave him half of our lunch so he wouldn’t die of hypothermia. Less than one minute later they made an announcement that there were lots of hot dogs left over, so anyone that wanted more could have them.
At this point my only goal was to get the boat loaded and put this poor excuse for a yacht Club behind me. The launch ramp was total chaos. The only good thing was that it was wide enough to retrieve two or even three boats at a time. After maybe 30 minutes there was a gap and I headed down the ramp. As I got near the water some older guy came up and said I was going the wrong way. I was supposed to be coming down a different approach to the ramp. I explained to him that I had been watching for half an hour and there was no organized system. In fact several of the trailers at the water had come from the same direction I had. He claimed that he was the one on charge, and I would have to go back. I explained to him that I would just as soon run over him if he got in my way. Third time was the charm, and I vowed I would never live long enough to sail on Lake Canyon again.
J24 regatta
I had a J24 and was racing the Texas Circuit. We raced all over Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma, with Lake Canyon being a regular on the schedule. My crew couldn’t understand why I would would drive six hours to Houston or twelve to New Orleans, but I wouldn’t drive four to Lake Canyon, but I refused to ever go. They asked one too many times, and I told them to have fun. They could have the boat and van, but they would need to find another crew, since I wasn’t going. My cockpit crew assumed the skipper duties and they found an Englishman to trim sails for them. Their trip to Lake Canyon didn’t turn out any better than mine had.
A nasty cold front came through, and they had horrible conditions (mid 30’s with wind and snow). By the time they got the boat put away Sunday everyone was thinking they had lost their fingers to frost bite. Then to top things off the roads started icing over. They made it about half way home before they opted for spending the night in a hotel rather than a ditch. I listened to their stories of pain and suffering. I just smiled and told them “I told you so.”