My most fond "claim to shame" involves that very "march in the mud" at Steeple day 1.

Southwesterly winds made it a long and puffy slog down Key Largo, and Slaughter and I were pretty worn out.

Yes, we should have overstood the line and tacked over to reach over the little cut to the finish, but that would have been too intelligent.

So, we pointed straight at the finish bouy, which was now lying on DRY LAND due to the falling tide.

Somewhere between our position and the finish bouy, the shoal caught us, and grabbed a daggerboard, forcing a tack. Unfortunately for us, that tack put us right up on a nice channel marker resplendent with a full complement of barnacles which made such a nice scraping noise along the hull gelcoat.

So, Slaughter and I jump overboard to control the boat. Sinking rapidly into chest deep muck, we realized that this was going to be a long 1/4 mile treck to the finish line.

No one told me that there are little sea wasps in that muck, either. So, slowly dragging the boat in the muck (getting the itchies) toward the line was one thing. Watching two boats sail by us (they took the other route) was not exactly the "high" point in the day.

The final straw was having to carry the boat (literally) over the line. It was ankle deep at the time.

After cleaning up, the final boat to finish that day enjoyed a nice sail over the line, as the tide had risen enough to clear all that shoaling.

Good times.....

Best part - I still like that race course! Someone shoot me!