Tybee 500 Race
Catsailor's Beach Hot Line by Mary
(Note: The most recent news postings are on the top, toggle down for previous posts)

Saturday, May 17, 2003

11:10 p.m.
Trophies are going to be awarded Sunday morning. There are still eight boats out.

10:00 p.m.
Two more boats are in – Antieau Art, followed by Castrol I.

So we now know the first three places overall for the race: Tybee, Key Sailing and Castrol I. Alexander’s has wrapped up first place in the F-18HT class.

9:45 p.m.
Alexander’s finished third, followed by Tommy Bahama 30 seconds later.

By the way, Fully Involved dropped out of the race this afternoon due to a broken rudder and possibly other problems. They beached at Jekyll Island and were picked up by their ground crew.

9:25 p.m.
Key Sailing is second to the beach.

9:20 p.m.
We have a winner of the Tybee 500! Team Tybee has just arrived, winning the race overall and also in the Inter 20 class.

It’s very dark right now, so it is hard to see if anybody else is coming. Rick thinks he sees another sail.

8:30 p.m.
Race Organizer Chuck Bargeron has announced that trophies will be awarded after all the boats are in. If there are still boats out at midnight, trophies probably will be presented in the morning.

8:15 p.m.
Race committee and ground crews are waiting and shivering at the finish line. Temperature is in the 70’s, but with a 15-knot wind off the water, it is definitely chilly, and people are bundled up as darkness settles over Tybee Island, with no sailboats in sight.

Team Loewen just called their ground crew and reported that they are about 15 miles south of the finish, with about seven other boats in their vicinity. They are sailing close-hauled. The cell-phone was breaking up badly, so that is all the information that could be understood.

4:10 p.m.
The wind is now definitely up to about 15 knots and has shifted a little bit more east.

3:15 p.m.
Wind is about 10 east-northeast at the finish area, Tybee Island, GA. When Rick was driving north he based his estimate of 15-knot winds on the fact that there were whitecaps on the Intracoastal; but when he got to the beach it was much lighter than that on the ocean.

1:40 p.m.
Rick is at Tybee Island now and there the wind is blowing at least 15 out of the northeast, which means parallel to the coast and directly on the nose for the sailors. If that holds, they will be beating to the finish.

No word yet on what the wind conditions are where the boats are – they are still a long way south.

10:08 a.m.
The boats are off to Tybee Island, with no mishaps at the start. Very low surf and very light westerly wind right now. Nobody is using spinnakers. They are beam-reaching down the beach. Most of the sailors said they are going to stay along the shore, but they will have to watch out for the major tidal currents along this area and also the unpredictable shoals that sometimes extend far out from the shoreline and constantly change position.
* * * *
Rick has a complete story about the situation with the Sunnucks team that will be posted this afternoon prior to the finish of the race.

6:30 a.m.
Here is an early-bird report for the last day of the first Tybee 500 Race:

Only four women are in the race, but they are all great sailors –
Team Fully Involved -- Les and Linda Bauman are switching off on the helm.
Team Loewen -- Rick and Terry Loewen are switching off on the helm.
Team Antieau Art – Carl Roberts and Gale Browning are switching off on the helm.
Team Manajr – J.R. Fowler and Amanda Communale
* * * * *
The trophy situation:
The race committee has decided that trophies will be awarded for the Nacra 6.0 class, even though it has four boats instead of the eight boats required by the sailing instructions to constitute a class.

Therefore, at the end of the race today at Tybee Island (I have been told), trophies will be awarded three deep for the overall finishers based on total elapsed time for the six legs. And trophies will also be awarded three deep for each of the three classes – Inter 20, F-18HT, and Nacra 6.0.

During the race, a trophy has been awarded at the end of each leg to the first-to-finish team. It is a nice plaque donated by Harken. I have been told that there is actually a little block of some kind attached to the plaque, so it sounds like a USEFUL trophy.
* * * * *
The leg from Fernandina Beach, Florida to Tybee Island, Georgia is the longest, at 100.7 miles, and also potentially the most hazardous, because there are few places along the way where ground crew would be able to get to their teams and few beaches to come ashore – lots of swamps. The question on this leg is always, do we take the long route following the shoreline, or do we take the rhumb line to the finish, shorter distance but a long way offshore.

Rick will be posting more about this on his main Tybee coverage page this morning, I’m sure.

Friday, May 16, 2003

7:25 p.m.
Well, phone communication still iffy with Rick. He says 23 boats are in or accounted for. Team Sunnucks is trailering to the finish line, even though a hull transplant was done successfully. There seems to be some question as to whether the race committee told him to trailer to the finish or whether it was the team’s decision. Also still in doubt is the amount of time he will be penalized. We’ll let you know when we find out.

6:55 p.m.
Tybee was first to the beach, with Castrol I about 5 minutes later and Key Sailing a couple minutes after that. Then Alexander’s, the first F-18HT and their best finish so far. There are 12 more boats on the horizon.

I’m late getting this report because Rick had to walk around the beach for a while to find a spot where his cell phone would work. I think he needs to install a satellite dish on his head.

6:15 p.m.
See what happens when I leave and go to work for a while? Rick just called and reported that Tommy Bahama blew out their spinnaker and went in to Jacksonville Beach to get a replacement from their ground crew. And the Sunnucks team hit a herd of jellyfish with one of their daggerboards with such force that the daggerboard was pushed back and split their hull open. They went to shore and were loaned another hull by one of the other F-18HT teams.

The boats are reported about 7-8 miles from the finish. Wind has died again a little and is east-southeast.

3:45 p.m.
Latest report from the water is that the wind is now out of the east at 12-15 and boats are reaching at about 20 mph with all the teams double-trapped. The race committee does not expect them to arrive before 6:00 p.m., and it could be as late as 8:00.

1:20 p.m.
During the traditional ground-crew lunch stop at Flagler Beach, 25 boats went by at approximately 12:30 p.m.. Here is the order of the first 15 boats:
Tommy Bahama, Castrol I, Key Sailing and Tybee all about a football field apart. And then about a half mile back were Antieau Art, Halsey Lidgard, an unidentified boat, Chesapeake, OBXCC, Mezzo, Brevard Challenge, Sunnucks, and Soul Surfer.

P.S. Turns out that a lot of cell phones don't work in that particular area.

12 Noon
Well, Rick just called and talked to me for a long time, but I did not hear any of it except that “The wind has now switched to the southeast.” That would mean spinnakers are now flying and the sailors are happy.

Meanwhile, I am going to have to call the people at Verizon and ask if their guy has yet covered the East Coast of Florida, because I was asking, “Can you hear me now?” and I wasn’t getting any answer.

11:05 a.m.
Rick is reporting from between Flagler and Ormond by the Sea. The first four boats are Tommy Bahama, Castrol I, Key sailing, and Tybee, all separated from each other by about 100 yards. They are right next to the beach on starboard tack.

10:08 a.m.
All the boats are on their way.

The surf was mild, but there was almost no wind, so the pushers pushed and the sailors paddled, and there was a lot of pushing and paddling going on to get them going.

The wind is very light out of the northeast, exactly opposite the forecasted direction from the southwest. So the boats took off on port tack and have now tacked over to starboard for what looks like another long, slow day in the sun on this 96-mile leg to Fernandina Beach.

Thursday, May 15, 2003

5:25 p.m.
24 boats are on the beach now. Carl Roberts (Antieau Art) just came limping in with a badly ripped mainsail. The last 3 boats are on their way to the finish line.

5:20 p.m.
Key Sailing finished 3rd and Tommy Bahama 4th. Fifth was OBXCC (charles Thuman/Jon Britt), and they were also the first Nacra 6.0.
23 boats are either on shore or in view. Rick is heading back to the motorhome to write a story and post pictures – said he has some good ones.

4:50 p.m.
Team Tybee is first to the beach, with Castrol I following by about two minutes. They had a huge lead over the rest of the fleet. The next boats are barely visible.

4:30 p.m.
Boats are in sight and will be finishing soon.

3:10 p.m.
It is now beginning to appear that the leg distances given on the Tybee 500 site on their “Way Points” page are all off by one leg (or I guess I should say I was off by one leg in how I read them.). I talked to Robert Onsgard, who is on the race committee, and he said he, too, had assumed that the distance given with each checkpoint is the distance TO that checkpoint. But it may turn out that it is actually the distance from that checkpoint to the next checkpoint. That would make the distance from Cocoa Beach to Ormond Beach 75.7 miles rather than 96.2 miles.

That’s what happens when you get used to years of seeing it done a certain way in the Worrell 1000 and somebody changes things.

Robert is going to get back to me later about this, but it seems logical, since a mileage distance was given with the starting point and none is given for the last leg to Tybee.

2:15 p.m.
Hi, race fans. Rick now has a cell phone again – the third new one of this particular brand in a couple months. You would think he would try a different brand, but he says this is the only one that has a ringer loud enough for him to hear. It’s a Motorola.

Anyway, communication has been restored. He is at the Ormond Beach checkpoint. Boats are reported to be 37 miles south. Winds are light out of the southwest. Pretty exciting, huh?

9:25 a.m.
Rick has the early morning report posted on our main Tybee coverage page. If you have read the stuff below, you know that he no longer has a working cell phone, so I will not be able to get any information from him right after the start.

6:20 a.m.
If you have been following this Beach Hotline from the beginning, you know that I have been chronicling the ongoing problems of the media in covering a race like this. Since Catamaran Sailor is the only publication I know of doing daily coverage via its website for this event, this is all about Rick White’s problems. But I think of him as a pioneer, blazing the trail and making all the mistakes, so that others who follow him in the path of race coverage can avoid the pitfalls.

Rick’s overland adventures on Day 2 of the Tybee 500:

Well, early on Tuesday morning he was able to escape from the alley and find a place to park where he could use his satellite dish to post stories and pictures. After the start, I got a call here at my office from a ground crew who was not able to leave the grounds because Rick was blocking the exit. So I called Rick, who explained to what was now an angry mob of ground crew that he could not leave the spot until he finished transmitting his story from the dish.

Finally on his way, he had to stop and pick up his trailer (he is towing a powerboat because he is on his way to do a seminar). At Hollywood, there was not room for trailers at the Holiday Inn, so there was a designated parking area for the trailers farther down the road. When he got there, a motorcycle policeman was blocking the entrance to the side road where the trailers were. So Rick pulled off in a lane that was also being blocked by a parked semi tractor-trailer rig. He walked up and got his trailer and manually wheeled it down to the motorhome. It took him about a minute. When he got back to the motorhome with the trailer, the cop was in the process of writing him a ticket. Apparently, Rick ranted about this so much that the police officer suggested he was going to be in more trouble than just a ticket if he didn’t shut up.

Fortunately, the officer did not ask to see Rick’s driver’s license, since he does not have one due to the lost wallet, as explained in the earlier chapter, farther down on this Hotline.

On the road again, he headed for a driver’s license bureau in Jensen Beach, the next race checkpoint. Naturally, when he got there the license bureau was closed for two hours for lunch. Since the wind was light and the race was slow, he waited until they re-opened – only to learn that they do not issue driver’s licenses there, just vehicle licenses. There was a driver’s license bureau 12 miles inland. So, being the faithful reporter he is, he opted to go to the finish line instead and wait for the boats. Still no driver’s license.

Rick’s overland adventures on Day 3 of the Tybee 500:

After the start from Jensen Beach on Wednesday morning, Rick was ready to roll on northward in his quest for a driver’s license. Unfortunately, he could not roll, because one of the motorhome’s levelers would not retract, so he was stuck on the spot. He tried everything to get the thing to lift and finally had to call a tow truck. Well, apparently, it is not easy to rustle up a tow truck for a 37-foot motorhome, so he waited about three hours before “the biggest tow truck I have ever seen” showed up. Fortunately, the driver had some lifting equipment with him that did the trick to help get the leveler to go up.

Rick was mobile again and headed for a driver’s license bureau in Melbourne, which is on the way to the Cocoa Beach checkpoint. As good luck would have it, this bureau was actually open and actually does issue driver’s licenses, but it was very crowded. “Take a number and wait.”

While he was waiting, the wind had shifted and strengthened, allowing the boats to use spinnakers and make better time.

Rick arrived at the checkpoint after most of the boats had finished. (Which is why there was nothing on my Beach Hotline during the finishes.)

Meanwhile, his cell phone had stopped working (a manufacturer defect of some sort), and he had no way to contact me to even let me know, so I figured he must be dead – what other excuse could there be for not being at the finish in time?

HOWEVER, he got his story and got his pictures and was able to use his dish to post them on our website.

AND, he now has a driver’s license!

Things are looking up….except for the cell phone that isn’t working.

Obviously, his next destination up the coast is going to be a cell phone repair place.

Wednesday, May 14, 2003

2:35 p.m.

Jim Falardeau in Vero Beach saw 24 boats go by there at about 1:50 p.m., packed pretty close together, across maybe a two-mile range. The wind is now east-southeast at 13 according to the weather reporting station in the area, and the boats are flying spinnakers. Vero is about 40 miles from the Cocoa Beach checkpoint. Eyewitnesses estimate the wind at much lighter than 13.

10:07 a.m.
The race has started from Jensen Beach to Cocoa Beach, 75.7 miles. It was a two-tier start again, with the second row starting one minute after the first row. Rick said this seems to be working out well, but the boats at the beginning of the second tier are actually ahead of the boats that started at the down-beach end of the first tier.

Wind is very, very light out of the northeast, and Rick said it looks like a still life right now. Just as yesterday, the boats started on port tack and flopped over to starboard as soon as possible.

Let's hope the wind picks up to that forecasted high end of 20 knots today, and shifting more toward the south. But right now it looks like another long, hot day on the water.

Tuesday, May 13, 2003

8:10 p.m.
Those are all the finishes that will be posted on this site. Please check the Tybee 500 Results page for full results. Rick is on his way back to the motorhome to write a story and post pictures from the finish -- it's too dark now to get any more pictures.

8:00 p.m.
4th is Lil Alexanders; 5th is Halsey Lidgard; 6th is Castrol I. Sunnucks is 7th and Alexanders is 8th. (Those are the first two F-18HT's -- First six finishers were Inter 20's.) Accelerated Chaos, the first Nacra 6.0, finished 9th.

7:50 p.m.
First three boats are on the beach. 1st is Key Sailing; 2nd is Tommy Bahama; and 3rd is Tybee. All within about 30 seconds. Two more arriving, and then a whole slew of them.

7:15 a.m.
Some action, at last! Seven boats are on the horizon. The wind has finally switched a little more to the east, at 10-12 knots, so the boats are reaching.

5:00 p.m.
False alarm. Latest report is that at 3:45 p.m. the boats were still 35 nautical miles away. So the white sail sighted was apparently not one of the boats in the race.

4:18 p.m.
One boat is in sight from the finish line at Jensen Beach. It is far away and appears to have all-white sail(s).

12:40 p.m.
Mike Phillips just called in a sight report. The top five boats are passing Hillsborough Inlet, which is in the Deerfield Beach area. Key Sailing, Tybee and Castrol are tightly grouped, followed by Tommy Bahama in fourth place and Alexander's (Lambert/Livingston) in fifth.

They are tacking north, taking long starboard tacks until they get close to shore, and then taking little hitches out.

10:05 a.m.
All the teams are off and running except for TKO (F-18HT with Stu Bernd and James Sammis). They broke their tiller crossbar when one of the sailors fell on it during the launching process. They are putting on a replacement and will be on their way soon.

It was a two-tier start, partly because there was limited beach launching area.

All the boats started on port tack and most are tacking over to starboard as soon as possible.

9:40 a.m.
Report from the beach is that the wind is currently very light out of the northeast and will probably switch to southeast later today when the sea breeze kicks in. The NOAA weather report says the wind is currently southwest, but Rick says that is wrong by about 180 degrees. Teams are preparing for the 10 a.m. LeMans start off the beach. There is no surf at all.

A weak warm front may bring stronger winds farther up the course later in the week, but nobody knows when or where. Maybe Bob Curry will give us a forecast.

9:25 a.m.
Rick escaped from the alley and has his satellite dish working and has the pictures posted on our main Tybee 500 coverage page for the finish yesterday.

7:00 a.m.
When the phone rings here at the Hotline office, I never know whether the news is going to be about the race or about Rick. Like last year when he was covering the Worrell and almost turned the old motorhome into a bomb. The supports for the propane tank had broken, and he drove a whole leg of the course before discovering that the tank was about two inches above the ground.

Well, this year he has a newer motorhome, and he had a satellite dish installed on the roof so he would be able to send stories right from the motorhome. Nice plan.

Unfortunately, the only place he could find to park at the Hollywood checkpoint was in a sort of alley area between two buildings. Always the optimist, he pushed the buttons to raise up the satellite dish and hoped the dish would somehow see the satellite. No such luck. So he had pictures of the finish and no way to send them to our website.

Plan B was to send stories and photos to our internet site by telephone using the phone in somebody's room. But that would involve using a phone card. Unfortunately, Rick no longer has a phone card because he lost his wallet Saturday night when he took me out for a Mother's Day dinner.

So he thought, "Well, I can leave and park somewhere else for the night and get my satellite working and my pictures posted." Whoops. He was totally penned in by cars. No way to leave.

I think it is predictable that at some point on this trip, he will forget to lower the satellite dish before hitting the highway.

The other interesting dilemma is that he also does not have a driver's license. Yep, it was in the lost wallet. We thought, no problem, because there is a license bureau in Key Largo. He was just going to stop there and get a replacement license before heading up to Hollywood for the finish of the race. Guess what? That license bureau is closed on Mondays. Rick said, "Oh, well, surely I will be able to find a license bureau somewhere along the way between here and Fernandina Beach."

Mary said, "Hmmm."

Anyway, yesterday's finish pictures will be posted today. And I will await the further adventures of my intrepid reporter.

Monday, May 12, 2003

9:35 p.m.
The last boat, Windy Hill (JD Solomon and Frank Moore), just got in at about 9:28 p.m. Initial report from them is that their spinnaker halyard got wrapped around the top batten in their mainsail and it took them a couple of hours to get it unwrapped. Sorry, I'm having trouble picturing this, so Rick is going to ask them for further clarification of this interesting phenomenon.

7:00 p.m.
The results are now appearing on the Tybee 500 results page, and those are the most accurate. You can get them at www.tybee500.com or through the link to that site's results from our coverage page.

One correction to our finish positions below is that Will Sunnucks came in 12th, right before Howard's Pub, so that was three F18HT's in a row -- Alexander's, Sunnucks and Howard's Pub.

6:45 p.m.
17th is Platapus (Judson Linnabary/Bart Hall); 18th is TKO Racing (Stu Bernd/James Sammis)

6:30 p.m.
12th is Howard's Pub (Doug Kirby/Jeff LoSapio); 13th is Chesapeake (John McLaughlin/Rick Parsley); 14th is Morada (Dennis Green/Curt Johnson); 15th is Castrol II (Chris Runge/Terry Greene); 16th is Mezzo Speed (Frank DiMeo/Adam Szepesi).

Two more arriving as we speak.

6:15 p.m.
7th place is Key Sailing (Kirk Newkirk/Rod Waterhouse); 8th is OBXCC (Charles Thuman/Jon Britt); 9th is Little Alexander's (Todd Hart/Craig Callahan); 10th is Tommy Bahama (Nigel Pitt/Alex Shafer).

First F18HT is coming in in 11th Place, Team Alexander's with Brian Lambert and Jamie Livingston.

Ten more boats on horizon.

6:10 p.m.
Okay, I finally have eyes on the beach and a free phone here. Castrol I (John Casey/Jay Sonnenklar) finished first; Halsey Lidgard (Paul Van Dyke/Brad Cavanaugh) 2nd; Fully Involved Linda and Les Bauman, with Linda on the helm) 3rd; Team Tybee (Steve Lohmayer/Kenny Pierce) 4th; Antieau Art (Carl Roberts/Gale Browning) 5th; Accelerated Chaos (Jamie and Nate Titcomb) 6th.

The first five boats were all Inter 20's, and Accelerated Chaos was the first Nacra 6.0.

All boats were flying spinnakers, with south wind of 10-12 knots.

Two more boats are about to finish and nine more are on the horizon.

The boats that went out to the Gulf Stream got killed, because the in-shore boats got the sea breeze.

More real soon.

10:20 a.m.
Well, the race started promptly at 10:00 a.m. and literally with a loud "bang." The problem was that the "bang" was the sound of Brian Karr's starboard daggerboard hitting a rock (coral head). The impact stopped the boat and spun it into the wind. No word on damage, because they finally got organized and continued sailing. Apparently, that was the only rock and they were the only ones to find it. The start was in about 4 1/2 feet of water. (Brian Karr and Chuck Harnden are on an Inter 20.)

The boats all started on a beam reach and were all flying spinnakers in light winds, 7-8 knots.

9:20 a.m.
The inaugural running of the Tybee 500 is counting down to the 10 a.m. start on the ocean side of Islamorada in the Florida Keys. The host hotel, the Islander, only has a small amount of beach area for launching boats, so it is necessary to do a deepwater start. The RC boat is right now on its way out to set the starting line. Rick White is aboard to get pictures of the start. This will be approximately a 90-mile leg to the first checkpoint at Hollywood, FL.

27 teams are registered -- 15 Inter 20's, 8 F-18HT's, and four Nacra 6.0's.

I will be posting updates on this Hotline throughout the race, as often as reports are called in by Rick or by anyone else with information. If you have something you would like to report to this Hotline, please contact me by phone, 305-451-3287, or by e-mail, mary@catsailor.com

Next report on this Hotline probably will be soon after the start.