day 1.....off to a slow start, got pinched out at the start and had to loop around at start about 30 seconds late. A nice reach in about 12-15 knots to card sound bridge. Tripp did a great job on strings and by the time we reached the bridge, we were right behind the other F-18's (Ingram, Jake Kohl, and Jim Zellmer). Then a nice upwind to the entrance to Angelfish creek. We were second into the creek (of the F18's) right on the tail of Jake, once in the ocean it was a double trap "death reach" south. After a short period, we decided to try the kite, it was a much smoother ride with the kite, but we were being constantly knocked towards shore, we had to douse and reach back out and found ourselves a bit ahead of jake. The spin runs got longer and the reaches shorter as we moved south until we could run with the kite and not have to worry about getting knocked to the shore. Behind us, it looked like Dave had passed Jake (later found out the Jake broke a spin halyard cleat and had to stop to regroup). appeard to have 4th (behind the 3 carbon boats) comfortably locked up with some time in our pockets. Until.........the spin bridle broke and the pole folded. Crap....20 miles from the finish and no kite. While we were stopped to work out options and Dave passed us and checked to make sure we were ok. Our jury rig consisted of passing the spin tack line through the spin bridle tang on the windward hull and tying it off to the beam. We were able to do 14-16knots this way but both Jake and Jim passed us as our progress slowed considerably. Each time we needed to jibe, Tripp would douse the kite, scurry out the bow, untie the tack line, throw it around the forestay, we'd jibe the boat, then he'd scurry out the other bow and retie to the new windward hull, rehoist the kite and off again. Once we got back to the beach, Mike Krantz, Dave Lennard, and Brett Moss immediatly dove in and started working out how to get us fixed in time for the morning start. Dave and Mike rode with us back to Gilberts and spent about an hour building a patch section for the pole and putting it back together. Aren't cat sailer friends great!


Now day two.......short spin run down to the channel 5 bridge, the pole lasted about half way there before it broke again. Crap......last under the bridge with our competition out in the distance. At least it would be upwind the rest of the day. Tripp, the animal that he is, worked his tail off and before long we had passed Jim and were crossing tacks with Jake and Dave. Trying to navigate one of the really narrow channels, we were clumped in with 3 other boats and I got pushed too far outside the channel, we hit bottom and capsized. Damn......competition sails away. Again Tripp grinds them down again, Just as we catch up, our mainsheet blocks break. **insert explatives here** We stop the boat and Tripp goes about jury rigging the blocks and after about 5 minutes, were off again. Jim is still behind us, Jake is way out in front, and Dave is about half way between. The rest of the leg is spent again catching up, but we ran out of room and finished a couple minutes behind Dave.