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.

FL Keys here we come! again...

Wednesday the boat will once again travel down a very familiar stretch of I-95. We've made this venture nearly every year for the last 6 years.
The 2 big regattas in Flordia during the winter are the Key Large Steeplechase and the Tradewinds.
The Steeplechase is a 2 day 110+ mile drag race around the 3 Northern Keys of Key largo, Islamorada, and Mattecumbe. Check out the picture below to see the course. The race goes North from marker "C" which is the Carribean Club in Key Largo to Anglefish Creek then out to the ocean for a 60 mile run south to Anne's beach at the South end of Mattecumbe. Day 2 we leave Anne's beach and go under the Channel 5 Bridge (part of the overseas highway to Key West) and venture through the southern Everglade National Park, through narrow channels, mangroves, over sandbars, and whatever else this amazing place can throw at us. The best part is because of all the weather down there, it changes every year! We manage to find the bottom every year and last year only ran aground 3 times! Hopefully we can improve on that this year :)

Below is a picture of us sailing a practice day before the 2007 Steeplechase through the widest and last mangrove of the course. Sailing through these narrow cuts can be tricky as the water can be complete glass and without any notice you can be hit by a 15-20 knot puff and if your not on your toes you can end up sailing into or capsizing into the brush that is VERY close to you on each side. If this happens all you can do is hope you don't see any crocs!

The second regatta, Tradewinds is basically a giant midwinters for all types of catamarans. This year is the first year it will be 3 days, usually one day gets blown out (as it will blow 30-40) but luckily if that happens, your in the keys and a nice cold drink will make you forget about racing real quick.
We also plan to take part in a 2 day training clinic ran by Robbie Daniels prior to the regatta this year. 5 days of intense sailing in the Florida Keys!
All of this could not happen without the generosity of many fellow catamaran sailor. Barb & Chip Short are graciously putting us up for most of our time down there! In this economy, this trip would not be possible this year if we had to pay for hotels. Mike Ferrara is loaning us his Suburban to leave down there in between races, the Sonneklars are allowing us to keep the Suburban at their house between events, and Brian Paine is housing us for a nite on the trip down!
Catamaran sailors really are one big happy family... I can't express enough gratitude towards everyone that has helped us out over the years! Thanks so much!

Interview during Tybee

Team Adrenalin Interview at on Jupiter Beach Tybee 500
Sorry to add this a little after the fact but once again, better late than never!
Mr. Clean from Sailing Anarchy interviews Angela, Brendon, and Todd after the shortest leg of Tybee, especially with the breeze we had this year!

It's a wrap!

Well our last regatta of our regular season was the Heineken High Performance Dinghy Open October 10-11th. It was a tough regatta with winds peaking out around 30 knots. Despite 2 capsizes, putting a trap hook hole in the main in one, we managed to hold it together enough to place 3rd overall. This 3rd place finish put us in 4th for the final season standings of the Narraganssett Beer F18 summer series.
We're very happy with our performance this season. We really think we took our sailing up a level. It took a lot practice and time in the boat but it paid off. Keeping the boat at Sail Newport, we most likely sailed the most out of any other F18 teams in our fleet. Help towards our improvement also came from all our awesome sponsors who provided us awesome gear to outfit our new boat and ourselves. Thanks again!
Our next event is the Key Largo Steeplechase December 12-13th. Tradewinds and the Tybee are still up in the air for financial reasons. We will be sure to keep this blog updated with our plans, which we hope to have sorted out soon.
Also stay tuned for some late regatta writeups that I have but haven't posted yet.

8th at Canadian Nationals

The above picture is from one of the starts. That is us reaching down closest to the camera. We found the only way we could get off the line was to start on our own, it seemed to work. The one time we tried to start in the middle of the fleet we found ourselves clawing back.
Below is a little writeup I did to summarize the Canadian F18 Nationals. Todd partnered up with John Harmuth for their first regatta together. Thursday's 2 practice races went well as we had one mediocre finish then won the 2nd. I've always heard that winning a practice race was bad luck but never read too much into it. I will in the future as on the first day of racing, while waiting around for the start, sloshing around in the waves, we both started to feel sick. We struggled through the first race than while sitting before the 2nd race started to feel even worse. Barely making it through the 2nd race we decided we were a danger to ourselves and others and sailed in, missing 2 races. A tough decision as we thought this would take us out of the regatta. Friday night we were in 28th place, we definitely thought we were out of the running. However, with 8 more races on Saturday and Sunday (Saturday in moderate to heavy conditions, and Sunday in very light conditions) we managed to string together a very consistent regatta with all 8 finished in the top 9. This was good enough to move us into 8th overall! We are very happy with this result but can't help but think where we would have been had we had our A game on on Friday.
The 2009 Canadian F18 Nationals took place last weekend in Toronto out of Etobicoke YC. With an initial entry list of around 25 boats the word spread and more entries poured in. It quickly became evident that this was going to be one of the largest fleets of F18s ever in North America. The final number was 37 boats, nearly doubling the fleet from last years regatta! Boats came from all over Canada and the U.S. and by the regatta end everyone was happy they did! The regatta organizers put on a top notch regatta with amazing food (literally half a chicken for each competitor for Friday’s dinner!), a live band, AND the weather cooperated for the whole weekend providing 3 days of excellent racing in all sorts of conditions.
Racing was close with many different boats mixing it up each day, especially in the top 15. Proving to have another gear than the rest of the fleet Team MicroWind, Mike Easton and Tripp Burd of Marblehead, MA put on a clinic, winning the event by 50 points!
Thanks again to EYC, the organizers, and competitors for such a great event! The New England Fleet (which has about 25 boats) is looking forward to the continued competition between us and the Canadians in several events next year.
This regatta is a great representation of the F18 class and it’s tremendous growth in the last year or two.
Photos courtesy of Rob Van Den Enden
Full results and more pictures can be found at: Cat-Alist.com