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.