2008 Round the ISland (Florida) pics at this link. Lots of boats dropped out. Lighting strike damaged some boats the night before the start. Link here:

http://myfwyc.org/FWYC_2008/

C'mon, tell us more!! Were you telling jokes at 3 in the morning to other boats drifting in the Narrows? Huh?

The RC27 was hit by lightning. Two N20's flipped from the same storm, mine and Ken's. Ken's boat broke the mast. My boat damage some rigging. A sailbox on a trailer was collapsed. I will post some pictures of the carnage soon. Ken and I and crews were having a pre race breakfast at Waffle House when the storm hit. I said I was heading over to FWYC 'cause I had a funny feeling about this. Ken and crew laughed at me, as it did not look like a bad storm. So I get to the club and, Oh %#&*, the first thing I see is the red hull in the air. As I get closer I see Ken's boat tangled up in a trailer and the RC 27. I call Ken on the cellphone and tell him his boat, as well as mine are flipped, and he responds 'Yeah, sure, real funny Philip. I'll be there in a bit"
The lighting on the RC27 grounded out at the starboard rudder and starboard hull. It blew a hole out of the rudder. The damage to the hull was not discovered at first, but after inspecting the bottom, there were dozens of pin holes where the hull was in contact with the ground.
I'll get some pics up shortly.

Results

1. Marstrom 20; Bret Moss / Bob Curry (yes, I was crewing!) 1st overall and corrected.
2. CFR20; Brian Lambert / Alex
3. Nacra 20; Scott Beach / Rob

There will be full results posted on the FWYC main site soon.

It was very light at the start and as you can imagine, it took nearly 2 hours to get to Destin Pass with a fast incoming tide. The wind then switched to the WSW at 10-14 making for a long beat up the shoreline. Thunderstorms caused the winds to switch to the NW for a blast reach along Navarre Beach. As this passed and the sun came out, we sat in the hole before the seabreeze filled in for about 30 minutes. The M20 roared into the Pcola Pass double trapped with the chute up around 4pm and began the trek east. It was a double trap spin reach all the way to the Narrows where we decided to play it safe with all the sandbars. We finished at 7:23pm, roughly a 12 hour day at the office. The last boat, a F28, finished at 4:30am.
The FWYC put on a great show for all the competitors. Dinner on Friday night, Saturday morning breakfast, grilled hamburgers and a keg or 2 at the finish. Sunday, we enjoyed a full spread breakfast. The trophies were very original and unique thanks to Jennifer Grant. The whole FWYC volunteers get a full round of applause! <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> Don't miss next years event!!!

Bob <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />
= Thanks Bret for the great ride! <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

Short synopsis of the race from our point of view.
Started, wind was light out of the NNW. Tide was probably close to max flow as we tried to get out, made for some problems for some boats, we made it right out and worked our way towards the gulf in the shallow water of the West side. Wind picked up shortly after rounding the sea buoy and was blowing ~15 out of the West.

I've not looked at the GPS tracks so times are approximate.

We beat for about an hour and a half up towards Navarre. We got ~10 miles from PCola beach and the wind DIED. After an hour and a half the breeze came back and we were on a close reach to the pass. We came in the pass at ~5, poped the kite and headed for home.

We made it through the Navarre bridge around 7 and on to the narrows we went. The breeze stayed pretty constant up till just after sunset but lightened as the evening went on. We rounded the #8 buoy at probably 10:15 and headed to #3.

Just after rounding #3 we were RIGHT on top of two boats that we thought we had lost. (6.0 express and the first I20) After a heated exchange with a passing motorboat a/b out lack of lights we all finished within 45 seconds or so of each other at 10:45. The next boat was an I20 at 12:30 and I don't know who/what after that.

Tough race but could have been worse!

The RC did a GREAT job and we had burgers waiting for us when we hit the beach and a great breakfast at FWYC the next morning.

oh... so it was Brett Moss? Why would he start trash talking saying he was someone else and why would you let him?

I think I am done racing.

Do not let one person spoil your experience. Brush it off. Its definitely not worth it.

alright robi... you make a good point. how about no races with certain participants.

10:30..... 12:45.... That's not supposed to happen in the middle of summer! How the heck am I going to get sweetness to do this one again with those kinds of finish times. She still looks at me funny when I ask her if she wants to do it again.

Hey?! Where were the super kitties?

Agreed; don't let one person ruin your sailing.

From the RC27- race started a little stressed for us. Replaced rudder damaged by lightning with the spare we carried. Checked hull and found some small holes from lightning going to ground. We thought (hoped)this would be just cosmetic. Our thoughts on leaving the boat over night now, are to leave part of the boat on the ground. Carbon does a good job of transmitting electricity. We may have avoided all damage if the boat had been on the ground. The front was on cat trax and the rear we had on foam noodles. This meant the lightning had to jump to the ground. In doing so we had damage. Bill Roberts, commented that he had a boat the was suspended higher off the ground and it recieved much more damage when it was hit by lightning several years ago. So if you have a carbon boat, suggestion is to leave some part of the boat on the ground.
Back to race- we had a slow start, got clear and set the kite. It looked like the CFR was way out in front followed by M20 and the rest going to the first bridge. The CFR seemed very fast under spinnaker, we eventually passed them going to the sea bouy off Destin Inlet. Then going up wind the M20 had the advantage and over took both us and the CFR. They had very good speed and pointing. This is where we started to look for the beer boat that was promised to be serving us out in the Gulf. Then the Nacras showed up, at this point we began to suspect we had more problems than just poor sailing. We began to go under more waves than we went over. Our speed felt very slow for conditions and we suspected we were taking on water. Rather than risk a complete disaster we decided to retire and head back to FWYC. This was about at 25 miles west of Inlet. Upon reaching the beach we found the starboard hull very full of water. Once again we have our excuse to cling too. It really wasn't our bad sailing...right???
Anyway, thanks to the gang at FWYC, they have always gone out of their way to make sure everyone is having a great time. As we were packing up the boat, I can attest to the fact that the "race committee" has way more fun than the racers in this event(yep, that's where the beer boat was..). I think they had a 3 to 1 ratio of race committee personel to racers and they found a way to spend their time waiting on finishers. We will be back to try again next year. If nothing else we will stay close to the beer boat.

. . . and only 9 boats finished.

I spoke with Mike about the super kitties. He said his is getting some work done on it and the other two have not seen the water this year.

Picture attached. This happened at 5:30 am, same time as the lightning

another . . .

. . . and the lightning damaged rudder.

. . .as the RC27 sat.