Truly an incredible day! Perhaps we should have known better since big air was predicted, although not the 40s. You can see from the graph that the wind was over 20 all day and by the time we turned for the 8 mile beat home the gusts were up to 40+. The air was 75 degrees, and the water in the upper 60s. The waves were 3-5 ft and directly on the nose, huge white caps with blinding spray. Solo on the wire on my Nacra 5.0, I went up the steep face of the third wave in a 5 foot set when a HUGE gust got under my bows and I did vertical reverse capsize, bows completely vertical, landing upside down and stabbing my mast into the just-too-shallow water. When I got back aboard to right the boat I scanned the horizon and could see four other boats over. Outside me by a mile I could see Jack Woehrle's Hobie 20 with a broken mast. That was one monster gust!

The stories of many rescues and the long, long trip home I'll leave for others to tell.
Right now I'd like to cheer the heroic efforts of Bob Barton and his daughter for spending hours in his chase boat scooping up swimmers and towing boats to shore in really terrible conditions. The situation could have been tragic without him. EVERYONE thanks you, Bob.

The REAL question is why those spineless F-18 guys (Ding) wimped out of the race at the start.