Summer of the F18

Taking delivery of a new boat gave us no time to rest after Tybee. Todd spent all his free time working on the boat at Sail Newport, tweaking little things, tuning, changing lines and etc. Boat work on these racing machines seems never ending. In order to keep everything running smoothly to be competitive and not break anything, boat work is imperative.
After a couple shakedown sails our first regatta was the Sakonnet Challenge. 12 F18 catamarans showed up to this event, the best turnout of a single class in several years in our area. After a strong day 1, and a bullet in the last race of the day, we were in second place. Flukey conditions on day 2 got the better of us pushing us back to third for the regatta. All in all not a bad finish for our first outing on the new boat. Mike Ferrara was pretty happy with the new boat, pronouncing on the beach "My name is Mike, and this is my little boat!"
Our second regatta was the Hampton Beach Regatta where 11 F18s showed up. Todd invited 2nd time cat sailor Andrew Vachon to crew for him. The last time we sailed together was Sakonnet Challenge two years earlier on the N20 and we sailed very well. Once again, we proved to be a fast pair rattling off three 2nd places, a 3rd and a 5th. We even managed to lead speed demons Mike & Tripp around the course a couple of times only to have them get the better of us just before the finish. We woke up on the morning of day 2 to find nasty conditions (large waves, drizzle, and lots of breeze). Racing was quickly cancelled, leaving Saturday's scores final with us in 2nd overall. A couple of boats mustered up the courage to venture out through the large surf. We decided just to watch, it wasn't worth breaking anything! Sure enough they got through the surf, both broke their rudder casting retainer clip, one of them capsized then they sailed back in. We sure didn't miss much!

Team Accelerated Chaos launching at Hampton on Day 2

Regatta 3 was the Statue of Liberty Race. This is one of our favorite regattas of the year, this year marked Todd's 9th year in a row and Brendon's 3rd. We had some timing issues at the start and were late to the line. This left a line of boats for us to screw around with in order to get a clear lane. It was a screaming double trapped jib reach and we were faster than almost every boat we came up behind. By the end of the Navy Pier, John Sullivan on a tiger decided to make it hard for us and fended high and low, nothing wrong with a bit of friendly competition! Finally after several minutes of being slowed by John we got a big enough gust to surprise him and take him on the high side before he knew what had happened. From there we had a clear lane in the front of the main pack. We put some distance on the pack and caught some ground on the leaders only to lose and then gain again. Upon nearing Liberty Island we were in 2nd in the F18 fleet (out of 7) and about 5th overall. Just before the rounding mark the two Capricorns managed to get above us and roll us. After the rounding mark we went down the center of the river, more towards the Jersey side while the Capricorns blasted down the Brooklyn side. Under the Verazanno the situation was the same, both us and the Capricorns raising our spinnakers for a couple minutes to get through the lull the bridge/land was causing. The wind quickly forced us to douse and continue on a dreadfully wet double trapped jib reach. About halfway back between the bridge and the finish line we noticed the leeward board had slipped down but didn't think much of it as this had been okay on the 20. It wasn't too long before we heard a SNAP! and saw a yellowish white thing float up behind the back of the boat. We weren't sure if we had hit something or the board had snapped but decided just to keep going, figuring the board would break off flush with the hull. Well apparently carbon is a little tougher than we thought as 1/2 of a half of the board was still being dragged in the water. We were going so fast we thought "oh well, let's just figure it out when we get to the beach". We got back to the beach 2 hours and 14 minutes after the start, about 15 minutes after the first place boat (an F18). The two Capricorns managed to slip by us during our daggerboard ordeal and we had to settle for 4th in the F18 fleet. Our time was good enough to correct us out to 10th overall out of 41 boats.

Cha-CHING!!!

Regatta 4 was the Newport Regatta. Unfortunately Todd had to work on Day 1 and we missed an epic day (so most of the competitors thought, but really it's just typical Newport conditions). We joined the racing for day two and had a good day despite having really bad luck with dealing with mark roundings with the monohulls sharing the course. It's great seeing them out there, just not when your on the outside of them in an 8 boat pinwheel! I think the frustration is mutual. The RC ran 6 races on Saturday and only 3 on Sunday so we couldn't be contenders at all, it was fun acting as the spoilers though! It was great practice for us just to get on the water as this was Brendon's first buoys race on a cat.

1-2-3: Bob & Tripp, Sandra & Mark, Todd & Brendon

Next up for us is Hyannis Regatta and BBR. Look for an update after these events. It's really cool sailing in these events as we will get exposure to 3-400 other sailors from V15s to Lasers from 505s to 420s to PHRF boats! Stay tuned for more updates.

After 5 events Team Adrenalin sailing as Team Jaypro Sports for the summer stands in 2nd in the Narragansett Beer F18 Summer series. Team MicroWind has a strong lead with Team Bad Dad in third. Almost 25 teams have participated in the series so far!

Additional thanks!

We've acknowledged our sponsors, team members, and etc. Other people that deserve a great big thank you are our family's and friends. From our parents, grandparents, sisters, and brothers we saw tons of support from everyone! We can't thank all of you enough. Without you we never would have made it to where we are today in the sport of sailing or through the Tybee.
In addition, our friends the Novick and Maco families were gracious enough to make donations to our team. These donations are huge! We made sure to make an as accurate budget as possible pre-race but the expenses of doing this race just never end and can't always be predicted.
Thanks again to everyone!

Team Adrenalin videos on Sailing Anarchy

Team Adrenalin finish in Tybee Island, GA
Mr. Clean of Sailing Anarchy interviews Team Adrenalin

Tybee 500 and a long, long, long drive home

Our new boat!
The plan for after the Tybee was to drive to Pensacola to pick up our new boat then stay there for the night then drive back. As the week unfolded Brendan realized he had to be home for 8AM Tuesday morning. This meant staying overnight would not be an option.
Of course we had to celebrate in Tybee after finishing, somehow we didn't end up getting to bed until around 4AM. Luckily, we were smart enough to get the boat almost all set to go before we started celebrating. We woke up Saturday morning at 8:36 and ran to the awards ceremony. Here we found out the final standings. We placed 16th out of 24 overall and 10th of 17 in the Nacra 20 class. We are quite happy with this performance for our first Tybee, especially since our goal was simply to finish.
Afterwards, we made a few last minute preparations to the trailer and reorganized the truck a bit. We finally got on the road around 11:30 and drove straight to Pensacola through some nasty T-storms. Perhaps the worst part of this drive was the irony of it all, driving back to FL after having worked so hard to get out!
We arrived at Key Sailing and met up with the new owners of our 20 and handed over the reigns. This was a very sad moment for us as we loved that gray boat. Luckily the new owners are great guys and we are sure they will treat it well. The boat will be in New Orleans but will spend plenty of time in the Pensacola area being sailed.
Next we received our new boat, a 2009 Nacra F18 Infusion. Capt. Kirk Newkirk gave us a great deal on it! Despite being a major pain in the butt, he is a great guy.
From there we drove 3-4 hours into Alabama until we realized we were just too tired to go on. We pulled into a rest area and slept between some 18 wheelers for a few hours.
Once we woke up, we hit the road again, next stop was Trey Brown's house in Greenville, SC to pick up a couple trailer boxes. After that stop we had to stop at Trey's old house in Raleigh to pick up one more box!
With all the stops we ended up rolling into RI about 6:30AM after a solid 2.5 days in the car!
Nothing like sailing 500+ miles and then being cramped in a car for that long!
Upon arriving back to RI, Brendon dealt with some school stuff and then went racing on Swan 42 that night. I slept for a few hours and then passed on the chance to go racing with Brendan as I was too eager to rig the Infusion.
One important word of advice for anyone considering this long of a road trip is to have some company that you can goof around with. If you can't have fun then it's going to be one miserable trip! For all of those that don't understand what I mean... take a look at the following picture:

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.