August 28, 2001 — I’m still not sure if I really grasp the whole concept of the Poker Run on Lake Lanier — which, for what it’s worth, is touted as the largest event of its kind in the world.
On Aug. 18, more than 300 boats participated in this year’s Poker Run, sponsored for the past eight years by Lanier Harbor Marina & Restaurant in Buford. I was aboard one of them. Although you may not be able to tell that from reading this column.
Well OK, anchors away, my friends. Here goes nothing.
The Poker Run, I was told, is known as a boat rally. Vessels of all pedigrees and proportions set out on a rather long course that takes roughly three hours to complete. Very little of the lake is left unvisited.
But it’s not a race. Precision, not horsepower, wins the Poker Run. To win, a boat must complete the course in the time closest to the one predetermined by event organizers. One problem: the predetermined time is not made public until after the Poker Run is run.
Sure, you have a general idea of the preferred pace. For example, I rode in the cruiser class, which is supposed to move along at approximately 20 mph. Also, at four check stations throughout the course, each boat is told what its elapsed time should have been up to that point. You either speed up or slow down accordingly, and hope you guess good enough for a shot at the more than $16,000 in cash and prizes.
It’s definitely not an exact science.
“My theory is that it is purely luck,” said Cumming’s Rich McPherson, captain of my boat, whose Poker Run finishes have gotten progressively worse since his fourth place effort six years ago.
“It’s more of a party. There are some people who are definitely here competing, but I think most people are here partying. That’s what we are here for.”
That was obvious from the moment boat No. 194 — aka “Tiny Bubbles” — floated my way. It was a 46-foot sport yacht, and a floating tribute, of sorts, to our 50th state. The crew wore straw hats, hula skirts and leis. Don Ho blared — if it’s possible for Don Ho to blare — over the stereo system. And, yes, there were plenty of bubble machines on board.
I knocked over a mimosa in a coconut-shell cup when I hopped on in.
“Would you like a drink?” the boat’s owner Mario Galang, of Alpharetta, asked me. It was just after 10 a.m.
“No thanks, I’m fine,” I responded.
“We have non-alcoholic drinks on board, too,” Mario added.
“But,” yelled out a voice behind us, “they’re just for show!”
Mario and Rich — and the two teenage crew members — appeared to be the only people on the boat not imbibing. Instead, they stood hunched over a map, calling out numbers to each other.
You see, the Poker Run’s course is kept secret until the morning of the event. Even then, boaters must crack a code and decipher symbols to determine where they will be headed. It’s all based on the navigational markers that appear throughout the lake.
I know what you’re thinking: So where does the “poker” come into play?
Well, at every check station, each boat picks a card. The best five-card hand wins $5,000. If someone was to draw a five-of-a-kind — and not get struck by lightning on the spot — he or she would win a prize package worth more than $240,000.
If a prize was awarded for electronic gadgetry, I would have named Mario’s boat the odds-on favorite. His high-tech chart plotter showed us exactly where we were, and exactly where we wanted to go on the lake — it didn’t, however, have a live feed of the Yankees-Mariners game.
In case the chart plotter sputtered, we had a backup GPS on the dashboard (and another in my backpack). We also had two speedometers … and a blender.
“Imagine the days when you had to navigate with sliding rules and pencils,” Mario mused. “How did they do that?”
“I didn’t know people actually boated prior to the invention of the GPS,” I quipped.
Just north of Buford Dam, Lake Lanier was a parking lot for much of the morning. Boats left every 30 seconds, until there were none.
Mario was attached to the chart plotter as soon as we launched. Like an air-traffic controller, he shouted out digits and directions to Rich — who was doing his best to keep the boat at 20 mph.
“I’ve got a heading of 50 degrees from where we are,” Mario would bark, switching his eyes rapidly from the chart plotter’s screen, the map and his binoculars. “We’ve got to go counterclockwise. It’ll be on the port side. Then we’re going to be heading to 13 on the main channel.”
Mario’s wife Cheryl tried to approach him while he was in navigation-mode. “Babe, you want a drink?” she asked.
“No time,” Mario grunted, eyes glued to his screen.
Mario’s son Jordan leaned his arm over the edge of the boat’s deck.
“If you fall over,” Mario said jokingly (I think), “you’re going to screw up our time.”
This was Mario’s first Poker Run. He had no idea it would be so stressful. He had no idea he’d have the most stressful job on the boat. He had no idea he’d like it so much.
“Normally when we boat,” Mario said, “you leave the marina, you find a cove, you drop anchor and you stay. This is real boating. So that’s what makes this so much fun to me.”
I played the role of navigator for a short stretch. My view through the binoculars kept getting blocked by the festive fish and pineapple decorations that were hung throughout the cockpit.
Meanwhile, the rest of the crew seemed oblivious to the goings on in the control center. Some of them napped.
“Are you guys stressed out back there,” Mario shouted.
“Yep,” replied Suwanee’s Larry Ballew, his feet propped up, after a sip of a mimosa. “Pretty stressed.”
As the day progressed, Rich and Mario were quietly optimistic about our chances. If they had calculated correctly, we were right on time.
“We’re either very perfect,” Mario said as we finished, “or very wrong. But it was fun either way.”
Well, let’s just say that we likely would have fared better with a slide ruler and a pencil. We were 56th in our class, more than 15 minutes off the official time, more than 15 minutes behind the winning boat — which finished was just eight seconds off the pace.
We had a crummy poker hand, too. But, I was told, the festivities on the water carried on well after nightfall.
That’s what the Poker Run is all about anyway, isn’t it? Just a complicated excuse to party on the lake.