Congratulations to the survivors and winners of this year’s C100!
This year's edition of the Chesapeake classic started and finished at the WRCRA home-port of Galesville, Md. The Saturday leg included roundings of the Thomas Point and Bloody Point Lighthouses before turning south for Solomons Island. Getting out of the West River and around the two lighthouses would turn out to be the difficult part! Almost everybody who attempted the Saturday leg, finish or not, had stories to tell and some broken gear and bruises to display.
If you raced last year, all you needed to do was double the winds on both days and you would have a sense of what happened. This year we managed 30 knots and driving rain on Saturday followed up with 6 knots on Sunday. No doubt about it… the bay was a tough place to be on Saturday. The easterly measured at Thomas Point at 30 mph during the roundings of Thomas Point Light and Bloody point light generated huge 6 foot waves in the mouth of the West River and a horrible confused chop on the bay. Trapeezing was difficult unless you had rigged adequate chicken lines. Many teams never made it out of the river. Chris Bolton flipped and discovered his crew was nowhere to be found and his mast tip hung on a crab pot. Chris used up all of his good will, righted the boat, found his crew and retired for the day. Jim Galloway and Roger rounded Bloody point just behind Constantine any myself on the Tornado however they did not fare quite so well. A nasty pitchpole separated Jim from the boat while Roger suffered a serious eye injury in the crash. Roger was taken to the hospital and the good news is that the prognosis looks promising at the moment. Chris Brown and WF discovered that when your mast base explodes but everything sort of works with a jury rig AND you can’t spin the boat down wind in 6 foot seas to go back up the West River… you just go south. They managed to sail the rhumb line with their mast tip falling well off to leeward. The sailing gods snookered us again since the huge morning breeze diminished to zero near Calvert Cliffs. All of the survivors closed ranks with Chris Brown escaping first. They were first to the beach in Solomons and saved their time for the leg win.
The forecast on Sunday called for the 5 to 10 northerly to go east and no one trusted the weather service. The fleet swelled with several Hobie 20’s heading north. Tom Yorty and Chuck Woodworth called on their years of experience, tanned and rested from not racing Saturday they were TRUE BELIEVERS in the weather man and chose to sail the rumb line north on the eastern shore. As the tide turned they caught the flood out of the Choptank and along with Mark Shroeder STUNNED the string of boats close reaching up the western shore and corrected out for the leg 2 win. They were last seen with a really big cigars, beers and big smiles. Equally stunned were Chris Brown and WF who were called over early back at the start. The rules mandated a DSQ - however if the 10 minute alternate penalty were in use they would have corrected out for the overall win. As it worked out Keith Chapman and Alec Daunheimer worked their Nacra 6.0 through the spin fleet on Sunday and pulled off the overall win.
Doug Kirby, Jodie Perkins and Andy Herbick managed another great C100 for us. Thanks to John McGlaughlin who created great looking T shirts and trophies and Pat Ragen and the Solomons Island fleet and all of the other volunteers who pitched in or helped out on the water.
Mark Schneider, Keith Chapman
Go to the CRAC website for the full results. Also, for some pics of the Saturday finish, go to:
C-100 Solomons Finish Pics CRAC Web Site - C-100 Results 
