Does anyone have an idea what it will cost to do the Tybee 500? Not including the cost of the boat itself. Are there spares available or does everyone have to bring their own?

Boats are brought by participants and need to be race ready. Replace everything thats not new. Have extra boards, rudders, spin pole, sails, battens, rigging, rudder gudgeons and castings, hell just have a spare boat! We brought an extra mast plus the above listed stuff and used some of the spares(rudder casting and spin pole, spin)

Plan on having at least 3 land crew, the more the better. We did it with 2 and worked them extremely hard. Girls in bikinis are a distraction(key Sailings strategy)

Count the hotels, gas, food, beverages, and incidentals for the crew all the way up the coast including 2-3 days of prep on location. $500 entry fee.

Count on 3K at the very least(you may not eat a couple of days on this amount) 5K is better, 10K and you are in.

We had about 8K and barely got by, that included boat upgrades and spares.

Get yourself some sponsors, a good team, and a good team manager. Take care of them. Get a good boat and test it. Buy spare everything.

Sail!

David Mosley
NACRA F18
Team SEACATS

Some people have told us we're crazy, but we're using a 35' RV to go up the coast instead of hotel rooms. Hopefully going to save oogles of cash there.

oh and everyone on our team can only eat grape nuts cereal. Thats it, nothing more. :P

Plenty of teams have used RVs and have saved lots of money. On the plus side is that you don't have to move stuff in and out of a room at every stop, no checkouts or checkins, etc.
However, even a large RV gets pretty small after a while.
Good luck,
Rick

Actually, our cash expenditure up the coast was a little over $2k for fuel in the RV, a hotel room at each stop, and moderate food. It is doo-able at this level but not terribly comfortable. And before you intend to pile four people in an RV - go through every imaginable detail such as making sure there isn't a snoring problem...everyone needs to be able to sleep well on this journey! For the advantages that the RV offers, it is disadvantaged by manueverability. A couple of the stops are very tight and one had us about two miles (and a ride in a taxi) away from the motorhome (that was tough). Our ground crew mgr. recommended having a van pulling the trailer and two hotel rooms up the way (and he's pretty experienced with motorhomes).

For the people who participated in the early days of the Worrell 1000, when they sailed around the clock and rotated a sailor out and sailor in at each checkpoint and pushed off again through the surf, it must be funny to hear people worrying about snoring keeping the sailors awake in the comfort of a motel room.

Ok, ok...I can sail for 18 hours a day for 5 days - but when it's time I gotta have my beauty rest.

Last time I saw you, Jake, you looked like you needed it.
HA!
Oh Yeah! That was after the race.
Rick

Ohhh...there was not much sleep had then...

Our expenditure on hotel food and gas(oh, and beer) was 2K, but remeber 2 dry suits, 2 epirbs, VHF, GPS(2), Flares, horns, safety lanyards, throwable, extra parts, new sails, spare sails, spare spin pole, spare dagger board, spare rudder, spare rudder castings, spare tiller arms, spare tiller, extra rigging, extra blocks, ropes, shackles....
You get the point, the cost are not just calculated on the hotel food and gas cost, somebody has to have the boat and spares. We also had to replace a tire or 2 on the RV, so figure it all up. Dont try to skimp, it will bite you. If you pay a $500 entry fee only to break something the first day and be out because you dont have a spare, then you youve lost the whole race and your 500$.

David Mosley
NACRA F18
TEAM SEACATS

also make sure your ground crew and team mate have good knees and don't let them stay in the hot tub too long.
Team Weathermark

Is this not the sadest thing you've ever seen? And there was another team member laid up in the RV with a busted knee too (two of them).

I can imagine bruises, burns, blisters, skinless hands, broken ribs etc., but not knees.

How do you bust a knee while long-distance racing? Old injurys or ..??

he slipped getting out of the hot tub.

That is a sad photo, because we all worked so hard just to get to the starting line and then packed up everything and went home without even starting the race.
Mike hurt his knee weeks before the race playing frisbee and was doing physical therapy to get it back in shape.The doctor said his knee was in great shape and he could race. We went out for a practice sail on the day before the race and Mike hurt his knee on a tack and we came in. Mike iced it down that night and it felt a lot better and we planned to race the next day. While doing streching in the morning before the race it poped out again.
David our ground crew member had too many rum drinks stayed in the hot tub too long and his knee gave out in the RV (his knee had been injured from skiing years before).

Mike had surgey a few days after we got back and was sailing a few weeks later. David had surgey I think in August and is still recovering

I heard that Mike and David STRICKLAND (awesome ground crew member)had had too much to drink and were dancing together. David, being the manly-man that he is wanted to lead and Mike wouldn't let him. A scuffle ensued and they both ended up on the floor of the RV.

Renee Lennard

HAAAAHAAAAHAAAA...That explains it all!