This should be one of the hippest happenings in the hemisphere! I went down Saturday to see if I could help out at all. Mapquest directions were wrong, but I did find it.Beautiful venue! It's right on the Atlantic Ocean. There are a series of breakwaters along the shore, and another quite a distance out running parralell to the beach, with enough room to set courses if it's too wild on the outside. The morning started off slow, but as the day progressed we had more and more boats show up. It was great to meet so many people that I've only known from this forum, and race results! I found it very exciting to meet folks from all over that came to race at this terrific event! My guess is that Fleet 204 had the largest contingent. Their dealer showed up with five boats stacked on a trailer! Never saw that before! Then there's that crew from Jersey (and Penn.)that includes some converts from the 17 class like Jim Glanden, and Dan Ward! I met two guys from Venezuela, a couple from Australia, and some really fun and interesting folks from the left coast! A good number of Fleet brothers and sisters showed up to help for the day, and it was great to see them as well. A core group of women organized the registration, led by Barbara "Super" Powers, Tina Connors,Marie Esten, and Joy(?). What a great team they are! Sean Esten, Dave Heroux, and the rest of us guys weighed boats, got the marks ready. P.U. arrived and was there helping measure anchor lines for the marks etc. Bob Packet(?) one of our senior 17 sailors, was there lifting boats as they were weighed all afternoon, despite a recent operation/procedure! How wonderful is that devotion to the sport?! As the day faded we closed up shop, and most folks headed off to dinner. I went to a pub down the street with Mike Levesque, Sean and Marie. We had a nice meal and went back to the beach, where Mike was going to stay as security. I found John (?) from S. Cal. working away on his charter boat with just a headlamp. I got my headlights aimed at the boat and went to see what he was up to. He'd done quite a bit of fixing up, and tuning. By the time he finished, I felt I had a real friend. I gave him a ride back to his Inn, and we met up with Gordo, Ann, and Marcy. They hadn't had dinner yet, and I was having too much fun to leave, so we all went to a restaurant around the corner. What a great day! I think it'll be a really good week down there!