The Tybee 500 Race Coverage

Team Coconut Grove Sails Wins by Seconds

After 5 1/2 hours the first three boats to hit the beach were a mere 36 second apart. Carla Schiefer/Clive Mayo on Coconut Grove Sails eased into the beach only 13 seconds ahead of Sailmax I, sailed by Dave Lennard and Mike Krantz, and then came Team Tybee Island. And just to be sure and upstage the boats ahead of them, Tybee broached in the surf, ran to the outside of the finish line and almost nailed one of the Officials.., the same Official that was run down last year.

Carla Schiefer said they spend all day just looking for the wind. It seemed to be better close to shore, but she was new to sailing seas and surf and was afraid to overdo the shoreline.

Kenny Pierce of Tybee Island said it was mostly a reach all day until they got about 7 miles from the finish line. And then it was a dicing out tacking (jibing) duel between the leading three boats. teammate John Casey said the three of the lead boats had a huge lead over most of the fleet. Then the wind filled in from behind them and to the south and most of the fleet caught back up.

For unofficial results, click here!

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After all those miles and all those hours Sailmax I (left) finished within 13 seconds of Coconut Grove Sails (right)

This was the first "line honors" finish for Carla Schiefer and Clive Mayo on Coconut Sails

Tybee broached in the surf and headed right of the Race Official

But Bill made like a matador and cleverly evaded being run down by Tybee Island

The youngsters of Key Sailing had a much better showing in this 2nd leg of the race finishing in 4th place

Rod Waterhouse of Australia has not been performing as well as he expected and lost another 10 minutes to the leader.

2nd place Team Morada finished 6th, but only dropped about 13 minutes to leaders Tybee Island

Despite their terrible spinnaker set at the start, Sailmax II came in only 20 minutes behind the lead boats

Ground crew for Space Coast had that run down feeling

Windy Hill finished ninth, but they had some spectacular sailing at the finish. Just take a look at the follwing series of shots

Team St. Louis dropped down in the standings after this finish of 10th place

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The Fleet is Off from Hollywood to Jupiter Beach

Only Tybee Island set their spinnaker before the start.., and did it ever pay off. They jumped into a solid lead before the others could even get their chutes up and running.

And many had lots of problems setting their spinnaker at that. One boat had the kite hang up on the spreader bar on the mast, another had his hooked on the mainsail batten (that looked like a sure-fire rip coming up.)

The winds are out of the east-southeast just enough that everyone needed to fly the spinnaker. This should make for a pretty fast ride to Jupiter, despite the light wind speed of around 5 mph.

All of the boats lined up in one row, rather than two rows as they were yesterday.

Many of the teams put their spinnakers up after the start.

Tybee started with their spinnaker preset and got off to great start

Tybee Island had a great start and was walking away for the fleet

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Spinnaker Mishaps

This boat struggled to get the spinnaker set and working

So did Morada. The chute was all over the boat and later caught on the mast spreader bar.

But, none were worse that what poor Sailmax.biz II suffered. Just look at the series of pictures below:

Stay tuned for the finish in Jupiter and be sure to check our HotlineForum

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Winds Similar to Yesterday

At 8AM the winds were from the south at around 7mph, but have since switched more to the east. It appears that the winds will be marginal for a spinnaker run and may again be a beam reach or perhaps even closer to the wind.

Scoring Problems

Race Officials were unable to get the results posted last night. So, we at Catsailor.com and www.onlinemarinestore.com gathered the info and here are the Unofficial Results after the first leg. Click Here for Results!

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