Ohhhh...that leg. I remember the sun going down and we still had 45 miles to go. Then at about midnight, I was out on the wire, driving the boat with the kite up reaching a bit (when the wind finally did come up), mild sea state, pitch black (could barely make out the white decks), while trying to keep my eyes open. I thought it was crazy that I was either THAT tired or THAT comfortable driving the boat from the wire that I could fall asleep while doing it. With the beach strobe marking the finish line coming into site a couple of miles away, a hole opened in the clouds exposing the moon which illuminated things for a short while. Frank and I looked around and noticed the silhouette of a Nacra 20 behind us - not very close, but not as far away as we would like. The moon shortly thereafter disappeared again behind thick cloud cover and our attention focused again on the yellow strobe that was visible only when we sailed to the top of each big gentle roller. The shadow of another boat on our tail instilled a bit of adrenalin and neither of us were quite as sleepy anymore. Considering the amount of time we had sailed in complete and utter darkness and as long as it had been since we had seen another boat, we could very well have been duking it out for 1st place ... or last place. Maybe, just maybe, that was Team Tybee on our tail. An hour or so later, as we approached shore and could envision the finish line, the lights from the streets and hotels started to light things up. We saw that it was Team Tygart, the team we have been battling all week with for 3rd place finishes, in the dark and they had closed on us. They were farther out in fresher breeze while we were getting choked by the wind shadows of the tall buildings. Frank and I desperately footed to try and cover and got right down on them to only miss covering them by one wave as they rode it and shot their bow into clean air. We gybed for the beach and decided to not fight them through the surf (we didn't have much chance anyway) to make a safe landing...as the first wave broke over the stern of the boat and accelerated us to the beach, it was then we noticed a swimmer in the water...then someone tried to illuminate the swimmer with a spot light and put it right in my eyes. That was the hardest I've ever driven a boat bow first into the sand.
After what? 14 - 16 hours on the water we finished 3-4 within seconds of each other? That's nuts.
I should continue that story for the better conclusion...
Now completely blinded, I felt the boat surge ahead, bow down, and undoubtedly poised with the bows into the sand at a beach I can now only imagine. I knew Frank was near standing on the trampoline as he was only moments before trying to point out the swimmer in the water. As the bows dug in and the boat decelerated, I thought Frank was a gonner as I saw his shadow headed for a faceplant somewhere in the midst of the self tacking rigging and I slid and rolled on the deck of the boat. Our gracious and incredibly responsive ground crew, both awake AND sober, settled down the boat and picked us up out of the sand as I let forth a blast of profanity. While pausing for a moment only to catch my breath, my Mom, who had joined us for the her first Tybee and is certainly not accustomed to such language, patted me on the shoulder and said, "that sucked". Frank managed to catch himself with the mast rotation bar and made a safe 3 point (cheek, foot, arm) landing between the hulls.
If you watch the video, you can see my state of mind early ..,. and then a little later after I gained my composure.
