The 2008 Tybee 500 Race Coverage

Team Tybee Once Again Takes Line Honors.., Big Time!

Tybee Island grabbed the lead right from the start and never let go today. In fact stretched it out. They started off with only a 12-minute lead over Marleys Yellow, but added at least another 15 minutes to that total to take the grand prize at Tybee Island.

Around Jacksonville Marleys Yellow was only four minutes behind Tybee, but was not closing. So, they decided to do something different and went out.., instead of staying close to shore. Big Mistake.

The same mistake was made by the youth guys on Marleys Orange. They too, lost a lot of ground. When Tybee finished, the two Marleys boats were barely in sight.

The order of finish was:

1. Tybee
2. Marleys Yellow
3. Marleys Orange
4. Cat Fever
5. Velocity
6. Accelerated Chaos
7. Marleys White
8. Seacats
9. Cat in a Hat

Caution

Because of storm stystem developing in Georgia Race Officials are thinking of changing the schedule for tomorrow's race. They might start earlier to see if they can beat the storms, or they may just cancel the last leg and end it right here. Owner of the race, Chuck Bargeron said, "We will make a last minute decision in the morning. We don't want to send the fleet right into terrible storm."

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Below are pictures of the finish and some are pretty exciting:

Tybee Island begins to insure overall victory with a horizon job today. But anything can, and has, happened on this last, perilous leg to Tybee Island.

Marleys Yellow was within 12 minutes this morning, but lost valuable time by going out and not staying close to shore where the better winds usually are.

These youngsters on Marleys Orange had some misfortune when their mast fell down on the leg from Cocoa Beach to Daytona Beach. They were allowed to continue racing this morning, but they were assessed an 8-hour penalty. No chance for the overall, but they are sailing beautifully.

This next series of shots was of Cat Fever coming in at full speed.

At this point I started running. He was coming right at me and not slowing down.

Tema Velocity has had two days of bad luck, including today. About ten miles up the road from the start they had to pull in repair a rudder gudgeon. The lost 35 minutes in the repair. Yet they finished only 25 minutes behind Team Tybee, the lead boat in an amazing comback. One sailor said, "They have amazing speed."

Accelerated Chaos came in hot and did some hot-doggin. Check out the sequence below

Seacats was the obvious next boat to finish. Then, only a 100 yards off the beach, they went over, much to to the delight of Team Marleys White, see below. You can see the finish line flag on the left side of the picture above.

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They are Off on the 100-mile Jaunt to Fernandina Beach

Amazingly the wind sweitched to the SSE just before the start and no one used chutes to go through the surf. The did immediately set their spinnakers right after the start and were off.

Only one boat had problems -- Marleys White was smacked hard by a wave, turned the boat aiound and knocked Dennis Green off the boat.

Here are pretty good shots of the start:

This is my favorite! Wow what a pop!

The following sequence of shots is Marleys White, who was hit by a gnarly wave, heading the boat back toward the beach, and knocking Dennis Green off the boat

Before the start, and much to my disbelief Chris Titcomb of Accelerated Chaos has this music machine that plays for them all during the leg. Huh?

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Light Offshore Land Breeze for the Start

Winds of 5-7 mph are now blowing out to sea against a surf that could be a problem, but more than likely won't be.

Once through the surf the fleet will be heading up the 100-mile leg to Fernandia Beah. Most likely they will try to blast through the surf with spinnakers and the entire leg will probably be with chutes.

The forecast is for the windout of the souitheast at 10-15 mph. This is a typical sea breeze situation which will probably develop around noon or later. But, before the sea breeze happens there will be a time of abslolutely no wind.

The ground crew fleet meanwhile will all stop at Ormand Beach at the beach shack restaurant, grab a great fish sandwich and watch the boat slog by. Once the breeze comes, however, they will flying.

Stand by for more.

As a follow up to yesterday, Moose-Burd is retiring after having a bad-hair day on the last leg (for more see our forum under HOTLINE)

The youngster are back in the race with an 8 hour penalty.

Please Patronize our sponsors for the coverage of this event. It is costly to make this jouney and to give you the coverage we do.

For Video of the raceg and interviews at the finish, click here!

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