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!