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

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!