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.