Finished the 2010 Tybee 500!

Leg 6 from Fernadina to Tybee was a pretty rough one for us, we finished 10th for the leg but didn't get done what we needed to. We were running with the leaders well for the first 5-10 miles and ahead of Team Pepod, whom we needed to beat by around 15 minutes to move up in the standings. After the start we were just ahead of Team Pepod but realizing it would be hard to beat them by 15 minutes by drag racing them we made the bold decision to jibe in early, one of the first boats to do so. If you watch the tracking on Tybee500.com you will see what we realized 3 hours later as a pack of 5 or so boats including Pepod came into shore a few miles ahead of us, we jibed way too early. The wind was still light when we jibed and making terrible vmg towards shore put us back in the pack. The group that came in later waited for more breeze and had much better vmg on their way in. After jibing back and forth along the desolate Georgia coastline we found the angle we needed to sail to Tybee and held it for the last 40 miles. During this time we ground down Team Velocity 2 and gained on Pepod but couldn't quite catch them as they beat us by about 5 minutes in the leg.
The biggest pain during the day was 1) every time you jibed into shore your vmg was horrible and depressing to look at 2) in the murky brown GA water's we had our rudders kick up 6 times, we know that 2 times it was from jellyfish (amazing how loud the pop is as you make these guys explode sailing at 18 knots) but the other 4 we aren't so sure and it's pretty creepy not knowing what's down there! At the end of the leg we found a quarter size chip in the leading edge of our rudder blade. I'm just thankful for not getting the chance to mingle with a 12' Hammerhead again this year, we only saw a few smaller sharks this year.
All in all we are very happy with our performance at this year's Tybee. Us being there and finishing this race would not have been possible without Team Seacats... Frank, Jake, Tim, Chris, David, Robyn... thank you very much! You have all been so kind to us and we are proud to have been part of such a great team... the awesome team t-shirts that Jake made were worth it on their own! Also thanks to the team groundcrew's Tim, Chris T. and Bjorn for helping out our road crew Chris. B... it was amazing to have a full on NASCAR style pit crew waiting for us on the beach. it was There is no way we had the energy to do everything you did for us off the water. Chris B, thank you for stepping in as the all-star perfect ground crew, you did everything we asked and more making it possible for us to focus on sailing. There is no way we could have done half the things you did for us and still make it through this race, especially after the first 2 days.
I also have to thank everyone involved with this race whether it be RC, competitors, other ground crews, and so forth the camaraderie blows my mind each and every day.
I'll try to update this blog with some more stories from the week over the next few days, i'm a little bit fried right now after driving straight through to CT all night.