Jim,

I'm sorry to hear you are not sailing this year! Team Seacats will be sitting it out this year but are planning for some sort of return next year.

With regards to the open class; I have a mixed bag of feelings about that in this race but I've had a lot of conversations with sailors about that. It seems like the competitors go through a series of phases in their draw to attend such an event. For us last year, our draw was "To Finish". We wanted to do it and that was enough for us. The next time around, we not only want to finish (now that we've done that) but we want to improve our finish position. I'm sure that as we continue to do a race like this, every time we run it, our goal is to perform a little better until ulimately being near the front line to the beach. The open class makes that goal much harder to reach. Another point of interest is that with every kind of racing, the back of the pack gets little coverage. If the leaders are running hours ahead instead of minutes, the coverage (and sponsorship opportunities) for the back of the pack teams (i.e. the entry level teams) could get worse as well.

On the other hand, I think it will be interesting to see the development come out of these boats but it could easily get boring (ref: Oryx Cup) if it turns into a blow out. When the charm of COMPLETING a race up the coast wears out on some of the newer teams, the lust might fade if a few teams completely anhialate the competition year after year. However, the addition of the open class has not detered us from wanting to compete currently.

That said, I think part of the attendence issue with this year's Tybee (I realize that I'm playing arm chair quarterback here) is not the open class but that the information for the race was (is still) so late in coming. The Tybee500 website still has no information on it and only says "under construction". This makes it very difficult to gain sponsorship and almost impossible for an international team to make plans for the event. It is notable on this point to realize that a lot of the delay is the hurricanes that rearranged and damaged many of the hotels from last year so much replanning had to be done. Chuck runs a hell of a race and does it on a cut-throat budget - I couldn't suggest anyone better suited to put a race like this together. But the formula is still a little incomplete - they've got the hard part, actually running the race, together and totally in control but there is currently a need for more publicity and planning to be made available to the sailors ahead of time. I think that last bit will help bring attendance up again.