That is what the slogan on the t-shirts claimed, and this year they were right on. The 52nd Mug race was an excersize in patience. I know how the Chico guys felt, a whole day of 0-2, but hey at least it did not rain on us.

The Mug is supposed to be a 35 mile race down the St Johns River, with a stagard start based on corrected times. We had a 9:53 start in about .25 knots of wind and started with the standard A-cats. My brother-in-law flew in from OK to race this with me. Not the best conditions to preview the boat or its weight carrying ability, as we were weighing in at about 340lbs

We managed to keep the boat moving and gradually worked our way through the fleet of boats starting ahead of us. I have to admit it was very cool to ghost with spin up and down about 15 times, through what seamed like 200 monohuls and cats covering the river. We worked our way to the front with a Mystere 6.0 sailing single, an A-cat with spin, and a G-cat single with reacher (best combination of sails for the day, and well sailed by Hans)

There is a bridge half way, and who would have expected the catamarns would have to worry about a cutoff time to be scored. A couple of the larger boats had slowly caught us as the day wore on, RC27, SC22, and an I20 right before the bridge. Only the A-cat w/ spin, the RC27, SC22, and Gcat made the cut off time. We were within hailing distance, but missed it.

As it looked like we were on pace to finish sometime on Tuesday, we sailed over to the side of the bridge with the I 20 to see if we could pull out and use their ground crew to shuttle transportation. Unfortunately for us they were just getting a dinner delivery and there was not a place to pull out. Begrudgenly we pulled back out into the river. But luckily, the wind began to fill in ever so slightly. Also a number of boats managed to catch up, so it at least became interesting again. For the next hour we were able to fly the spin and even got to single trap with it for a short time. We passed the G-cat, Mystere, one of the SC22s and were loosing very little ground to the RC30.

We did manage to complete the whole course, even the tuning marks, before the sun went completly down. The finish commitee boat was pulling anchor just as we came up to the line. At least when we hit shore she came up an appologized for not scoring us because of the time limit, we missed both of them by less than 10 minutes. Very frustrating to go all day and not be scored. This was an endurance series race as well that will now end up causing much debate.

It was a fun race though, and with 340 lbs on the boat it seamed to still move very well. And with a little bit of spin run I was able to show off what it could do to my brother-in-law, so his trip out was not a complete waiste.

We are due for a blow next one.......


Matt

It was too long with no wind...unil it was too late! I was crewing on the I 20 Matt mentioned, sailed by Dave Ingram. We were about 5 minutes from the first bridge at the 6:30pm cut off time. There were a couple motor boats sitting there, I hoped they were finishing boats there but no, they told us "It's over for you..." So we went to shore to get food and beer. A couple of locals there told us about a boat ramp just north of the bridge so we decided to pull out there rather than risk spending the night drifting on the river.

Of course then the wind came up, as we were pulling the boat apart! It would have been nice to finish but not at the risk of spending the night out drifting.

Nice job Matt. You guys were way up there, ahead of just about everyone. Which side of the river did you go up after the second bend? We went up the left side, expecting the forcast east wind to be stronger there, but the boats who went to the right passed us in a very light breeze. There was also some adverse current until about 4pm when the tide changed. That may have been stronger on the left side, I don't know.

Was that a long day or what? Then, at 10pm, I drove the 4 hours back to Sebring, missing 9 deer on the road side and having many halucinations from about 1-2am! I got to sleep around 3am.

At 0800, the wife wakes me up and says for Mother's Day, she wants to go to Epcot to see the flower show.... I told her she's not MY mother!

I talked her into going shopping in Sarasota instead, Dinner at the Columbia and then Killwinn's candy shope for some fudge...

If you had been solo I'll bet you would have won it. I told you it's a light air race!

Next year, I'll be home if they do it on Mother's day weekend again! Drifting all day is not worth the payback I have to give mamma.

Yo Tim,

I lost count how many times we crossed the river looking for any wind. We made a huge mistake at the second bend and stayed on the west side thinking the sea breeze was finaly going to fill in. We got caught in a current and could not get out the air was so light. We had been trading tacks all day with Jeff on his 6.0, Brett on the A-cat and Hans on his G. They all went across the river and kept going, while we were watching a boat coming up the left and felt it was going to be OK (Turned out to be the second RC 27) This is where we lost those guys and getting ourselves counted. Even after going over with you guys to see about getting out, we were only 7 min slow of being under the bridge in time.

What realy bites is since BK quit and got a tow, he is going to be a stickler on scoring for the endurance.

If we could have just had the wind we had after the bridge, we would have been done the whole thing in a couple of hours. As it was we ended up back in Merritt Island at about 2:30, just in time for Mothers Day.

Matt,

Not cool, making the implication that Brian will be bias because he got a tow! You and I both know Brian better than that!

Keep in mind it's NOT UP TO BRIAN how a race is run or scored. All Brian can do is work with what the regatta provides him. The results will show only 3 boats finished and everyone else earned a DNF. Times were NOT recorded for any boat that did not make the cut. Therefore there is NO WAY corrected results can be computed for any boat that did not make the cut off! The SI, and the RC clearly stated the cut offs.

You were out before the bridge, and we were in front of you and we verified with the Rudder Club chase boat before we headed for shore.

Being a stickler for the rules is the ONLY OPTION Brian has. To start bending the rules to suit a minorty is wrong and you know it.

Regards,
Dave

Jeez Dave,

Take it easy. Nobody got any times taken, so there is no way we could have been scored anyway. I know perfectly well it is not Brians fault, but, I am going to continue to give Brian crap about being towed just because.

We're due for wind on the next one, and we had best set up taking our own times now too as a back-up.

Drift fast

Any of you guys got GPS units on board. Pretty hard to cheat with GPS tracks. Is also a good check on wether everybody rounded the marks alright.

Wouter

Oh there is no doubt we are due for a good one. We paid a big price for this year... I'd say we have enough in the bank for the next five years.

No issue giving a guy crap for cathing a line... it was that other part I got pissy about.

Wout,

That's really not the issue here, and nobody is calling cheat.

Ding