It's coming...I should be home this evening to upload it (we're still traveling right now). I've got some personal synopsis at www.teamseacats.com

There should be no regrets in pulling out of that race. We questioned our sanity on several occasions.

Rounding down was certainly tricky and there was one occasion where we were getting pushed to close to a key on the ocean side and had to round upwind so we could sail away from land a little and bear away again. There was no way to sustain sailing above 5-10 degrees within dead downwind or under 15 degrees of close hauled. In that stuff, you feel trapped - sails are all the way out, the main is rubbing the shrouds (probably got some damage there), battens are s-curving, the jib is banging back and forth because you're so close to dead downwind and, given that we were both crammed as far back on the boat as possible, we were half panicked with the potential to have a surprise gybe in a puff that would send the boom across at the speed of light.

Oh, and to help the boat round down slightly more safely, pull the boards up and ease the jib from an upwind setting. The boat won't bite the water so hard with the boards almost all the way up and will reduce the tendency to lift the stern and dig in the bows. With the jib drawing a little it will help the turn go faster but too much jib will put additional pressure on the bows. Enter the turn with speed to keep good flow over the rudders and turn hard.

Mike,

If you need somewhere to host the images, I'll be glad to help.

Jake,

Excellent description of the downhill ride! It's like sitting on a guided rocket with no ability to apply any breaking system, all you can do is steer that thang!

hi everyone.
It was great fun (and a bit scary) racing w y'all this weekend. For everyone that went, yeah we had a blast and fortunately everyone ended up ok. For everyone who made a wise decision not to go, don't beat yourself up, bc you only got 1 you, and thats never worth a race (no matter how hard it is to convince yourself of that). Anyway re my epirb, I did lose my handheld one (BreakOutAnotherThousand) so I brought my "desktop" unit (a 406 w built-in gps). We actually (miraculously) never did flip (slow conserv. sailing) yet the pirb was in my spin bag which got hi powered drenched and this must have set it off. The coast gaurd told me it only went off briefly and hence never sent gps coords, just an id (it takes about 15 mins. to send first coords). so that being said, makes u feel better about their not locating us (which we fortunately didn't need them to do). On the other hand, when i emptied out my spin bag on anne's beach, the pirg was flashing so either it was intermittently off and on (the first signal had gone out 2 hours earlier) or it was not transmitting properly. Of further interest, once it was out of the bag 2 minutes it dried out and shut itself off automatically. Bottom line, its nice to have a pirb, but try not to need it cause it may not be enough to bail u out.

Look forward to seeing everone on the distance circuit this spring.


lf

did the coast guard make you pay them for going out to look for you?

My laptop died when I tried to turn it on to upload the video lastnight. I'm trying to recover it now (corrupted registry when coming back up from standby). There are other copies - so all will not be lost if I can't get the computer back up. I just can't get to them right now.

Kewl...patiently standing by.... <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

JL

no. actually, w/ further reflection, the original cg officer I spoke to said he had coordinates, but the one i spoke to yesturday said they didn't. since they were already out there for the larger sinking boat and then the f-18 crew, I guess the add-on hassle didn't get their bevy up for cash hit. (fortunately). as per the prior epirb account from 2002, it seems if you keep them updated asap, they r more forgiving.
lf

Just want to say thanks for the terrific thread! I've scarecely(?) been on line for the past week, and to find this thread this morning was just great! I didn't notice the Patriots loss, but this stuff really gets my attention. Some of you managed to getme LOL with your accounts and comments! I was of course rooting for Chaos. They are the "local" team after all for us New Englanders. But there was such a great group of sailors in this event, I found myself chanting "Seacats! Seacats! Seacats!" and then "204! 204! 204!" Eric, if I'd known what you guys were going through I would've been praying. Cat In The Hat, after Tybee, I think we all have become your fans! My left coast brother Gary's questions are typically relevant for ocean voyagers, safety oriented stuff that benefits all of us if we think about it, ( and we should!) And no that's not Gary in his avatar doing the wavey thing. Gary, the "204!" is Hobie Fleet 204 in upstate N.Y. I had the pleasure of meeting Pat, Diane, and their daughter Sarah, and Sue Korz at the Hobie 16 Nationals. I don't know if there is something special in the water up there, but they are one of the most successfull, and fun fleets in the country! Pat and Sarah sailed together in the H16 Nationals. She went back out after the day Hobie Alter Jr. and at least one other boat lost their masts. It blew, and it rained! And the children of 204 didn't quit! Mike S. is a 204 sailor. Yahoo Mike and Lindsey!!! On the topic of the weather, and worrying, Mary I'm glad I was unaware of what was going on. I think I would've lost what little hair I have left! (I'd be happy if it just turned gray!) While we're here, I'd like to say I've been out in similar conditions on Hobie 16s, and there's no boat I'd rather be on in that situation. <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Video is up - thanks to Robin Strickland and Wendy Anon for taking it!

Great video! Many thanks to all of you.

Yeah, I had actually decided to bail before the start when the visibility dropped and we couldn't see the bridge any more. This being our first time there I had counted on atleast being able to see where we were supposed to go. But once it cleared we decided to start the race and sail to the outside and see how the conditions were figuring we could always sail back on the inside.
So we started and actually had a great time sailing upwind in the big breeze. We also thought we had set the jib so we could furl it for the downwind if needed.

When we got to the outside we thought the waves weren't as bad as I had thought they would be. The winds were still very gusty though so we decided to furl the jib but it would jam about half way thru so after about five minutes of being parked we gave up on it and just left it out. We made the turn downwind and hoisted the spinnaker and started booking downwind. Unfortunately due to the wind direction we started to get too close to the shore so we ended up taking the spinnaker down pretty soon and started sailing under main and jib. I think we sailed about 6-7 miles when we got hit with a gust that pitchpoled us. We righted the boat and sailed on a (wild) close reach for probably about a mile or so to get away from the shore. What happened next is something I still can't quite explain.
When we made the turn downwind the boat accelerated from right under me and I simply slipped off. The HUGE mistake was that when I fell I still had the main sheet but let go. Should have never done that!
The boat ended up flipping but there was no way for me to catch it. It's amazing how fast the boat drifts on it's side. Pat even got the boat righted once and was headed back to me when another gust blew him over. After that he was cartwheeling down and away from me. About half an hour later I couldn't even see the boat so I knew there was no way he could see me.
Lucky for me, Pat turned on the epirb and called the Coasties on the cell phone. Turns out that they were not seeing the epirb signal but they had a plane in the air which ended up spotting him. At that point these two guys working on their house on shore saw the plane circling and spotted Pat standing on a flipped boat. They went and got him and started looking for me based on how the CG plane was circling. It was only about a minute after the plane spotted me in the water when the boat actually found me as well. They took us back to our boat and we righted it and sailed it to their cove where they had a boat ramp. At that point I thought it would be too much to try to make the finish line before dark. Not to mention I was exhausted.
A scary experience for sure... I spent about an hour in the water and I thought my only chance was to try to make headway to the shore about two miles away but I did not seem to be moving too fast and the problem was that some of the waves would break over me so I would have to stop swimming and use my arms just to keep my head above the waves. My drytop took on some water making me heavier and I just couldn't decide whether to take it off so I could swim better. Thing was taking it off meant taking the lifejacket off first and risking losing it.
Learned quite a few lessons that day. Will carry a personal epirb during the next distance race for sure (have to make sure it works though). Given the same conditions, I would do that race again though. I don't think the conditions were that terrible. And if we would have dropped the jib, I think we could have sailed the whole downwind just fine.
It's a fun race in the breeze - just need to hang on!

Olli

Not to hijack the thread, but this is exactly the kind of incident that prompted me to start the thread on tethers and such.

From my experience this year - you may have intended to hold on to the mainsheet but you would not have been able to do so (I know I couldn't), and you might have injured yourself if the sheet was wrapped on your hand. Recent issue of Practical Sailor has an article on tethers and a little experiment about being dragged by a tether at 6 or knots and found it be a dangerous experience. I'm starting to think a short tether to keep you on the boat is a better answer...

Jake, that video made me rofl.

Thanks for posting that.

Sure bring that up again! <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />

I'd be interested in hearing from the H16 sailors. How they feel their boat compares to the newer, bigger designs; how they feel about "big" air and distance racing in general. Also, the logisitics problems they encountered.

Jake, that video is awesome, especially the narration. What a pain in the butt that must have been. Great perserverence in continuing to attack.

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.

I'm glad you mentioned reefing the main, after reading all the war stories from the event, I'd been very curious if reefing was even doable on a high-aspect rigs like these. Happy to know it is workable.

Thanks for the story! <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Excellent video!