Sounds ike you want to sail this thing(?) Heres what I did to prepare. In November I weighed 195 #'s, never been in a gym, and couldnt stand the thought of giving up food. I did realize that this race was going to be challenging, and so I should treat it seriously, in so doing, start strengthening my body and mind to step up to the challlenge.
I have mountain biked for 15 years, but with 2 new kids and a crazy work schedule, even that had slipped. My employer( a hospital with a brand new fitness center) offered a free membership and 3 visits with a trainer. I tried to explain to the trainer what I was doing, and the muscle groups I anticipated would be "challenged". I stopped eating sugar, even sweet tea(thats hard for a boy from S Carolina). I quit eating carbs after 5pm, and I cut back on the cool ones. I hit the gym 2 times a week and bought a weight machine to fill in the gaps. I did millions of crunches, tons of dumbbell work(more on that later) and did a serious cardio workout on the stationary bike. I like the "Hill plus" mode on the bike. I did interval training on the bike in this mode with the one minute rest cycle at 100 rpm, and when the one minute hill cycle hit, I bumped up my rpm's to 125. One minute on, one minute of rest with a 5 minute warm up and a 5 minute cool down. Then on to the wieghts and the swedish ball for the abs. I also found when Jake nd I were training on the I20 that I tended to stand on my tip toes while trapezing. I didnt do alot of that in the race, but I worked my calves pretty hard before the race too, just to be sure. I dropped 15 pounds pretty quickly and my stamina increased dramatically.
In the race my biggest pains were my elbows, I seemed to get a serious tennis elbow in both arms by the end of day 2. My abs were fine, my legs were fine, but my back hurt everyday. I contribute most of my back soreness to staying on one tack looking and leaning backward for 4-6 hours a day.
The Dumbells. I beleive with a good cardio program, a set of heavy dum bells, and a homemade mainsheet system workout bench of sorts, you could bypass the gym. You have to be pretty motiivated to work out at home, too many distarctions for me.
Bottom line, if you want to sail next year, start working out today.
As far as the ocean training, we had one day. Saturday before the Tybee we went out for about a half an hour. Not really a good idea, do more training in the ocean! Practice the starts and the finishes, with the chute up, driving hard up to the beach, thats what you will be doing in the race.

Good luck,
Dave Mosley
www.teamseacats.com