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.