Spring Training Day 1 & 2

Despite having sailed in FL just 2 months ago, we quickly got a bit antsy to get back out on the water.

We need to thank our friend Malcolm for allowing us to store our boat in his basement for the harshest winter months and thanks to our friend Ernie for doing some amazing boat work at an amazing rate.

We had a 2 hour shake-down sail this past Thursday which was highlighted by me going for a swim when I went out the trap without being hooked in! Floating the 38 degree water while Brendon circled around to get me was not very enjoyable.

Today we met Tyler Burd & Garth Fasano, another F18 team for us to train with. Winds were a gusty 15-20, perfect sailing except that the thought of flipping when the air and water are only at 40 degrees is not a happy thought. We agreed on a plan to head upwind out the East passage into the ocean and around the R2 Buoy off Brenton Reef. Blasting through 3-4 foot waves we settled into a nice groove, working hard to keep the hull and our butt's out of the water. Brendon was working hard at the mainsheet while I steered around the waves despite that neither of us could feel much of our fingers. We got to R2 and luffed up to discuss the beat with Tyler & Garth. We then headed downwind into Narragansett Bay through Newport up to the south end of Prudence Island. At the south end of Prudence we turned around and battled it out upwind. During this beat Brendon and I started to get REALLY cold so we put the throttle down to get in as fast as possible. As we neared the Newport Bridge I told Brendon to be prepared for a wind shadow from the support column. I've never been able to figure out exactly how the wind shadows come off these things and as soon as we neared the column, powering up in a puff the breeze immediately shut off sending us into the water and off the back of the boat. The boat nearly flipped over on top of us and as I fell I pulled the tiller to turn the boat onto a beam reach and headed right at the next bridge column. I did all I could to steer the boat to keep it from flipping but as Brendon had dropped the mainsheet we needed to get back to the boat asap. Luckily we found the strength to get back on the boat and get it straightened out. Garth later told us they were very worried for us as the witnessed this. As if the cold hadn't gotten to us enough this put us over the edge, luckily it was a quick upwind sprint through the harbor to Sail Newport. Overall we sailed for about 3.5 hours and covered 29 nautical miles, a pretty amazing training day.

The boat is now packed up and ready to head to Georgia for the Southern Area F18 Championships / Spring Fever Regatta. Expect updates from this over the weekend or early next week.

2010 Tybee 500

It's official! We are registered for the 2010 Tybee 500.
We are extremely excited to announce that we will be sailing as part of Team Seacats this year.

The team roster includes 2 other experienced teams, Team Seacats White - Chris Zander/David Strickland (whom we battled with A LOT last year) and Team SeaCats Orange - Jake Kohl/Frank Moore. As a well established and experienced team we are looking forward to the support that these race veterans are showing us!

We will start practicing in Newport (where the water is currently 32.2 degrees!) in late March, will compete at the Southern Area F18 Champs / Spring Fever Regatta in Georgia over Easter weekend and then continue practicing in Newport until the Tybee which starts May 10th.

5th at Midwinters

photo courtesy of www.racebook-us.com

We've finally recuperated from the drive north and am finally able to sit down to summarize our experience at the Tradewinds /F18 Midwinters this past weekend.

After 12 races and 3 days of racing in 10-25 knots we came out in 5th overall, 5 points behind fellow New Englanders Accelerated Chaos and 19 points ahead of Team Zhik. While the top 3 boats clearly had an extra gear than the rest of the fleet, we managed to beat a couple of them in a few races throughout the series. Between the 3 of these boats they have more Nat'l titles and high level sailing experience than I could ever dream of. It was rewarding to be able to mix it up with them at times, scoring a 2nd place in the first race affirmed that we are capable this and that we have come a long way in the last year.

The rest of the fleet found ourselves in tight battles, we may as well have tied a 10' line between us and several other boats because that's about the most separation we saw the entire race!

This tight racing and fantasy level sailing conditions made this one of the best weekends of sailing any of us had ever experienced!

The two days prior to the clinic we took part in a clinic put on by Robbie Daniels. While the wind wasn't on our side during these two days we still learned more than we had all season. Robbie is an amazing coach, add in Jill & Enrique and you have the best multi-hull coaching team imaginable. Jill was also kind enough to provide us with water & lunch all through the regatta... that alone made it worth every penny! We will definitely be taking part in another one of their clinics in the future.

Pictures and story at www.catsailor.com We will add some pictures to here as they become available on www.racebook-us.com

Tradewinds day 1

Amazing sailing conditions of 10-12 with some gusts to around 15 and completely flat water! The F18s got 4 races in... the top 5 is John Tomko, Alex/Nigel, Mike/Tripp, us, and Chris Titcomb/Sam Adleman that means New England boats in 3 out of the top 5! It is really competitive though, in the last race of the day we were in 4th with a big lead over the next boat and small mistakes within our final minute of the race let a few boats sneak in and push us all the way to 7th.. that's all it takes.

We sailed hard for a 2nd place finish, but it appears they might throw the first race out as timing was off at the start. We are hoping they don't but will admit that the timing was way off... I hit my watch at 1 minute and the start was still 20-30 seconds late.

Forecast today is calling for 20-30... should be a fun day!

More info and up to the minute results can be found at Catsailor.com on the open forum.

FL bound again!

It's been 20-30 degrees everywhere along the eastern seaboard but as we get on our plane tomorrow it will be 18 and it will 48 in FL. By the time we arrive it should be around 65... sounds better right? The forecast is calling for progressively warmer temperatures over the course of the week maybe even reaching 80 this weekend! We are just hoping we can get some good sailing in, maybe a little drinking, and catch a nice tan.

We're arriving in Lauderdale around 10:30 where we will pick up the burban (thanks to the Sonneklars for donating a parking spot in their driveway for the last month!) and head south to Islamorada in the FL Keys. Our boats have been enjoying their vacation in Key Largo (thank you to the Shorts for storage!) but it's now time to put them to work!
Wednesday and Thursday we will be taking part in a training clinic put on by Robbie Daniels. Friday- Sunday we will be racing in the annual Tradewinds Regatta, a giant catamaran regatta which we treat as our Midwinters. We're expecting 15-20 extremely talented F18s... we will be putting Robbie's advice to good use to hopefully stay near the top of this fleet!
Stay tuned for details and results and hopefully some more video from our FLIP camera.
More details can be found at http://www.catsailor.com/