That is what the slogan on the t-shirts claimed, and this year they were right on. The 52nd Mug race was an excersize in patience. I know how the Chico guys felt, a whole day of 0-2, but hey at least it did not rain on us.

The Mug is supposed to be a 35 mile race down the St Johns River, with a stagard start based on corrected times. We had a 9:53 start in about .25 knots of wind and started with the standard A-cats. My brother-in-law flew in from OK to race this with me. Not the best conditions to preview the boat or its weight carrying ability, as we were weighing in at about 340lbs

We managed to keep the boat moving and gradually worked our way through the fleet of boats starting ahead of us. I have to admit it was very cool to ghost with spin up and down about 15 times, through what seamed like 200 monohuls and cats covering the river. We worked our way to the front with a Mystere 6.0 sailing single, an A-cat with spin, and a G-cat single with reacher (best combination of sails for the day, and well sailed by Hans)

There is a bridge half way, and who would have expected the catamarns would have to worry about a cutoff time to be scored. A couple of the larger boats had slowly caught us as the day wore on, RC27, SC22, and an I20 right before the bridge. Only the A-cat w/ spin, the RC27, SC22, and Gcat made the cut off time. We were within hailing distance, but missed it.

As it looked like we were on pace to finish sometime on Tuesday, we sailed over to the side of the bridge with the I 20 to see if we could pull out and use their ground crew to shuttle transportation. Unfortunately for us they were just getting a dinner delivery and there was not a place to pull out. Begrudgenly we pulled back out into the river. But luckily, the wind began to fill in ever so slightly. Also a number of boats managed to catch up, so it at least became interesting again. For the next hour we were able to fly the spin and even got to single trap with it for a short time. We passed the G-cat, Mystere, one of the SC22s and were loosing very little ground to the RC30.

We did manage to complete the whole course, even the tuning marks, before the sun went completly down. The finish commitee boat was pulling anchor just as we came up to the line. At least when we hit shore she came up an appologized for not scoring us because of the time limit, we missed both of them by less than 10 minutes. Very frustrating to go all day and not be scored. This was an endurance series race as well that will now end up causing much debate.

It was a fun race though, and with 340 lbs on the boat it seamed to still move very well. And with a little bit of spin run I was able to show off what it could do to my brother-in-law, so his trip out was not a complete waiste.

We are due for a blow next one.......


Matt