Introduction by W.D. Schock

This tale of a 84 year old sailor, his grandson, and a 47 year old Lido 14 is a fine mariner's yarn. It came to our attention via a friend. It is witty, humble, long, and just earthy enough to taste salty . We thought we'd share the story of how to cruise a Lido in Texas style.  

Pour yourself a Dark & Stormy , sit back, and enjoy; 

Sailing the Texas 200 in a Lido 14

by Garry Osborne

Garry and his grandson, Douglas aboard his Lido 14

During the fall of 2011 I read several mentions of the Texas 200,  the  Everglades Challenge and  others in one of the many sailing publications I receive. Having moved to Colorado in 2004 from Connecticut, where I sailed quite a lot in everything from a Pearson "PETREL",  a Sunfish, a GP14, a Grumman 17" canoe, a Sailstar "ORION", a Rhodes 19 , a Sabre 28, a Sabre 34 (not mine), and a Shannon 38 (also not mine).

I was drawn to the idea of sailing in salt water again.

I can't say exactly why the idea seemed so attractive, but sailing in Colorado is done on very small bodies of water, often in the lee of a dam or the edge of the forest. 

On salt water there always seems to be plenty of room to sail. But it's a long way from Denver to the sea, no matter which way you turn when you go out of the driveway. On the internet I read the accounts of participants in earlier T200s and I studied the photos and the videos, becoming more and more motivated to participate myself. 

Although I had bought a "MINIFISH", I had only sailed it a couple of times and found that although it is very like a Sunfish, I was not comfortable on it at all. The 25 year passage since I had a Sunfish hasn't improved my flexibility one bit. 

At 84 I'm about as flexible as a railroad sleeper.

So without any sort of boat to take to Texas I began to look around.

          Finding a Suitable Boat                                           

I found a very old Lido 14 (number 1533, built in 1963) advertised for what I perceived as a very high price, but the owner is a tolerant and patient young man.  

A photo of a vintage Lido 14 also built in 1963

Contact between us continued sporadically over a couple of months. Finally, in March I offered him a sum of money to allow me to charter the boat while he retained ownership. I would improve the condition of the boat and when I returned from Texas, he could examine the boat and if he wanted to sell it on his own, he would return my money. If he didn't think he could get more for the boat than I had given him, he would sign it over to me and no further payment would be called for. We signed a contract. 

 Improvements to the "Blue Lido"

The hull was perfectly sound. Black graffiti, "SUR13", adorned one side. The driver of a concrete delivery truck, making a delivery next door said to me , "Do you know what that means?". I answered that I couldn't even read the letters but he told me that SUR 13 is the symbol of the "SURENOS", or southerners, an infamous street gang. 

The 13 is a reference to the thirteenth letter of the alphabet, "M", a salute, if you will, to the Mexican mafia. 

We were not able to totally remove the graffiti, so the boat carried its sinister symbol throughout the T200 and I'm happy to say that there were no negative consequences.

The original wood rudder blade, vertically laminated, had been covered with fibreglass, which had cracked in several places. I removed the covering entirely and repaired the sharp trailing edge by adding a small piece of matching cedar. But fibreglassing is not something I like to do. I

nstead, I made a new blade out of plywood using a belt sander to shape it similar to the original. I was concerned about the strength and intended to make a second blade to take with me but I never got it done. 

Fortunately, the plywood blade was plenty strong and survived the rigors of the windy conditions encountered.

The tiller was another matter. The laminated tiller that came with the boat was in terrible condition and beyond repair. I had plenty of cedar and fabricated a laminated replacement. BIG MISTAKE! Cedar is much too soft and is not nearly strong enough for the application. My grandson and I suffered the consequences of that bad decision...more on that later.

Many of the chroniclers of the T200 have warned that one should be prepared for a LOT of wind and that reefing capability is a must. 

To that end I began contacting sailmakers in an effort to find someone who would install lines of reef points in the mainsail. I began to study what might be done to reduce the size of the big (for so small a boat) jib of the Lido. The sailmakers, several of them, answered that they were already booked for work and could not meet my time requirement. They might have thought anyone who wanted to double reef a Lido was crazy. Finally, Doyle Sailmakers, of Salem, Massachusetts, responded saying, "Send the sails". Andrew Schneider of Doyle was very helpful and they did a fine job at a reasonable cost.

Slab-reefing, which I was preparing for, requires fittings on the boom to which the reefing lines are dead-ended and which re-direct the reefing lines along the boom toward the mast. These were made as two-bolt clamps, fashioned out of polyethylene with Delryn sheaves. 

Because the Lido boom is round, these reefing clamps are quite simple and they permit forward and aft adjustment along the boom so that the tension in the "foot" of the reefed sail can be properly established.

The Sailing

The  200 is a five-day, 40 mile a day event. 40 miles is a long way to sail at 4 or 5 miles per hour.

At Port Mansfield, you can sleep aboard if you have the accommodation or stay in a convenient hotel, with BATH and a nearby watering hole, or restaurant, if you prefer. My grandson and I stayed in the hotel.

First Day - Double Reefed Main

Sailing the first day started out with a relatively gentle breeze and the wind strengthened during the day. 

We started out under full sail and reefed as the wind became stronger.

I sailed almost all of the trip. Douglas, my grandson, has never really sailed before and during our one sail before leaving Colorado, I must admit I was impatient with him and he was disinclined to receive any more abuse from his irrascible captain. It took a while to sort out all the halyards and reefing lines at the mast and when shaking out a reef we had to take care to free the reefing lines to eliminate wrinkles in the sail. Doug got better and better at the job as he became familiar with the maze of lines and the reefing/shaking out went more and more quickly.

Garry and Douglas under big Texas skies

By the time we arrived at Port Mansfield the wind was quite strong, we were reefed right down (two reefs in the main and flying the little jib) and it was a bit rough as we turned to enter the harbor.

I had previously arranged for a county-owned slip for the Lido and we had a reservation at the Sunset Hotel.  The manager fulfilled her promise to come and get us at the dock and drive us to the hotel. Great service indeed! After dinner at the Windjammer Restaurant, we had a good night's sleep.

Second Day - Broken Tiller

The second day the wind rose in the afternoon and during a particularly strong gust the poor choice of material for the new tiller brought its consequences home to us.

The tiller broke off in my hand. We we were quickly blown ashore in the shallows. 

Our sailing vessel is secure for the night

During the incident we jibed accidentally and some water came aboard and while we got things sorted out and the boat bailed out a couple of guys stopped in their Bolger "Light Schooner". We were on a lee shore. They simply got their lee-board and rudder blade up and grounded near us. They were very helpful. 

I reversed the tiller, put the little end into the rudder head, packed with a little bit of light line to get a better fit and I thought that as long as I held the tiller back, into the rudder-head, we could continue. Getting off the lee shore was my greatest concern. The wind was striking the shore a an angle. We asked the schooner-men to turn us around and give us a bit of a shove, which they did, with a will.

With just a tiny bit of board and a little bit of the rudder blade, the Lido hauled off without difficulty and we continued to the end of the day's sail, a location called "Hap's Cut". 

Our friends in the Bolger 'Schooner' in foreground.  Douglas bringing us ashore in background

The mud at the water's edge (there is only about 6" of tide in the waterway) is 12" deep and it'll take your shoes off and not give 'em back if you're not careful.

At the waters edge, having landed not five minutes before, a couple of the other participants came down and said, "We understand you have broken your tiller. What can we do to help?" When I removed the rudder, these guys took it and we walked down the beach to where another of the sailers was beached. He had with him a box FULL of stainless fittings in a wide assortment, a cordless drill, a cordless sawzall, and a miracle of miracles, an old wheel-barrow handle!

Talk about helpful! In and hour I fit the handle to the rudder head and, suffice to say, we were able to complete the T200 without further trouble. This demonstration of forethought and generosity I will never forget.

Third Day - $1 Beers 

The third day was relatively uneventful except our arrival at the Padre Island Yacht Club where we were to be guests of the club. As is often the case, things can get a little dicey when the wind is hooting and there is "hard property" close at hand. Although we were deeply reefed, our speed was substantial while we tried to maneuver to a dock, so I sailed up to windward of our goal and Douglas took off the last remnants of sail.

   Under Double Reefed Main 

Even with nothing but the windage of the mast driving us we were moving pretty rapidly when we entered one of the club's big slips where, thanks to our good fortune, one of the club volunteers was able to stop us with his feet.

   Zooming along towards Dusk 

We were looking forward to spending the evening and night at the club, which organization has welcomed the participants of the T200 for several years. 

They provided everyone with a very good 10$ hamburger-and-fixin's dinner, along with 1$ beer and other cold drinks. 

Plus, we were welcome to use the showers and camp anywhere we wanted to on the grounds, even inside the air-conditioned building.

Fourth Day - A Wedding at Paul's Mott

The fourth day we and many of the others elected to sail up to windward, toward the barrier island, to minimize the wave-making capability of the wind. This as an alternative to sailing across the mouth of Corpus Christi Bay, with considerable "fetch" to windward and the resulting bigger sea. This meant that we were out of the intracoastal waterway for miles and the water is very shallow. 

There's nothing like a center-board to let you know when you're in the shallows and we touched the rudder often as well. 

This day the destination for camping was a place called "Paul's Mott". 

Shortly after we arrived, two fellows in an O'Day "Day Sailer" capsized within a quarter mile of the destination beach. The sailors were experienced but not very physically fit and the boat filled anyway and they needed lots of help and they got it.

Paul's Mott is really an idillic, although primitive, camp site and it was there that two of the sailers were married!. They had met on the T200 a couple of years before and wanted to be married there. 

One of the sailers is a minister (and boat builder), there was cake, the minister wore a robe and a grand, tall mitre, the girls had grass skirts, there were leis and champagne for everyone! 

Day Five - Destination

The fifth day was, perhaps, a little anti-climactic, but mercifully uneventful, at least for Douglas and me. When we arrived at Sea Drift, Texas, where our trailers were parked, the town feted us with an excellent $10 "shrimp boil", with plenty of free drinks.

The road back to Denver was still about 1200 miles long.

Suitability of the Lido

Is a Lido 14 suitable for this kind of dinghy cruising? Absolutely! But the ability to reef is of paramount importance.

What changes would I make in that Lido in order to go again? In preparation for the impending sale of the boat, I made a new tiller out of a beautiful piece of ash, so that's done. 

One of the members of the Lido organization recommended that I add flotation forward and reinforce the boom. 

I didn't do either of these, although our substantial dry-bags could be considered as added flotation. 

As an added note, we never hiked out nor sat out. We adjusted the amount of sail. One objective I had was to avoid capsize. I chose to wear my hearing aids all the way. To capsize would have meant the probable loss of these $5000 instruments.

 Another beautiful day ahead of us