This just in from the Tommy Bahama story about rounding Cape Hatteras:



“My chicken lines broke. Both of them,” said Brendan Busch of Lexis Nexis, speaking of the safety lines used to prevent skipper and crew from flying forward when smashing into the back of a wave, experiencing sudden and drastic deceleration. “They didn’t wear through or get cut – they broke.”



Conditions were described as follows:



"With wind gusts near 30 knots and 9-foot seas, Alex and Nigel sailed around Cape Hatteras through the Diamond Shoals, an area off the Outer Banks that had swallowed more debris than Charlie Brown’s kite eating tree. Several boats found themselves sliding down the backs of monster waves with nowhere to go, a howling wind behind them, and the cold Atlantic waiting with arms wide."