Cruising around Newport

I love the change of season... it's why I live in New England... but looking outside at almost 2' of snow, having left the FL keys 2 weeks ago, and having to wait another 2 weeks to go back, i'm getting a little jittery... I NEED TO GO SAILING!!! Here's a few videos that i'm hoping will get me through, maybe it'll help you get through winter too.

Onboard during the Steeplechase

New England 100 video

Taken while doing RC for the New England 100

KL Steeplechase Day 2

For the third year in a row the Key Largo Steeplechase provided ideal conditions. Temperatures in the high 70's low 80's both days and 10-20 knots all weekend, I knew there was a reason we made this journey down there every winter!

The day 2 start from Anne's Beach on the South end of Lower Matecumbe Key is always interesting. For starters your sailing for about a mile in water that is 6" to 3' deep. Once you reach Channel 5 you put your rudders down, turn, and sail under the bridge into the backside of the Keys, entering the Everglades. The goal is to go as fast as possible with your rudders barely in the water and be first to the bridge, there is a lot of force on the helm at these speeds with the rudders up makes it quite the task to hold onto the tiller.
The Lemans start off the beach is fast because you can't push your boat too long without getting sucked into the sandy bottom. From there usually the options are hug the "channel" (the parentheses because you still can't put your rudders down) near shore or heat it up and go fast over the shallows.
We got off and put our spinnaker up and were ripping along with the lead boats. Trying to hold onto the helm and keep the boat going fast it's tough to pay attention to much else. We were sailing along with the spinnaker up on the hotter route over a foot or so of water. There are the occasional crabpots and I thought we were going to make it above one until we got a puff, forcing us to bear off but I noticed a line trailing off the buoy and bore off a little too hard throwing mysellf over the side of the boat in the process! I had the mainsheet in my hand but somehow it got wrapped around my ankle, dragging me at 10 knots (painful!). Brendon managed to grab the helm, slow us down, and keep us upright. I got the mainsheet off my ankle, grabbed it and pulled my self back to the boat which was still moving at 5+ knots. With Brendon's help I got back on the boat and we got back in the hunt, we didn't even have to drop the spinnaker!
We got into Channel 5 put our rudders down and gybed. We sailed past Randy Smyth who's crazy homemade trimaran had crashed but there were already two 2 other boats helping him so we continued on. Apparently his 2 amas scissored the wrong way and led to him crashing.
We got the to bridge, dropped our chute and tight reached to the first channel at about 15 knots. Reeling in the boats ahead of us was a blast, the infusion reaches great, especially with 385 lbs on the wire and a beast sawing the mainsheet!
When we got the the channel it became an upwind sail. Continuing on we clawed at the boats in front of us, eventually reaching a Nacra 20 Team Royal White. Unable to pass them for quite some time we nipped on their heels for over an hour. Finally we caught our break when a sandbar came up. They slowed down but we made the decision to go as fast as possible so Brendon ran in, pulled the boards, and I stayed on the wire sailing across the shallow covered sandbar with the rudders barely touching the water at almost 10 knots. As soon as the water was deep again we put the rudders down and we were in front of them sailing at full speed again.
Soon the wind lightened up a bit and they got in front of us again. This little battle pushed both of us and we eventually caught up to and almost passed Team Accelerated Chaos. As the wind lightened more the 20 took off an our's and Chaos's F18s started to suffer.
Entering the second mangrove we got in a traffic jam with Chaos, and a Nacra 6.0, side by side the 3 of us took up the entire width of the mangrove. Carrying our spinnaker into the mangrove entrance, the momentum carried us past these boats and right behind Royal White again.
Leaving the last mangrove we got caught up in some motor boat wake which contained tons of kicked up weeds. This, combined with flukey winds gave the couple boats we had caught an opportunity to open a gap and with just a few miles left we knew it would be hard to catch them again.
Entering the last mangrove we noticed 2 other boats catching up to us. Knowing we had our work cut out for us, when the wind died, Brendon grabbed the paddle and started stroking! It was dissapointing to see the 2 boats come around the last corner of the mangrove, bringing in the new wind with them and getting within a couple hundred feet of us. Leaving the last mangrove with this small lead we made the final mile long sprint to the finish line. Taking too long to make the decision on which way to go, we watched the 2 boats the had been almost a mile behind us all day caught a huge lift, sailed inside us, and beat us too the finish. There wasn't much we could do but it was alright as we still had both of them overall.
With a series of small mistakes and some misfortunes on day 2 we got pushed back to 6th overall, a result we are pretty happy with. In our last 3 years of the race we have gone from 18th to 11th to 6th... a pretty steady improvement! AND the best part of all... in past years we have ran aground 3-4 times each year, this year we didn't run aground at all! We need to thank Karl "hot karl" Langfield for this as he provided us with great GPS coordinates since our GPS broke earlier this summer. "The Hot Karl" is a little inside joke you will hear us mention in the video attached below.


Our attending this regatta may not have been possible had it not been for our gracious hosts Chip and Barb Short. Also, the Sonneklars for allowing us to park our Suburban at their house until Tradewinds. The catsailing community is such an amazing family... thank you so much to everyone for all the support!

Finally.. stay tuned for more video in the coming week or so.

New Ronstan trapeze shoes

Below is a short video clip on the new Ronstan ultralight trapeze shoe. This shoe is PERFECT for cat sailing or any other trapeze boat. Upon putting the shoes on I noticed how incredibly light they are, I almost forgot I was wearing shoes!
These shoes feature a sole with spiderweb like grip that is the grippiest sailing shoe I have found. A velcro strap across the top of the foot and a neoprene big toe separation inside the shoe snugs up the fit and eliminates any slop.
The lightweight and flexible construction allows great contact with the boat.
You'll hear me say in the video that the cuffs are "almost high enough"... prior to use I thought that the cuffs were too short and would leave a gap between my wetsuit and the shoes allowing sunburn. After sailing in the sunny Florida Keys for two days I didn't have a problem and all my skin stayed covered.
While the front top 1/4 of the shoe is covered in a thick rubber for protection, these shoes are likely limited to trapping or light hiking.
Amazingly, you can purchase these shoes for only $40!
Also note... While I say in the video some stuff Ronstan has provided us, I failed to mention the Ronstan Racing Trap Harness that is our favorite harness for buoys racing, we absolutely love it, it provides great support, especially when lying flat. In distance racing however, we do a lot more sitting up and as you may notice we are not wearing the Ronstan harness in this video.

KL Steeplechase Day 1

*Typed this initially really quickly Saturday night, i've made a couple edits.
Day 1 of the 2009 Key Largo Steeplechase tarted out high teens, puffs of just over 20 maybe.
From the start we were tight double trapped reaching to the Card Sound bridge, ripping along at 20-25 knots. We even got a great show of an F16 pitchpoling in front of us.
We were running even with the top first couple boats when Brendon's trapeze adjuster let go and he hit the water, swinging back into me and sending us both trailing off the stern. We managed to climb back on without capsizing but still this let a couple boats get by. We climbed our way back into the lead pack and turned upwind with them after the bridge.
Going through card sound we were chasing the leaders who decided to sail past Angelfish Creek, the mangrove exit to the ocean! Normally this wouldn't be our plan but it was the leader's 15th time doing the race, we figured they knew where they were going! Our gps was telling us we were going the wrong way but we convinced ourselves we were fine... soon after the leaders make a quick U-Turn and we realized we had sailed past Angelfish Creek. We got back to the creek and only a few boats who had not made this mistake had beaten us.
We entered the ocean and jib reached for a while in 12-15 with puffs a bit higher, averaging speeds in the mid to high teens. After not too long we got the spinnaker up and that picked us up a few knots but the occasional bow stuffing was pretty pretty pretty hairy. We were pushing it really hard which allowed for big gains! Immediately after putting the chute up we passed the Dave Ingram who didn't follow suit right away, probably to see if we could carry it, a question we were wondering ourselves. One of the stuffs was so hard that the spectra chicken line holding Brendon from flying forward snapped and his stainless steel trapeze ring bent! We took it easy for a a few minutes as we sorted out a new chicken line with some spare spectra and soon got back to pushing it just as hard. Soon the wind died down a bit so that it wasn't quite as hairy and we were able to push fast forward without any stuffing.
We managed not to flip but saw plenty of other boats do so.
We made our final jibe into the beach and ended up 5th overall, 4th on corrected, 2nd in class to the beach about 10 minutes behind the leaders. Chris Titcomb and Tripp Burd on Accelerated Chaos and our double stack partners for this journey finished about 5 minutes ahead of us and corrected out to first overall after Day 1.

FL Keys here we come! again...

Wednesday the boat will once again travel down a very familiar stretch of I-95. We've made this venture nearly every year for the last 6 years.
The 2 big regattas in Flordia during the winter are the Key Large Steeplechase and the Tradewinds.
The Steeplechase is a 2 day 110+ mile drag race around the 3 Northern Keys of Key largo, Islamorada, and Mattecumbe. Check out the picture below to see the course. The race goes North from marker "C" which is the Carribean Club in Key Largo to Anglefish Creek then out to the ocean for a 60 mile run south to Anne's beach at the South end of Mattecumbe. Day 2 we leave Anne's beach and go under the Channel 5 Bridge (part of the overseas highway to Key West) and venture through the southern Everglade National Park, through narrow channels, mangroves, over sandbars, and whatever else this amazing place can throw at us. The best part is because of all the weather down there, it changes every year! We manage to find the bottom every year and last year only ran aground 3 times! Hopefully we can improve on that this year :)

Below is a picture of us sailing a practice day before the 2007 Steeplechase through the widest and last mangrove of the course. Sailing through these narrow cuts can be tricky as the water can be complete glass and without any notice you can be hit by a 15-20 knot puff and if your not on your toes you can end up sailing into or capsizing into the brush that is VERY close to you on each side. If this happens all you can do is hope you don't see any crocs!

The second regatta, Tradewinds is basically a giant midwinters for all types of catamarans. This year is the first year it will be 3 days, usually one day gets blown out (as it will blow 30-40) but luckily if that happens, your in the keys and a nice cold drink will make you forget about racing real quick.
We also plan to take part in a 2 day training clinic ran by Robbie Daniels prior to the regatta this year. 5 days of intense sailing in the Florida Keys!
All of this could not happen without the generosity of many fellow catamaran sailor. Barb & Chip Short are graciously putting us up for most of our time down there! In this economy, this trip would not be possible this year if we had to pay for hotels. Mike Ferrara is loaning us his Suburban to leave down there in between races, the Sonneklars are allowing us to keep the Suburban at their house between events, and Brian Paine is housing us for a nite on the trip down!
Catamaran sailors really are one big happy family... I can't express enough gratitude towards everyone that has helped us out over the years! Thanks so much!

Interview during Tybee

Team Adrenalin Interview at on Jupiter Beach Tybee 500
Sorry to add this a little after the fact but once again, better late than never!
Mr. Clean from Sailing Anarchy interviews Angela, Brendon, and Todd after the shortest leg of Tybee, especially with the breeze we had this year!

It's a wrap!

Well our last regatta of our regular season was the Heineken High Performance Dinghy Open October 10-11th. It was a tough regatta with winds peaking out around 30 knots. Despite 2 capsizes, putting a trap hook hole in the main in one, we managed to hold it together enough to place 3rd overall. This 3rd place finish put us in 4th for the final season standings of the Narraganssett Beer F18 summer series.
We're very happy with our performance this season. We really think we took our sailing up a level. It took a lot practice and time in the boat but it paid off. Keeping the boat at Sail Newport, we most likely sailed the most out of any other F18 teams in our fleet. Help towards our improvement also came from all our awesome sponsors who provided us awesome gear to outfit our new boat and ourselves. Thanks again!
Our next event is the Key Largo Steeplechase December 12-13th. Tradewinds and the Tybee are still up in the air for financial reasons. We will be sure to keep this blog updated with our plans, which we hope to have sorted out soon.
Also stay tuned for some late regatta writeups that I have but haven't posted yet.

8th at Canadian Nationals

The above picture is from one of the starts. That is us reaching down closest to the camera. We found the only way we could get off the line was to start on our own, it seemed to work. The one time we tried to start in the middle of the fleet we found ourselves clawing back.
Below is a little writeup I did to summarize the Canadian F18 Nationals. Todd partnered up with John Harmuth for their first regatta together. Thursday's 2 practice races went well as we had one mediocre finish then won the 2nd. I've always heard that winning a practice race was bad luck but never read too much into it. I will in the future as on the first day of racing, while waiting around for the start, sloshing around in the waves, we both started to feel sick. We struggled through the first race than while sitting before the 2nd race started to feel even worse. Barely making it through the 2nd race we decided we were a danger to ourselves and others and sailed in, missing 2 races. A tough decision as we thought this would take us out of the regatta. Friday night we were in 28th place, we definitely thought we were out of the running. However, with 8 more races on Saturday and Sunday (Saturday in moderate to heavy conditions, and Sunday in very light conditions) we managed to string together a very consistent regatta with all 8 finished in the top 9. This was good enough to move us into 8th overall! We are very happy with this result but can't help but think where we would have been had we had our A game on on Friday.
The 2009 Canadian F18 Nationals took place last weekend in Toronto out of Etobicoke YC. With an initial entry list of around 25 boats the word spread and more entries poured in. It quickly became evident that this was going to be one of the largest fleets of F18s ever in North America. The final number was 37 boats, nearly doubling the fleet from last years regatta! Boats came from all over Canada and the U.S. and by the regatta end everyone was happy they did! The regatta organizers put on a top notch regatta with amazing food (literally half a chicken for each competitor for Friday’s dinner!), a live band, AND the weather cooperated for the whole weekend providing 3 days of excellent racing in all sorts of conditions.
Racing was close with many different boats mixing it up each day, especially in the top 15. Proving to have another gear than the rest of the fleet Team MicroWind, Mike Easton and Tripp Burd of Marblehead, MA put on a clinic, winning the event by 50 points!
Thanks again to EYC, the organizers, and competitors for such a great event! The New England Fleet (which has about 25 boats) is looking forward to the continued competition between us and the Canadians in several events next year.
This regatta is a great representation of the F18 class and it’s tremendous growth in the last year or two.
Photos courtesy of Rob Van Den Enden
Full results and more pictures can be found at: Cat-Alist.com

Summer of the F18

Taking delivery of a new boat gave us no time to rest after Tybee. Todd spent all his free time working on the boat at Sail Newport, tweaking little things, tuning, changing lines and etc. Boat work on these racing machines seems never ending. In order to keep everything running smoothly to be competitive and not break anything, boat work is imperative.
After a couple shakedown sails our first regatta was the Sakonnet Challenge. 12 F18 catamarans showed up to this event, the best turnout of a single class in several years in our area. After a strong day 1, and a bullet in the last race of the day, we were in second place. Flukey conditions on day 2 got the better of us pushing us back to third for the regatta. All in all not a bad finish for our first outing on the new boat. Mike Ferrara was pretty happy with the new boat, pronouncing on the beach "My name is Mike, and this is my little boat!"
Our second regatta was the Hampton Beach Regatta where 11 F18s showed up. Todd invited 2nd time cat sailor Andrew Vachon to crew for him. The last time we sailed together was Sakonnet Challenge two years earlier on the N20 and we sailed very well. Once again, we proved to be a fast pair rattling off three 2nd places, a 3rd and a 5th. We even managed to lead speed demons Mike & Tripp around the course a couple of times only to have them get the better of us just before the finish. We woke up on the morning of day 2 to find nasty conditions (large waves, drizzle, and lots of breeze). Racing was quickly cancelled, leaving Saturday's scores final with us in 2nd overall. A couple of boats mustered up the courage to venture out through the large surf. We decided just to watch, it wasn't worth breaking anything! Sure enough they got through the surf, both broke their rudder casting retainer clip, one of them capsized then they sailed back in. We sure didn't miss much!

Team Accelerated Chaos launching at Hampton on Day 2

Regatta 3 was the Statue of Liberty Race. This is one of our favorite regattas of the year, this year marked Todd's 9th year in a row and Brendon's 3rd. We had some timing issues at the start and were late to the line. This left a line of boats for us to screw around with in order to get a clear lane. It was a screaming double trapped jib reach and we were faster than almost every boat we came up behind. By the end of the Navy Pier, John Sullivan on a tiger decided to make it hard for us and fended high and low, nothing wrong with a bit of friendly competition! Finally after several minutes of being slowed by John we got a big enough gust to surprise him and take him on the high side before he knew what had happened. From there we had a clear lane in the front of the main pack. We put some distance on the pack and caught some ground on the leaders only to lose and then gain again. Upon nearing Liberty Island we were in 2nd in the F18 fleet (out of 7) and about 5th overall. Just before the rounding mark the two Capricorns managed to get above us and roll us. After the rounding mark we went down the center of the river, more towards the Jersey side while the Capricorns blasted down the Brooklyn side. Under the Verazanno the situation was the same, both us and the Capricorns raising our spinnakers for a couple minutes to get through the lull the bridge/land was causing. The wind quickly forced us to douse and continue on a dreadfully wet double trapped jib reach. About halfway back between the bridge and the finish line we noticed the leeward board had slipped down but didn't think much of it as this had been okay on the 20. It wasn't too long before we heard a SNAP! and saw a yellowish white thing float up behind the back of the boat. We weren't sure if we had hit something or the board had snapped but decided just to keep going, figuring the board would break off flush with the hull. Well apparently carbon is a little tougher than we thought as 1/2 of a half of the board was still being dragged in the water. We were going so fast we thought "oh well, let's just figure it out when we get to the beach". We got back to the beach 2 hours and 14 minutes after the start, about 15 minutes after the first place boat (an F18). The two Capricorns managed to slip by us during our daggerboard ordeal and we had to settle for 4th in the F18 fleet. Our time was good enough to correct us out to 10th overall out of 41 boats.

Cha-CHING!!!

Regatta 4 was the Newport Regatta. Unfortunately Todd had to work on Day 1 and we missed an epic day (so most of the competitors thought, but really it's just typical Newport conditions). We joined the racing for day two and had a good day despite having really bad luck with dealing with mark roundings with the monohulls sharing the course. It's great seeing them out there, just not when your on the outside of them in an 8 boat pinwheel! I think the frustration is mutual. The RC ran 6 races on Saturday and only 3 on Sunday so we couldn't be contenders at all, it was fun acting as the spoilers though! It was great practice for us just to get on the water as this was Brendon's first buoys race on a cat.

1-2-3: Bob & Tripp, Sandra & Mark, Todd & Brendon

Next up for us is Hyannis Regatta and BBR. Look for an update after these events. It's really cool sailing in these events as we will get exposure to 3-400 other sailors from V15s to Lasers from 505s to 420s to PHRF boats! Stay tuned for more updates.

After 5 events Team Adrenalin sailing as Team Jaypro Sports for the summer stands in 2nd in the Narragansett Beer F18 Summer series. Team MicroWind has a strong lead with Team Bad Dad in third. Almost 25 teams have participated in the series so far!

Additional thanks!

We've acknowledged our sponsors, team members, and etc. Other people that deserve a great big thank you are our family's and friends. From our parents, grandparents, sisters, and brothers we saw tons of support from everyone! We can't thank all of you enough. Without you we never would have made it to where we are today in the sport of sailing or through the Tybee.
In addition, our friends the Novick and Maco families were gracious enough to make donations to our team. These donations are huge! We made sure to make an as accurate budget as possible pre-race but the expenses of doing this race just never end and can't always be predicted.
Thanks again to everyone!

Team Adrenalin videos on Sailing Anarchy

Team Adrenalin finish in Tybee Island, GA
Mr. Clean of Sailing Anarchy interviews Team Adrenalin

Tybee 500 and a long, long, long drive home

Our new boat!
The plan for after the Tybee was to drive to Pensacola to pick up our new boat then stay there for the night then drive back. As the week unfolded Brendan realized he had to be home for 8AM Tuesday morning. This meant staying overnight would not be an option.
Of course we had to celebrate in Tybee after finishing, somehow we didn't end up getting to bed until around 4AM. Luckily, we were smart enough to get the boat almost all set to go before we started celebrating. We woke up Saturday morning at 8:36 and ran to the awards ceremony. Here we found out the final standings. We placed 16th out of 24 overall and 10th of 17 in the Nacra 20 class. We are quite happy with this performance for our first Tybee, especially since our goal was simply to finish.
Afterwards, we made a few last minute preparations to the trailer and reorganized the truck a bit. We finally got on the road around 11:30 and drove straight to Pensacola through some nasty T-storms. Perhaps the worst part of this drive was the irony of it all, driving back to FL after having worked so hard to get out!
We arrived at Key Sailing and met up with the new owners of our 20 and handed over the reigns. This was a very sad moment for us as we loved that gray boat. Luckily the new owners are great guys and we are sure they will treat it well. The boat will be in New Orleans but will spend plenty of time in the Pensacola area being sailed.
Next we received our new boat, a 2009 Nacra F18 Infusion. Capt. Kirk Newkirk gave us a great deal on it! Despite being a major pain in the butt, he is a great guy.
From there we drove 3-4 hours into Alabama until we realized we were just too tired to go on. We pulled into a rest area and slept between some 18 wheelers for a few hours.
Once we woke up, we hit the road again, next stop was Trey Brown's house in Greenville, SC to pick up a couple trailer boxes. After that stop we had to stop at Trey's old house in Raleigh to pick up one more box!
With all the stops we ended up rolling into RI about 6:30AM after a solid 2.5 days in the car!
Nothing like sailing 500+ miles and then being cramped in a car for that long!
Upon arriving back to RI, Brendon dealt with some school stuff and then went racing on Swan 42 that night. I slept for a few hours and then passed on the chance to go racing with Brendan as I was too eager to rig the Infusion.
One important word of advice for anyone considering this long of a road trip is to have some company that you can goof around with. If you can't have fun then it's going to be one miserable trip! For all of those that don't understand what I mean... take a look at the following picture:

Team Moose-Burd sail 38 miles under jury rig!

As mentioned in my below post... Tyler Burd and Morgan Kellogg of Team Moose-Burd folded their mast about 38 miles from the finish. They set up a jury rig mast using their spinnaker pole and flew their spinnaker. They spoke of speeds of 6-10 knots. We waited on the beach for them for an hour or two and here are a few pictures of them pulling in.
Tyler later told me they ran aground on sandbar and the crashing waves got them really nervous. They lost the boom overboard during these waves.

We made it to Tybee Island!

Photo Courtesy of Sailing Anarchy's Meredith Block. This was about 250 feet before hitting the beach at Tybee Island.
Thursday morning in Daytona the Race Committee announced that the start from Fernandina Beach would be at 8AM. After a sleep deprived week this was a brutal announcement. However, once we found out the reasoning, wind decreasing later in the day on Saturday, we agreed it was for the best.
After an early finish in Fernandina we did some minor boat work to get the boat ready to sail to Tybee. The coast of Georgia is very desolate and there is almost no where to pull out if you break down. A few years ago a team broke down and had to overnight in a remote area of the GA coast and sail to civilization the next day.
We started off in about 3 knots of wind. The start was brutal for us, we had the poll position in the 2nd start but the surf was the biggest at this end. We pushed off with the spinnaker full thinking we would punch out. Suddenly a wave set came and pushed us back and back and back until we were almost back at the beach. We started paddling and got through the first waves only to be pushed back again by a 2nd set. It was really frustrating and it led to a poor position once we got out of the surf.
Almost immediately we were in GA, crossing the opening of the St. Mary's river, avoiding a large tugboat and commercial fishing boats. From there we saw an hour or two of light (3-6mph). The forecast was for the wind to die after 11AM, we were trying not to think about this, but we were doing the math in our heads... 114 miles divided by 3 is a long time! We were praying this wouldn't be the case... as 11AM neared there was no sign of the wind letting up, infact around 10:30 the wind picked up to about 12 and then continued to climb and settle in around 15 knots. This fresh breeze led us to a double trapezed tight spinnaker reach. For the most part the 80+ mile speedy spinnaker reach was uneventful, we went back and forth with around 5 boats that were around us about 10 miles off the GA coast. One of these boats was Team Moose-Burd who was there one minute and gone the next, we later found out that their mast folded in half. These guys sailed the rest of the race (38 miles) under jury rig finishing about 7 hours after us.
This leg featured the least amount of sea life of the whole race. We saw a few dolphins about 2 feet off our bow early in the leg but that encounter that really shook us up was later on when we were sailing at 16knots, double trapezed with the spinnaker up and looked down to see a 8 foot hammerhead shark right below us! We both looked at each other and exchanged some words not to be repeated on here. We figure the shark was only about 6-8 inches from our daggerboard. After this sighting we decided we were going to try REALLY hard not to capsize and have a closer encounter with this guy or any of his friends.
As we neared Tybee we had to drop the spinnaker and jib reach for a bit. Within a few miles of the finish we raised the spinnaker which took us most of the way to the finish. There is a cool video of us finishing at:
Sailing Anarchy TV
The video of us is "Team Adrenalin Finish" it is the last of the Tybee videos.
It was great to pull up to the beach in Tybee and finish the Tybee 500 in our first attempt! The welcome was amazing with hundreds of onlookers and beachgoers. Tons of people came up to ask us about the race, we almost felt like celebrities. Apparently back in Daytona, one racer was asked for his autograph!
Making it to Tybee was made possible by all of our sponsors, family, and friends who supported us this year and all throughout our sailing careers. We know you will all continue to support us and we greatly appreciate that! Thanks again for everything!

Finally a finish in daylight!

Starting in Daytona was quite the adventure... very very light wind and pretty decent surf. Many teams had a hard time getting out of the surf. Luckily we got out in just a couple minutes, right behind the leaders. We got out of the surf, trimmed in and realized that our main halyard had come unhooked so we had to re-raise and lock our sail on the water.
Once we got going we were sailing at around 5-7 knots then the wind slowly started picking up and we went to single trapezed and eventually to double trapezed. We sailed the last 70 miles of the 99 mile leg double trapezed, fully powered up with the spinnaker up sailing at speeds of 11-16 knots. We were made up some ground sailing just outside of the surf line up the Florida coast for 40 miles or so until we came across the Jacksonville jetty. Unforunatley we were not aware of this obstacle and by the time we saw it were forced to sail straight upwind for 2-3 miles to go around it. During this time we lost a couple boats that we thought we had passed by sailing inshore. It was a dissapointment but we marked the end of the breakwater on our GPS for next year!
We saw TONS of wildlife today from Manta Rays, to turtles, to dolphins, and etc. It was very cool. The scenery on the shore was also neat... we saw lots of interesting architecture... leave it to FL.
We pulled into the beach at around 6PM in 13th place... tying for our best finish yet. Luckily the best part about being 13th is it means we will be the furthest left in the second row of the start tomorrow.. much better than being last in the first row.
We will need any advantage we can get as it is going to be a long sail to Tybee Island tomorrow. The mielage is around 107. If we break down there is pretty much no where to pull out, a couple years ago some guys had to overnight on the desolate GA coast. We look forward to getting to Tybee in one piece and completing our first Tybee 500!
Hope to see you at Tybee Island!

Another night finish!

Photo from after the start in Jupiter... Taken by Walter Cooper Photography (waltercooperphoto.com)
Sorry for the late post... we got in, went for dinner and passed out. I woke up and have a slight boost of energy... just enough to write this.t Leg 4, Cocoa Beach to Daytona Beach started off with a light and tight spinnaker reach off the beach. The breeze was just too light for several teams to power through the surf. It took a few attempts from many teams, including us to punch through. Once through it was a short spinnaker reach then a close hauled beat up to the first Cape Canaveral restriction buoy. Several teams were confused by a second set of buoys further in and failed to honor the ones mentioned in the Sailing Instructions. We had done our homework and sailed to the further set... those teams will likely be suffering a strict penalty. After rounding the buoy it was a great spinnaker reach for another 30 minutes to an hour until the wind started to die. Despite boat speeds 10-11mph of Between the dying wind, large waves, and wind angle, we were struggling to make just a couple of miles per hour towards Daytona which was straight downwind. It was looking like at the time that we might not make it in until past midnight again. Luckily we finally started making some progress and sailed the last 40-50 miles at 10-13 mph. We sailed into the surfline, timing the breaking waves perfectly this time and coming to a stop around 8:10.
We had a great dinner at Ruby Tuesdays h here Frank Moore of Team Seacats bought us and Team Moose-Burd a round of beers. Thanks Frank!
Tomorrow's forecast is for Southeast 10-15.. it'd be nice if it was actually at the higher end of that this time for more than 30 minutes!

Off to Daytona!

After just 4.5 hours of sleep we are up and getting ready to head off to Daytona. Todays forecast is 10-15 from the East. We will be rounding Cape Canaveral today and getting 9-15 miles offshore when we do so. After that we will take a hitch back in and follow the shore til Daytona. We hope there is a bit more wind today! The last boat got in around 4AM last night. Stayed tuned for another update tonight.

Finally in Cocoa!

After around 15 hours on the water we arrived in Cocoa.... We started off with a strong 15 knot jib reach that only lasted about 30 minutes. That died and we decided to jibe in to play the shore, at the time we were right with the lead boats and the boats that won the day. Those boats continued out and went a rumored 12 miles off shore to take advantage of the nearby gulfstream current. This is just reported but it seems really probable. The F18s that took advantage of this were first and second to the beach, beating the first Nacra 20 by 2 hours.
We had a really slow day, almost stopped at time in 3-4 foot chop. We managed to entertain ourselves and the company of dolphins and turtles made it that much better.3
As dusk set in we separated from the last boat we were near (Royal White) and tried to take an inventory of the boats around us. Immediately as it got dark we lost sight of all the boats around us but one (Team Chums). We eventually lost sight of him as well. We sailed for another hour or two until we came across Tad of Team Velocity with a split spinnaker that was holding on by the tapes, as I write this he is still not in.
As we got 6 miles from the finish we were hugging coast, we were surprised no other boats were near us until we turned around to see 3 boats 200 feet behind us. We had to hold them off sailing at 2.5-4 knots... as we got within 2 miles of the finish the moon finally came out from behind the clouds and we noticed there were not just 3 boats behind us but 5. We entered the surf and we let out a sigh of relief... that was until we heard "watch out for the wave" and turned around to find a really steep 5 foot wave chasing us down, our spinnaker was still up and the wave turned us sideways nearly taking out the race committee and several others. Luckily our awesome ground crew and friends grabbed us to take the boat under control and get it out of the surf. We were welcome by BBQ pizza and cold Coronas which we had requested in a bored phone call about 6 hours earlier.
It was a LONG day but we ended up 15th or 16th, not too bad. It was mostly REALLY light averaging 2-7 knots but there was some time we were trapezed or double trapezed reaching speeds of 10-14 knots. It was truly amazing to finish within minutes of 10 boats after 102 miles and 15 hours of sailing. Time for us to sign out.... we need to wake up in 4 hours and do this again!

102 miles to Cocoa

Today we have the 2nd longest leg of the race, from Jupiter to Cocoa Beach, as the crow flies is 102 miles.  Last year teams sailed around 130 miles and didn't get to the beach until after 10PM.... luckily the forecast is not looking to put us in the situation today.  The forecast is for East wind 5-10 increasing to 10-15.  This would mean a beam reach which would be very fast if the wind is up.  We shall see, I don't want to make any premature predictions like I did yesterday!  Well it's time to head down to the boat, we have to drive to the starting area as the beach just outside the hotel is not suitable and we have to be sure to avoid the turtle nests that liter the beach.  Stay tuned for more updates from Cocoa if we are still functioning.

A few pictures courtesy of SA

Sorry for the short post earlier... we had to high tail it to Craig Van Eaton's annual Gumbo party.  Craig supplied tons of beverages and of course excellent Gumbo for all the Tybee competitors who packed his ocean side condo.  Here are a couple pictures from the Sailing Anarchy coverage:

Team Seacats (foreground) and our sail (background):

Our sail through the palm trees:

Us after the start battling it out with a few other teams:

We made it to Jupiter!

Sorry for the premature post earlier.... the wind actually filled about 30 minutes before the start.  We started off going around 7-8mph with the spinnaker up, gybing back and forth.  Soon we were single trapezed and later double trapezed.  While we were double trapezed we were reaching speeds of 15-19mph.  The wind eventually clocked around enough that we were single trapezing at 20+mph (top speed 22.5) pretty much straight down the shore!  This continued until the finish.  It is really cool out there with 24 boats, we were able to see 15 others boats or so all the time.  It makes it really tough when you need to eat, drink, or do anything other than sail fast because you are constantly try to pass someone else and fend off those trying to pass you.  We were the 13th boat to the beach, this was partially because of a couple boats breaking down, but that's all part of the Tybee!  Hopefully our hard work to get the boat prepped for this race keeps paying off!

We were also interviewed by Sailing Anarchy today after getting off the water. I'd guess it'd be on their On The Water Tybee coverage later on... check it out... SailingAnarchy.com

Uhhh... this is going to be a long day!

This is the view from our room of the Hollywood Beach Marriott at 7:30AM.  It looks like it is going to be a long day!  The forecast is calling for 5-10Knots from the Southeast... not too promising, a 20% chance of thunderstorms could make it interesting though.  An area of high pressure moving into the area is certainly not going to help the rest of this week.   We are remaining optimistic as yesterdays actual wind was a bit more than the forecast.  Also, we only have 60 something miles to go today.  Jupiter here we come!  

We're in Hollywood!

We are in the middle (grey boat, we are wearing red) in this picture taken right after the start.  We got held up behind a crowded group at the boat that resulted in a t-bone.  It resulted in a rough first 30 minutes or so trying to fight for a clear lane.

First off we're in Hollywood, FL... we aren't quite rockstars yet.  

We sailed around 90 miles today starting just after 10 am with a light upwind beat with speeds of 6-8mph.  Soon into the race some F-18s were able to put up their spinnaker on a tight reach. Unforuntatley, the 20's spinnaker cannot be carried as high.  It was quite frustrating watching them sail quicker because of this.  We tried to put it up but it forced us to bear off way too much so we dropped it.  A couple hours in the wind clocked around just enough that we were able to put the chute back up and start sailing a double trapezed reach.  A double trapped reach in flat water is really a distance racers dream, however it kept taking us in toward the shallows so we had to drop it and head upwind away from shore a few times.  Only a few hours in we saw our first turtle (we saw 2 or 3 total)... they really blend into the water well!  Over the course of the day we sailed by many shallow spots, luckily our new GPS held up perfect and showed all of them to us, we didn't even have any  close  calls (feels good after running aground several times in the Steeplechase). 

The wind lightened up a bit entering Key Biscayne so we took turns being alone on the wire.  That didn't last long and we were double trapezed again reaching up the beaches of Miami at speeds of 16-21mph.   We got lucky enough to see some other sealife but we aren't quite sure what one of them was as it dove under the water once we got closer.

About 85 miles in we spotted the finish and were reaching REALLY fast, double trapezed, towards the shore.  We got close to shore a little too soon and had to drop the chute for a few minutes but raised it again to try to slip by Pirates of the Chesepeake who was right ahead of us.  We were flying in on starboard tack but in order to avoid uneccesary risks chose to take their stern and give them some room before we finished.  We then gybed and screamed into the beach, dropping the spinnaker about 20 feet off of it and running the boat up on the sand.  All and all we are really happy with our performance.  We didn't stick around to see how many boats we finished ahead of but we think it was 6-8.  We can't forget that there is a LONG way to go and anything could happen.  We are psyched for tomorrow, it's actually a "short" leg coming in at just over 60 miles!

Final note: Our Spot locater beacon turned off at some point early on.  We apologize for that and will try to make sure it stays on tomorrow.

2 hours until the 2009 Tybee starts!

We have 2 hours left until the start.  Today we will be sailing from Islamorada, FL to Hollywood Beach, FL, just over 90 miles.   The forecast is calling for 10 out of the Southeast but possibly switching to the west as we near Hollywood.  Looking outside at the palm trees swaying, I would say we already have 10, maybe more.  I hope this stays up or it could be a long long day!  Sorry I don't have any more pictures, we've been busy the last 3 days mostly doing boat work but we did manage to sail for a few hours each day to get our boat and ourselves dialed in to handle the next 546 miles.  The boat is rigged and all we have to do is get dressed and go, pretty good feeling!  I can finally say that we are actually 100% prepared.  All our efforts over the last 6 months are finally about to pay off!  Thanks again to family, friends, sponsors, and etc for all the support you have shown over this time.  

Stayed tuned for more updates... maybe tonight if I can muster up the energy.

1 Day until the start of the 09 Tybee 500!

Team Adrenalin is in Islamorada, FL making final preparations for the 2009 Tybee 500. Today we will finish up minor boat work, do our safety check, and get some more time on the water to be 110% fully prepared for what the next 560+ miles will throw at us.

Getting here was pretty much a logistical nightmare, despite starting planning 6 months ago, it seems as if there is always something else that has been overlooked!  My friends and family are all happy that it’s finally race time because they are sick of hearing me talk about it and quite frankly so am I!

It's been in the mid to high 80's here every day since we've been here.  The air is humid and there hasn't been all that much breeze so boat work has been brutal.  Between the sun and the heat it really sucks up your energy!  We sailed for the first time yesterday in the most incredible water ever!  The water is like bath water, it literally was almost too hot to stand in the shallows.  Once we got out past the shallows (which go out really far!) we found ourselves double trapezing in turquoise water which you could always see the bottom even when it was 50 feet deep!

Our boat is pretty much set to go.  With all the awesome gear donated by our sponsors the boat is really tricked out.  We only have a few final minor tweaks to do such as finalizing our chicken line set up and etc.

The scene down here is really great.  Pretty much all the boats are here and most teams are in final preparations.  Last night, Team Seacats hosted a Cruzan Rum party which certainly didn't aid in our waking up early this morning! It was a great night though, the vibe among the sailors, ground crews, and friends is incredible, I suppose it should be in such a beautiful setting.  This was the last time we are drinking until we reach Tybee Island though, this is definitely not a race to take lightly and we are not.

Well its time to get over to the boat but stay tuned for more updates today and the next several days!

On the road tomorrow!

We are off tomorrow morning to head down to FL for the Tybee 500. The plan is to be there midday Thursday and in Islamorada for Thursday night. Unfortunatley school is getting in the way for Brendon, he will be flying down Saturday morning. Todd will be picking up team manager Bret Sullivan in NJ and the two will be driving down from there. Sometime Thursday we will be picking up our other road crew, Angela, the coolest chick ever!
We have been busy practicing up in Newport, RI for the last month. Barry Moore was gracious enough to loan us his boat as ours is in South Florida in the enclosed trailer. Despite 40 degree water, we got some great practice days in. Almost everyday was 15-25 knots, perfect practice!We managed to only capsize once and of course we chose our first day which was by far the coldest. Maybe if we pretend the water during the Tybee is only 40 degrees we will make sure we stay upright! In all fairness though, as I write this the water temps in Newport are a toasty 48 degrees so we did get spoiled a bit towards the end haha. Team Moose-Burd also joined us for our last week of practice, those guys are looking good and with that big dumb animal in control of the front of the boat you can be sure they will be pushing it to the limit.
Stay tuned for an update at the end of the week from Islamorada!
The above picture was taken by the friendly Race Committee of the local Laser frostbite fleet on April 5th.

Unofficial Tybee 500 Teaser

With the 2009 Tybee less then a week away what a better way to get excited than with a little video action.
A little something I put together using footage I took soon after the start of last years race.

Sponsor Spotlight: Kinder Industries

Team Adrenalin is purchasing a Nacra F18 infusion the day after Tybee.
In order to keep it nice and clean on the drive back from Pensacola (where we are picking it up) we purchased some hull socks from Kinder. 3 other guys from the Northeast also purchased them and Kinder set us up with a great deal! I picked the covers up today and they are sweet! Really well built! If you need anything for your boat I highly reccomend these guys... they have the pattern for almost any boat out there or can get it.

New Sponsors: Glowfast Marine & Bluestorm

Glowfast Marine:
It's been a concern of mine for some quite time that we will be sailing the Tybee with a black spinnaker and if we end up sailing in the dark how that would play out. I was wondering "how will people see us?" "how will we see our spinnaker?" we will most likely be too tired to hold the flashlight on the spinnaker. I tried going to local sailmakers here in RI but no one had anything that would work well enough.
A great solution came across when Glowfast Marine was featured on the main page of Sailing Anarchy. Glowfast's glow in the dark sailtape was featured as draft marks and chevrons on a bigger boat. I immediately called Jason at Glowfast and he agreed to send me a 10 meter sample. There is a cool history that is tied to A-Cup stuff on their website (click logo at right for link). In addition this stuff glows for 20 hours after just 10 minutes of light exposure! I tried it out in some dark rooms and it was really neat.We stuck the chevrons on the other day and they look really cool... I just hope we don't actually have to find out how well it really works! I'll be sure to let you all know how it goes if we do.
Bluestorm:
In order to compete in the Tybee, a USCG approved lifejacket is required. I got rid of my last one a couple years ago when I switched to using CE approved buoyoncy aids. When I saw this in the sailing instructions I wondered what I was going to do as the USCG approved ones were usually so bulky and obnoxious to wear. Luckily I found Bluestorm! I went up to their warehouse which is housed in Massachussets based MTI, s msrine technology company that offers gear to paddlers, fishermen and etc. Bluestorm is their new line to cater primarily to sailors. When the amazingly friendly and sailing experienced staff at Bluestorm brought out their products and let me try them on I was psyched! The Spray lifejacket was the most comfortable USCG approved lifejacket i've ever tried on! In addition, all the rest of their gear spraytops, infltable PFDs, jackets, and etc was all spot on... these guys know how to design a great product! Check out their website by clicking the logo at the right.

Day 2 Steeplechase.. FINALLY!!

So it’s May and we are about to leave for Tybee and I still have not posted the day 2 story from the Steeplechase. To be honest, I wanted to wait until right before the sailing season started to give everyone something to get pumped up over! Haha That’s my best excuse and I’m sticking with it!
Day two of the 2008 Steeplechase was almost identical to day two of the 2007 race (and I’m assuming many others) the start was a downwind run off the beach to the channel 5 bridge where it was became an upwind beat in 15-20 with some nice jib reaching towards the end. For all of you that haven’t done this race, day 2 is the most challenging part of the race, it’s a journey through the southern Everglades National Park. The leg consists of sailing through narrow channels, over sandbars, through tiny cuts and mangroves, in between all that there is some great flat water sailing but unless you’ve done the race a lot of times (we haven’t) there are still plenty of shallow spots to discover (we found out the hard way).
We sailed the leg pretty similar to last year. The main difference was that we had a new jib that wasn’t so blown out that we had to foot off 5-10 degrees below our competitors. This made a huge difference in keeping us ahead of the boats we got ahead of at the start and passed through other opportunities, usually when they run aground! However, when a boat ahead of you runs aground you usually take precautions not to do the same. As we ran aground 3 times we lost a couple boat including Team Davis Island who we had been battling with pretty much all weekend. They sailed by us as we attempted to navigate through a NARROW channel, ran aground, and backed the boat up almost taking out a channel marker piling in the process. Luckily all of the bottom we hit was soft sand and we didn’t do any damage!
The final few mangroves and bays saw the strongest wind of the weekend reaching almost 20 knots. Even cooler, the third to last bay was a very quick jib reach in which our self tacker track decided to explode (not the cool part). Brendon quickly hopped off the wire in an attempt to tame the flogging jib but it was impossible and the boat shook violently as we reached across the bay at around 23 knots towards the next mangrove. We were able to jury rig the jib in the mangrove and were set for the final few miles mostly upwind sailing but we did get to pop the spinnaker in one of them and gained a bit on the boats ahead. Spinnaker sailing in the mangroves is always a bit sketch as you can’t see the wind coming and you run out of ground FAST if you have to bear off. We later found out or buddy Jim Zelmer from Vermont capsized in one of the last mangroves while doing the same. They got stuck in the brush on the side for quite a while apparently… poor Jim.
We finished up 11th of 21 overall but very close in time to the 4 Nacra 20s ahead of us and we can account for that time in silly mistakes. We felt good about how we sailed and it got us very excited for Tybee!! Bring it!
It’s hard to chose which is more fun, a 50 mile spinnaker run down the ocean side of the keys on day 1 or an obstacle course inside the keys on day 2. Either way, this race is incredibly fun and totally worth all the effort of traveling 1,500 miles to get there. If you are on the fence… just do it… you won’t regret it. I’d say this is my favorite race of the year.

New Sponsors: Kinder Industries & PLBrentals.com & Holmenkol

We are happy to welcome on board the addition of two new sponsors.

Kinder Industries located in Bristol, RI made us a beautiful mast bag for our Nacra 20. These guys are really professional, I simply took some measurements off a mast and gave them to them and they made up a product that works even better than I expected! The quality material they use will be really helpful to protect our carbon mast for the 5 months that it sits on top of a trailer in Southern Florida. If you need covers or anything I would highly reccomend these guys. Click on the logo to the right for their link. Thanks to everyone at Kinder!

PLBrentals.com has graciously donated two PLB's for our use for the Tybee 500. This will be really helpful as this will save us $120 that we can now spend on other much needed gear. The guys at PLBrentals.com are really helpful and really supportive. If your looking to rental PLBs, Epirbs, or etc definitely check out their site by clicking their logo to the right. Thank you PLBrentals.com!

Holmenkol has sent us three of their products Seal N Glide, AquaSpeed, and Sport Polish. The Seal N Glide will help improve our spinnaker snuffing while not allowing the sail to absorb water. We have used this stuff before and it is really slick! The AquaSpeed and Sport Polish will make our hulls really nice and slick to give us the couple knots of extra boatspeed which will really add up over 500 miles!
In addition, these guys set us up with the Care Fleece for applying these products and made sure we were 100% clear on how to apply them! Thanks to everyone at Holmenkol!

Steeplechase 2008 Day 1

We woke up early Saturday morning to find a forecast of 20-30knots. This is quite breezy for any sailboats, especially Nacra 20 catamarans that start to become overpowered in 15 knots! There was no way were backing out as we knew this would be great practice for the Tybee 500. After a quick breakfast we headed to the beach for 7AM to do last minute boat work and rig the boat. We were ready to push off the beach by 8:30 just as the last few boats pushed off. The wind was now blowing 20-25Knots and we had to sail straight upwind to the starting area. Soon after leaving the beach, we noticed fellow New Englander, Team Accelerated Chaos, capsized. Confused, we sailed by and noticed Trevor was ¾ of the way up the mainsail fixing a batten. They waved us off, but we heard some interested stories later on the series of events that led to their intentional capsize.
Once we got to the start it was only blowing about 18 knots. The line was heavily boat favored and the fleet was grouped up there. We managed to sneak in underneath all these boats, staying out of their traffic jam and in our own hole. We had to do quite a bit of protecting of this hole but ended up starting with good speed right below the main pack and punching out fairly well. Only the Tornado, Marstrom 20s, and a couple others managed to get off the line ahead of us.
From there it was an upwind beat, double trapezing through the bridge. On our way to the bridge we were doing well, having crossed many boats until we decided to sail conservative up the middle and the boats on the left made gains on us.
We came up to the bridge only to have to bear off to avoid the big wooden structure in the middle (not sure what it’s called) when all the sudden we saw a fishing boat, but it was already too late, we bore off but still went very close to them! We heard some yelling and screaming from their boat but we just kept sailing. A couple minutes later we noticed we were going slow, I turned back and saw a weird pattern in our wake and realized we had taken the fisherman's line with us! Brendan hopped off the wire and spent several minutes pulling up rudders and daggerboards until he finally realized the only way we were getting rid of it was to cut it. Once that was clear he hopped back out only to have his trapeze adjuster line slip and in the water he went. We were really moving at this point and he had a hard time getting back on the boat while I tried not to let him knock me off the boat and not capsize. Once we got all settled from these 2 ordeals Mike Hill who had been right ahead of us was long gone and Karl Langfield had just passed us. We managed to get going again and sail out from under Karl much to his dismay and battled him back and forth until Anglefish Creek. Nearing the end of the channel Karl hoisted his spinnaker only to have it fouled, at the time it was quite entertaining and we decided to antagonize them a bit. We had decided ahead of time to hoist late as last year an early hoist forced us to bear off out of the channel right into the reef. Once time came for our hoist we discovered that our spinnaker was even more fouled than Karl’s and they let us know it! We ended up having to sail very slow while Brendan fixed it. During this time we watch Karl and other boats sail South away from us. This was very painful to watch. Once we finally got going we figure we wasted about 10 minutes and had to make that up. Spinnakers in the distance seemed small and we weren’t overly optimistic of catching them but we still had around 50 miles to do it!
We got going only to find our tack line was slipping in the Spinlock, forcing us to tie a stopper knot and knowing that the only way we were taking the spinnaker down was to cut the tack line. It was beautiful single trapped spinnaker reach all the way down to Anne’s beach. We managed to make some gains on several boats and ended up close behind Todd Hart on Team Cat Fever. We would jibe and cross his stern many times, everytime hoping we had gained but it wasn’t meant to be. Finally after a couple hours we had a navigation error and ended up sailing over a reef covered by only 6” of water. This was perfect opportunity for Todd to sail away from us. By the time we got sailing full speed again he was long gone! As we made the final approach to Anne’s Beach we were on a high reach, we tried to hold it with the spinnaker up for as long as possible but it ended up taking us away from the beach so we decided it was time to take the spinnaker down, now remember we had to cut the tackline so once it was down it was down for good! Brendan brought the spinnaker down onto the boat but dropped the knife with the blade open! Luckily the spinnaker managed to avoid the knife and was not torn.
The finish was much less eventful than last year as we were actually able to sail over the finish! Thanks to Rick was listening to everyone! Not to mention the fact that I was not severely dehydrated and almost unconscious this year thanks to my camelback.
Despite all our issues that cost us around 20 minutes we were only about that far behind the top few Nacra 20s so we were still in the chase and knew what we had to make up for day 2.

Stay tuned for Part 3 about day 2 of the race!

2008 Steeplechase - Getting there

Upon our arrival and opening of the trailer, Trevor getting really excited about riging!

Better late than never! I decided to write a detail story about this year's steeplechase and never got to finishing it until now. Stay tuned for Part 2 and 3

We were extremely excited about this year's Key Largo Steeplechase. Knowing we were more prepared than the previous year gave us the confidence to know we would actually be competitive this year rather than just trying to complete the race.

However, my excitment was soon halted when 6 hours before our flight I found out that the plane was already delayed, not because of bad weather in the Northeast, but because of snow in New Orleans! The airline informed me that we might not be able to make our connecting flight and all scenarios didn't place us in Key Largo until noon or later on Friday. With already a full day of boat work planned I knew this was going to be a huge problem.

Despite the grim situation, we decided to go to the airport and just go with the flow. Our flight was infact delayed 3 hours but this gave us plenty of time to run our tab (exactly what we didn't need to be doing!) up at the T.G.I. Fridays at the airport. During this time we were joined by many other delayed travelers including a local Newport Laser sailor we know. Many interesting topics can be brought up at an aiport bar, but my favorite was that this was truly a conspiracy by the airlines to meet a quota set by the bars in the terminal to sell alcoholic beverages.

Finally after the long delay we got on the plane to be greeted by 3 heavily intoxicated middle-aged mothers who insisted on not letting us catch any rest during the flight. Luckily, 21 people from our Providence to Orlando flight were connecting to our flight to Fort Lauderdale so they held the plane 2 and a half hours. Needless to say, the people that were sitting on the plane were not happy campers when we all got there. We were not bothered by this as we were just glad to be getting to Lauderdale that night!

Upon arriving in Lauderdale, a friend picked us up and arranged for us to stay at a mutual friend's house. Thanks to Jeff and Nick for this!

At 7AM, it seemed like we had just gone to bed (probably because we just had) when I got a text message from Chris Titcomb of Team Accelerated Chaos saying him and his crew, Trevor Burd, were on their way. We struggled of the couch and into the car to head down to Key Largo. On our way down, I cannot fail to mention our finding an Ihop and stopping for breakfast as no real trip can be complete without a huge breakfast!

After stuffing our stomachs, we finished our trip to Key Largo, picked up a fellow catamaran sailor's truck (Thanks Jack!) to move our box trailer from Tiki Watersports to the Carribean Club to start setting up our boats.

Our list of boat work for the day consisted of removing our existing self-tacker and replacing it with the current style, removing and replacing our tramp lacing slugs, putting new lines (courtesy of Paraloc Rope) and blocks (courtesy of Ronstan), and much more. Our boats were also completely disassembled in the trailer! We had to watch as everyone went sailing all day while our mast was not ready to go up until around 5PM. By 5:30 the sun had gone down and we no longer had any light to work on the boat and knew we would have to be up early in the morning to finish the work.

As always, registration and the skipper's meeting were held at 6PM at Rick White and Mary Well's house. After attending that, we went out to dinner then retired to the hotel from last minute GPS and chart review then much needed quality time with our pillows.