My first Mug Race since 1972! It was pretty awsome to see the RC's run us down. They passed pretty early, maybe an hour into the race. After that, no other boat passed us and we settled into catching breeze along the East shore. The middle of the river was clearly lighter, but the current was better there.

I had never flown a spinnaker on a cat and Barbie had never seen a spinnaker, so I put her on the stick and did the crew work for most of the day. It took a while to convince her to bear off in the puffs (she's a pincher and she wanted to head up!). Eventually she got in the groove and was able to follow some pretty good shafts.

After the Shands bridge we and two other 20's (actually the H21 and N20)finally broke away from the cat pack. There was a big gap ahead and a giant hole. We sat for almost an hour with zip. The N20 (had a giant pink pig on the sail) moved by us again into about a 1 mile lead carrying their spinnaker in no air at all. I saw a flag moving on the lee shore so we turned left and crept over there, catching a nice little draft almost close hauled all the way to Orange Park. We came off the shore with a nice lift in a building sea breeze into the A mark ahead of the others, thinking we might be about sixth of seventh. Then a short trap beat to the finish.

We never saw the 3 A-boats that started and finished ahead of us. Word is that they actually finished up with the RC's.

Can't wait until 2009!

Jack Woehrle
Hobie 20 "Tallahasee Lassie"