So it’s May and we are about to leave for Tybee and I still have not posted the day 2 story from the Steeplechase. To be honest, I wanted to wait until right before the sailing season started to give everyone something to get pumped up over! Haha That’s my best excuse and I’m sticking with it!
Day two of the 2008 Steeplechase was almost identical to day two of the 2007 race (and I’m assuming many others) the start was a downwind run off the beach to the channel 5 bridge where it was became an upwind beat in 15-20 with some nice jib reaching towards the end. For all of you that haven’t done this race, day 2 is the most challenging part of the race, it’s a journey through the southern Everglades National Park. The leg consists of sailing through narrow channels, over sandbars, through tiny cuts and mangroves, in between all that there is some great flat water sailing but unless you’ve done the race a lot of times (we haven’t) there are still plenty of shallow spots to discover (we found out the hard way).
We sailed the leg pretty similar to last year. The main difference was that we had a new jib that wasn’t so blown out that we had to foot off 5-10 degrees below our competitors. This made a huge difference in keeping us ahead of the boats we got ahead of at the start and passed through other opportunities, usually when they run aground! However, when a boat ahead of you runs aground you usually take precautions not to do the same. As we ran aground 3 times we lost a couple boat including Team Davis Island who we had been battling with pretty much all weekend. They sailed by us as we attempted to navigate through a NARROW channel, ran aground, and backed the boat up almost taking out a channel marker piling in the process. Luckily all of the bottom we hit was soft sand and we didn’t do any damage!
The final few mangroves and bays saw the strongest wind of the weekend reaching almost 20 knots. Even cooler, the third to last bay was a very quick jib reach in which our self tacker track decided to explode (not the cool part). Brendon quickly hopped off the wire in an attempt to tame the flogging jib but it was impossible and the boat shook violently as we reached across the bay at around 23 knots towards the next mangrove. We were able to jury rig the jib in the mangrove and were set for the final few miles mostly upwind sailing but we did get to pop the spinnaker in one of them and gained a bit on the boats ahead. Spinnaker sailing in the mangroves is always a bit sketch as you can’t see the wind coming and you run out of ground FAST if you have to bear off. We later found out or buddy Jim Zelmer from Vermont capsized in one of the last mangroves while doing the same. They got stuck in the brush on the side for quite a while apparently… poor Jim.
We finished up 11th of 21 overall but very close in time to the 4 Nacra 20s ahead of us and we can account for that time in silly mistakes. We felt good about how we sailed and it got us very excited for Tybee!! Bring it!
It’s hard to chose which is more fun, a 50 mile spinnaker run down the ocean side of the keys on day 1 or an obstacle course inside the keys on day 2. Either way, this race is incredibly fun and totally worth all the effort of traveling 1,500 miles to get there. If you are on the fence… just do it… you won’t regret it. I’d say this is my favorite race of the year.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Thursday, February 26, 2009
New Sponsors: Kinder Industries & PLBrentals.com & Holmenkol
We are happy to welcome on board the addition of two new sponsors.
Kinder Industries located in Bristol, RI made us a beautiful mast bag for our Nacra 20. These guys are really professional, I simply took some measurements off a mast and gave them to them and they made up a product that works even better than I expected! The quality material they use will be really helpful to protect our carbon mast for the 5 months that it sits on top of a trailer in Southern Florida. If you need covers or anything I would highly reccomend these guys. Click on the logo to the right for their link. Thanks to everyone at Kinder!
PLBrentals.com has graciously donated two PLB's for our use for the Tybee 500. This will be really helpful as this will save us $120 that we can now spend on other much needed gear. The guys at PLBrentals.com are really helpful and really supportive. If your looking to rental PLBs, Epirbs, or etc definitely check out their site by clicking their logo to the right. Thank you PLBrentals.com!
Holmenkol has sent us three of their products Seal N Glide, AquaSpeed, and Sport Polish. The Seal N Glide will help improve our spinnaker snuffing while not allowing the sail to absorb water. We have used this stuff before and it is really slick! The AquaSpeed and Sport Polish will make our hulls really nice and slick to give us the couple knots of extra boatspeed which will really add up over 500 miles!
In addition, these guys set us up with the Care Fleece for applying these products and made sure we were 100% clear on how to apply them! Thanks to everyone at Holmenkol!
Kinder Industries located in Bristol, RI made us a beautiful mast bag for our Nacra 20. These guys are really professional, I simply took some measurements off a mast and gave them to them and they made up a product that works even better than I expected! The quality material they use will be really helpful to protect our carbon mast for the 5 months that it sits on top of a trailer in Southern Florida. If you need covers or anything I would highly reccomend these guys. Click on the logo to the right for their link. Thanks to everyone at Kinder!
PLBrentals.com has graciously donated two PLB's for our use for the Tybee 500. This will be really helpful as this will save us $120 that we can now spend on other much needed gear. The guys at PLBrentals.com are really helpful and really supportive. If your looking to rental PLBs, Epirbs, or etc definitely check out their site by clicking their logo to the right. Thank you PLBrentals.com!
Holmenkol has sent us three of their products Seal N Glide, AquaSpeed, and Sport Polish. The Seal N Glide will help improve our spinnaker snuffing while not allowing the sail to absorb water. We have used this stuff before and it is really slick! The AquaSpeed and Sport Polish will make our hulls really nice and slick to give us the couple knots of extra boatspeed which will really add up over 500 miles!
In addition, these guys set us up with the Care Fleece for applying these products and made sure we were 100% clear on how to apply them! Thanks to everyone at Holmenkol!
Steeplechase 2008 Day 1
We woke up early Saturday morning to find a forecast of 20-30knots. This is quite breezy for any sailboats, especially Nacra 20 catamarans that start to become overpowered in 15 knots! There was no way were backing out as we knew this would be great practice for the Tybee 500. After a quick breakfast we headed to the beach for 7AM to do last minute boat work and rig the boat. We were ready to push off the beach by 8:30 just as the last few boats pushed off. The wind was now blowing 20-25Knots and we had to sail straight upwind to the starting area. Soon after leaving the beach, we noticed fellow New Englander, Team Accelerated Chaos, capsized. Confused, we sailed by and noticed Trevor was ¾ of the way up the mainsail fixing a batten. They waved us off, but we heard some interested stories later on the series of events that led to their intentional capsize.
Once we got to the start it was only blowing about 18 knots. The line was heavily boat favored and the fleet was grouped up there. We managed to sneak in underneath all these boats, staying out of their traffic jam and in our own hole. We had to do quite a bit of protecting of this hole but ended up starting with good speed right below the main pack and punching out fairly well. Only the Tornado, Marstrom 20s, and a couple others managed to get off the line ahead of us.
From there it was an upwind beat, double trapezing through the bridge. On our way to the bridge we were doing well, having crossed many boats until we decided to sail conservative up the middle and the boats on the left made gains on us.
We came up to the bridge only to have to bear off to avoid the big wooden structure in the middle (not sure what it’s called) when all the sudden we saw a fishing boat, but it was already too late, we bore off but still went very close to them! We heard some yelling and screaming from their boat but we just kept sailing. A couple minutes later we noticed we were going slow, I turned back and saw a weird pattern in our wake and realized we had taken the fisherman's line with us! Brendan hopped off the wire and spent several minutes pulling up rudders and daggerboards until he finally realized the only way we were getting rid of it was to cut it. Once that was clear he hopped back out only to have his trapeze adjuster line slip and in the water he went. We were really moving at this point and he had a hard time getting back on the boat while I tried not to let him knock me off the boat and not capsize. Once we got all settled from these 2 ordeals Mike Hill who had been right ahead of us was long gone and Karl Langfield had just passed us. We managed to get going again and sail out from under Karl much to his dismay and battled him back and forth until Anglefish Creek. Nearing the end of the channel Karl hoisted his spinnaker only to have it fouled, at the time it was quite entertaining and we decided to antagonize them a bit. We had decided ahead of time to hoist late as last year an early hoist forced us to bear off out of the channel right into the reef. Once time came for our hoist we discovered that our spinnaker was even more fouled than Karl’s and they let us know it! We ended up having to sail very slow while Brendan fixed it. During this time we watch Karl and other boats sail South away from us. This was very painful to watch. Once we finally got going we figure we wasted about 10 minutes and had to make that up. Spinnakers in the distance seemed small and we weren’t overly optimistic of catching them but we still had around 50 miles to do it!
We got going only to find our tack line was slipping in the Spinlock, forcing us to tie a stopper knot and knowing that the only way we were taking the spinnaker down was to cut the tack line. It was beautiful single trapped spinnaker reach all the way down to Anne’s beach. We managed to make some gains on several boats and ended up close behind Todd Hart on Team Cat Fever. We would jibe and cross his stern many times, everytime hoping we had gained but it wasn’t meant to be. Finally after a couple hours we had a navigation error and ended up sailing over a reef covered by only 6” of water. This was perfect opportunity for Todd to sail away from us. By the time we got sailing full speed again he was long gone! As we made the final approach to Anne’s Beach we were on a high reach, we tried to hold it with the spinnaker up for as long as possible but it ended up taking us away from the beach so we decided it was time to take the spinnaker down, now remember we had to cut the tackline so once it was down it was down for good! Brendan brought the spinnaker down onto the boat but dropped the knife with the blade open! Luckily the spinnaker managed to avoid the knife and was not torn.
The finish was much less eventful than last year as we were actually able to sail over the finish! Thanks to Rick was listening to everyone! Not to mention the fact that I was not severely dehydrated and almost unconscious this year thanks to my camelback.
Despite all our issues that cost us around 20 minutes we were only about that far behind the top few Nacra 20s so we were still in the chase and knew what we had to make up for day 2.
Stay tuned for Part 3 about day 2 of the race!
Once we got to the start it was only blowing about 18 knots. The line was heavily boat favored and the fleet was grouped up there. We managed to sneak in underneath all these boats, staying out of their traffic jam and in our own hole. We had to do quite a bit of protecting of this hole but ended up starting with good speed right below the main pack and punching out fairly well. Only the Tornado, Marstrom 20s, and a couple others managed to get off the line ahead of us.
From there it was an upwind beat, double trapezing through the bridge. On our way to the bridge we were doing well, having crossed many boats until we decided to sail conservative up the middle and the boats on the left made gains on us.
We came up to the bridge only to have to bear off to avoid the big wooden structure in the middle (not sure what it’s called) when all the sudden we saw a fishing boat, but it was already too late, we bore off but still went very close to them! We heard some yelling and screaming from their boat but we just kept sailing. A couple minutes later we noticed we were going slow, I turned back and saw a weird pattern in our wake and realized we had taken the fisherman's line with us! Brendan hopped off the wire and spent several minutes pulling up rudders and daggerboards until he finally realized the only way we were getting rid of it was to cut it. Once that was clear he hopped back out only to have his trapeze adjuster line slip and in the water he went. We were really moving at this point and he had a hard time getting back on the boat while I tried not to let him knock me off the boat and not capsize. Once we got all settled from these 2 ordeals Mike Hill who had been right ahead of us was long gone and Karl Langfield had just passed us. We managed to get going again and sail out from under Karl much to his dismay and battled him back and forth until Anglefish Creek. Nearing the end of the channel Karl hoisted his spinnaker only to have it fouled, at the time it was quite entertaining and we decided to antagonize them a bit. We had decided ahead of time to hoist late as last year an early hoist forced us to bear off out of the channel right into the reef. Once time came for our hoist we discovered that our spinnaker was even more fouled than Karl’s and they let us know it! We ended up having to sail very slow while Brendan fixed it. During this time we watch Karl and other boats sail South away from us. This was very painful to watch. Once we finally got going we figure we wasted about 10 minutes and had to make that up. Spinnakers in the distance seemed small and we weren’t overly optimistic of catching them but we still had around 50 miles to do it!
We got going only to find our tack line was slipping in the Spinlock, forcing us to tie a stopper knot and knowing that the only way we were taking the spinnaker down was to cut the tack line. It was beautiful single trapped spinnaker reach all the way down to Anne’s beach. We managed to make some gains on several boats and ended up close behind Todd Hart on Team Cat Fever. We would jibe and cross his stern many times, everytime hoping we had gained but it wasn’t meant to be. Finally after a couple hours we had a navigation error and ended up sailing over a reef covered by only 6” of water. This was perfect opportunity for Todd to sail away from us. By the time we got sailing full speed again he was long gone! As we made the final approach to Anne’s Beach we were on a high reach, we tried to hold it with the spinnaker up for as long as possible but it ended up taking us away from the beach so we decided it was time to take the spinnaker down, now remember we had to cut the tackline so once it was down it was down for good! Brendan brought the spinnaker down onto the boat but dropped the knife with the blade open! Luckily the spinnaker managed to avoid the knife and was not torn.
The finish was much less eventful than last year as we were actually able to sail over the finish! Thanks to Rick was listening to everyone! Not to mention the fact that I was not severely dehydrated and almost unconscious this year thanks to my camelback.
Despite all our issues that cost us around 20 minutes we were only about that far behind the top few Nacra 20s so we were still in the chase and knew what we had to make up for day 2.
Stay tuned for Part 3 about day 2 of the race!
2008 Steeplechase - Getting there
Upon our arrival and opening of the trailer, Trevor getting really excited about riging!
Better late than never! I decided to write a detail story about this year's steeplechase and never got to finishing it until now. Stay tuned for Part 2 and 3
We were extremely excited about this year's Key Largo Steeplechase. Knowing we were more prepared than the previous year gave us the confidence to know we would actually be competitive this year rather than just trying to complete the race.
However, my excitment was soon halted when 6 hours before our flight I found out that the plane was already delayed, not because of bad weather in the Northeast, but because of snow in New Orleans! The airline informed me that we might not be able to make our connecting flight and all scenarios didn't place us in Key Largo until noon or later on Friday. With already a full day of boat work planned I knew this was going to be a huge problem.
Despite the grim situation, we decided to go to the airport and just go with the flow. Our flight was infact delayed 3 hours but this gave us plenty of time to run our tab (exactly what we didn't need to be doing!) up at the T.G.I. Fridays at the airport. During this time we were joined by many other delayed travelers including a local Newport Laser sailor we know. Many interesting topics can be brought up at an aiport bar, but my favorite was that this was truly a conspiracy by the airlines to meet a quota set by the bars in the terminal to sell alcoholic beverages.
Finally after the long delay we got on the plane to be greeted by 3 heavily intoxicated middle-aged mothers who insisted on not letting us catch any rest during the flight. Luckily, 21 people from our Providence to Orlando flight were connecting to our flight to Fort Lauderdale so they held the plane 2 and a half hours. Needless to say, the people that were sitting on the plane were not happy campers when we all got there. We were not bothered by this as we were just glad to be getting to Lauderdale that night!
Upon arriving in Lauderdale, a friend picked us up and arranged for us to stay at a mutual friend's house. Thanks to Jeff and Nick for this!
At 7AM, it seemed like we had just gone to bed (probably because we just had) when I got a text message from Chris Titcomb of Team Accelerated Chaos saying him and his crew, Trevor Burd, were on their way. We struggled of the couch and into the car to head down to Key Largo. On our way down, I cannot fail to mention our finding an Ihop and stopping for breakfast as no real trip can be complete without a huge breakfast!
After stuffing our stomachs, we finished our trip to Key Largo, picked up a fellow catamaran sailor's truck (Thanks Jack!) to move our box trailer from Tiki Watersports to the Carribean Club to start setting up our boats.
Our list of boat work for the day consisted of removing our existing self-tacker and replacing it with the current style, removing and replacing our tramp lacing slugs, putting new lines (courtesy of Paraloc Rope) and blocks (courtesy of Ronstan), and much more. Our boats were also completely disassembled in the trailer! We had to watch as everyone went sailing all day while our mast was not ready to go up until around 5PM. By 5:30 the sun had gone down and we no longer had any light to work on the boat and knew we would have to be up early in the morning to finish the work.
As always, registration and the skipper's meeting were held at 6PM at Rick White and Mary Well's house. After attending that, we went out to dinner then retired to the hotel from last minute GPS and chart review then much needed quality time with our pillows.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
New Sponsors: Paraloc, Ronstan, Magic Marine, Murrays, Hall Spars, and H20 Audio
We have begun our sponsorship quest for the Tybee and with that has come the donation of many products that will help us tremenously in our quest.
All these companies have treated us very well... please check out their websites by clicking the logos on the right of our blog.
Paraloc Swiss Rope:
Paraloc has donated new line to outfit our whole boat and more! This line is really cool stuff! Throughout the line, the cover is stiched to the core to prevent slippage or wear. R&W Rope, of New Bedford, MA is the U.S. Distributor and really has gone out of their way to outfit our boat with all the proper lines. They even gave us a spool of NovaTec shockcord... we are confident to say this is the best shockcord!
Ronstan:
We can't thank Ronstan enough for how much they are helping us out! They gave us everything we asked for! From their amazing wetsuits and gloves (which already were our favorites) to their new Orbit Series blocks for our spinnaker. They also gave us their new Racing Trapeze Harness which we are excited to try out. All of this will make us and our hardware fully capable of withstanding anything mother nature can throw at us!
Magic Marine:
Magic Marine also has provided us with gear that will make it much more comfortable for us to compete in our upcoming endevours. We are well aware of the reputation of Magic Marine gear and expect it to be perfectly suited for this type of sailing.
Murrays Marine:
As always, Murrays came through for us... they provided us with excellent deals on Barz Goggles, storage bags, and etc. I personally am excited for the Barz as last year by eyes had a tough time in reaction to the salt concentration of the water in the Keys. Steve Murray has treated me extremely well ever since my days sailing Hobie 16s... he and his company are a true supporter of the sport!
Hall Spars and Rigging:
Hall Spars in Bristol, RI has been nice enough to extend us a substantial discount on rigging and lines. This was extremely helpful as we were in dire need of new standing rigging. Hall made us some really fine rigging and in only a couple days! In addition to custom rigging services, they also splicing, and much more! These guys really know there stuff! I think we can trust the guys who built the mast for the BMWOracle DoG boat to build our rigging!
H20Audio:
H20 Audio was nice enough to contribute their waterproof armbands and headsets for our Ipods. While this might seem a bit odd, we are Team Adrenalin and what better way to add to our adrenalin than to listen to some "pump me up" music?!
All these companies have treated us very well... please check out their websites by clicking the logos on the right of our blog.
Paraloc Swiss Rope:
Paraloc has donated new line to outfit our whole boat and more! This line is really cool stuff! Throughout the line, the cover is stiched to the core to prevent slippage or wear. R&W Rope, of New Bedford, MA is the U.S. Distributor and really has gone out of their way to outfit our boat with all the proper lines. They even gave us a spool of NovaTec shockcord... we are confident to say this is the best shockcord!
Ronstan:
We can't thank Ronstan enough for how much they are helping us out! They gave us everything we asked for! From their amazing wetsuits and gloves (which already were our favorites) to their new Orbit Series blocks for our spinnaker. They also gave us their new Racing Trapeze Harness which we are excited to try out. All of this will make us and our hardware fully capable of withstanding anything mother nature can throw at us!
Magic Marine:
Magic Marine also has provided us with gear that will make it much more comfortable for us to compete in our upcoming endevours. We are well aware of the reputation of Magic Marine gear and expect it to be perfectly suited for this type of sailing.
Murrays Marine:
As always, Murrays came through for us... they provided us with excellent deals on Barz Goggles, storage bags, and etc. I personally am excited for the Barz as last year by eyes had a tough time in reaction to the salt concentration of the water in the Keys. Steve Murray has treated me extremely well ever since my days sailing Hobie 16s... he and his company are a true supporter of the sport!
Hall Spars and Rigging:
Hall Spars in Bristol, RI has been nice enough to extend us a substantial discount on rigging and lines. This was extremely helpful as we were in dire need of new standing rigging. Hall made us some really fine rigging and in only a couple days! In addition to custom rigging services, they also splicing, and much more! These guys really know there stuff! I think we can trust the guys who built the mast for the BMWOracle DoG boat to build our rigging!
H20Audio:
H20 Audio was nice enough to contribute their waterproof armbands and headsets for our Ipods. While this might seem a bit odd, we are Team Adrenalin and what better way to add to our adrenalin than to listen to some "pump me up" music?!
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