[color:"blue"] [/color]. Have you ever dreamed of sailing your boat to a tropical island and pulling it up on a white sand beach for a lunch break? Well dream no more. We not only get to do all of that, we get to have two races in the same day. Life doesn’t get any better than that, does it?

This coming Sunday, May 22, 2005, you can do it all at the Bug Light Double Distance Race. Dust of the ole boat and pack a lunch, because it is time to sail. If you are not into racing, come out anyway and cruise the course. If you want to race, have your boat ready to sail at 10:30. We will have a short crew meeting and be off and running.

The course will start from the Rickenbacker Causeway in Miami. We will sail south past the tip of Key Biscayne and out to Bug Light. Bug Light is a lighted 37 foot steel tower marker. It is a couple of miles southeast of Cape Florida. If you want to do some homework, look at a chart and locate the mark. Otherwise just follow the lead boat and hope the heck he knows where he is going. After rounding Bug Light, the race continues over to the beach on the ocean side of Key Biscayne. The race will end when we reach the beach. We will pull up in front of the southernmost condo building. This will put us landing just at the northern end of Bill Baggs State Park. Remember; don’t pull up on the parks beach. They get a bit testy about us Florida residents using “their” beach.

We will enjoy lunch on the beach and bask in the warm sun. After lunch, we will start the second race. This will be a reverse of the first race. Bring a timing device or preferably two timing devices; to record your own elapsed time for each race. Results will be calculated based on the times turned in. If we have enough boats, I will divide the boats into classes based on Portsmouth numbers and use of spinnakers.

You live in Florida; you may as well get out and enjoy it!