Reader Rant

Not Guilty!

Speaking of Key West, of all the boats and situations that have been discussed in our forum, the Melges 30 Tiburon the PHRF Class 4 winner and sailed expertly by the very talented John Dane, takes the cake for most posts and speculation. Some of the talk has been about the boat's legality, and one of the crew members from Tiburon, Cameron Kuebel, wanted to respond. Of course we gave him the vehicle to do so.

Scot, I really appreciate the chance to set the record straight.

5 years ago before the start of the Gulfport to Pensacola race, I got an excited phone call from John Dane III screaming about his boat (Tiburon) taking on water. I informed him that it wasn’t my f..ing fault, and what the f did he want me to do about it?

It was determined that one of the crew had thrown a sail aft, knocking the exhaust hose loose and the engine had pumped the water into the boat.

After bailing out and starting and I believe winning the race, he sent the boat back to us (United States Marine Inc., owned by Tom Dreyfus) w/ instructions to take that POS saildrive out and fab a custom outboard bracket. @ that time the boat was owned by Mark Watson, who apparently was holding checks for the boat from John and Michael Gray. The only modification to the boat is the removal of the saildrive.

Prior to my stewardship of said POS Melges 30, Donnie Brennan of Diversified Marine, was tasked w/ keeping the chunks of flaking gelcoat repaired.

Key West was sailed w/ a crew who has been sailing together for approx. 4 years, the newest addition to the crew was Angela Johnson from Minnesota (she had sailed on the boat once before in the Columbus Day Debacle in Miami last October). The Crew Consisted of: John Dane III (helm), Leslie Dane (tactician & John’s lovely wife), Robert Schaeffer Dane (high school student, John’s youngest son, AKA Schaeffer Dude), Donnie Brennan (main trimmer, tactician,AKA Mr. Fixit), Michael Gray (pit and halyards, AKA Sir Michael the Minuscule), Bob Hughes (foredeck, chief bleeder, old man (52+),calming influence), Angela Johnson (damn her calves taste good) and Conrad Kuebel (headsail/ kite trimmer, Mr. Fixit’s nemesis(I’m giving the responsibility of the boat back to him, but he’s gone w/o a forwarding address to send the boat to), and general defecation agitator).

Prior to the races we weighed ourselves, added up the total and determined we had room to spare. Michael and Angela went to weigh in before the races, as they planned on serious partying and eating. As for me, I was so worn out after the races, we went to the tent for the trophy presentations and then promptly went back to the Showdown (John’s double wide trailer in the general anchorage area west of Key West bight) and had lost an additional 5 lbs when I got home Saturday.

There are no PROFESSIONAL sailors on this boat. We have not, nor ever will hide anything from anyone concerning this boat or any other. We are in this for the fun, accusations of cheating suck the fun out of it. Three years ago a member of Waiere’s crew accused us of cheating @ the protest tent…we won the protest…I invited said crewperson to an ass kicking, which he declined, two years ago, New Wave & crew ( including my first cousin Jay) handed us defeat. During the great boat swap of 01, we swapped w/ the New Wave crew due to some boasting by John (a case of alligator mouth overloading elephant ass), the end result is well known. They beat us w/ our own boat, but our revenge was that we blew out their kite during the second leg..cost us plenty of time and they got the first look at our new heavy #1….told us it was beautiful.

We have worked hard in prepping the boat each time we go to Key West, we have a good time, and anyone who wants to see the boat, measure it or whatever is more than welcome. The boat is wicked fast in certain conditions, this year the conditions were great for us.

Oh, by the way, Michael’s boat (Hello Dolly) won the partying prize, they almost got kicked out of the Galleon Marina.