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/

Cruising around Newport

I love the change of season... it's why I live in New England... but looking outside at almost 2' of snow, having left the FL keys 2 weeks ago, and having to wait another 2 weeks to go back, i'm getting a little jittery... I NEED TO GO SAILING!!! Here's a few videos that i'm hoping will get me through, maybe it'll help you get through winter too.