Eric Arbogast already posted some details from our Friday adventure so some of this is repetition but here it is:

TEAM CYBERSPEED STEEPLECHASE STORY
The weekend story began at the Miami Yacht Club Friday afternoon. Eric Arbogast was not able to race that weekend and volunteered to sail the boat down to Key Largo with me. We were not the only boat to make the sail, Jamie Livingston was making it on a Tornado with his niece. We got there as they were about to shove off.

The sail started with decent but shifty and manageable wind. There were some gusts but nothing too out of control. We stayed to the West of Biscayne Bay because there was a little more wind there and we were able to pick up lifts. We stayed to the West until it got shallow and we had to gybe out to deeper water.

As we approached Arsenic Key, the wind started picking up and the bows starting to burry with all the sails let out. We decided to follow the channel markers so we would not run aground and lose our rudders. The wind continued to pick up and we had a key gybe to make after Arsenic. We held off making the gybe until we passed the wake of three big boats that were following each other. As we approached their wakes, we got a huge gust and blasted through the wakes. As soon as we cleared the wakes we had to gybe because we were running out of water. To prepare for the gybe we have been centering the traveler and sheeting the main minimize the sail transfer during the gybe. We were in the biggest winds we had seen so far and the gybe seemed to go well until traveler jammed and we were starting to pitchpole. I don't know how we were able to save it but we managed to pull it off.

After that we were basically on a partially guided missile. It was a struggle to head up enough to stay in the channel but we managed despite numerous near pitchpoles and a couple surprise gybes. As we approached Jewfish Creek, I looked at the GPS and we were timed perfectly to make the 5:30 bridge opening. The GPS ETA was 5:31. We tried to hail the bridge tender on channel 16 but got no answer. We still had good speed going through the creek but now it was manageable. As we approached the bridge, it was obvious the bridge was not going to open in time so we put our "Plan B" into effect and turned upwind and put her in irons on the east side of creek grabbing onto some mangroves. We hailed the bridgetender on VHF Channel 9 and because he did not open the bridge at the scheduled time he gave us an early opening and wished us luck for the following day.

After discussing the sail, Eric and I figured that if it were any rougher or more wind, we would have been beyond the limits of the boat. We already approached it a few times.

When Rob Behrend arrived we discussed tactics for the race. The wind was predicted to be higher on Saturday so we called Eric Roberts who was sailing an ARC 22. The ARC 22 has the same rig and is two feet longer. Eric was running his mainsail reefed and explained how to reef our mainsail.

The sun did not come up until just before 7am and it was raining. We made a halyard pigtail to reef the mainsail but we had a lot of problems getting it hooked at the top of the mast. Eventually we put the boat on it's side with help from Kenny Pierce(Team Tybee) and hooked it manually. The pigtail was a little too long. We ran out of downhaul and needed to sheet in the main more but we were block to block.
We did not have time to change it and make the bridge opening so we went with what we had.

We were a little late getting to the bridge but there were still a lot of boats trying to get through the VERY strong current. We almost made it out but we missed our one shot and the bridge closed and we got a tow out.

Once out of Jewfish Creek we looked at how the sails were reacting to the heavy gusty winds and I determined that the sails had about a 25% chance of making it through the day reefed the way they were. Rob said that was a bit optimistic. We did not like the odds and turned around to head back to Gilberts. It was a hard decision to make and I had to go through a period of disappointment but it was the right decision. After a short period of time two more boats joined us at Gilberts and we swapped war stories. There were four boats that made it out of the creek and chose not to start.