Finally got the story and pictures. Just go to our main page to view.
http://www.catsailor.com

Thanks,
Rick

Great pictures!

Yellow submarine

photographic evidence of why the Nacra 20 is the prefered carrier of business travellers everywhere.

Amen!

it sure looks like those guys are sailing off the wind w/o spi.
is that correct?
maybe it's just to get under the bridge?

Damn boys, I am frickin jealous!

jolly,

Not knowing what the direction is... in high winds, Spinnaker reaching can be quite a tast on the I20. At some point, you just can't point any higher without going over. I suspect they were at that point as the main looks kinda like "reach mode"

More like "survival mode"

Where is the "rest of the story"? More detail about what happened with the damaged boats and the reason some of them dropped out? Thanks in advance...

Regards,
Bob

Dave Calvert is writing up a story. I was only able to start the fleet in Key Largo, run down to get pix at the Channel Five Bridge and get back to KL to do the scoring. I wasn't with the rest of the race.., catching up on orders for the store, a huge, full inbox, etc. after two weeks of back to back seminars.

It looked to me like spins could have been used. The wind was pretty far behind them. No boat flew a spin, however. And it was howling.
Rick

JC said that they had their spin up, but the approach to the bridge you had to drop it to maintain a proper course through it.

TBH if I was approachinga bridge and there was any sort of tide running or any gusts around, I'd be dripping the kite to allow me a little more room to sail where I wanted to, not where the kite wanted to take me!

Can you imagine stuffing any other boat like that and not going on a "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea."? Wow.

I've done worse on a Hurricane 5.9 !

Comments were from the shore that the whole boat disappeared (and so did we) and it did feel like we went thru a whole wall of water and came out the other side, boat came up, water came off the decks, washed the sheets out the back along with drinks and snacks and a compas and we carried on.

i figured the bridge may have been the reason not to fly a spi., but i have to say that the concensus on the forum has been that the spi. keeps the bows up in strong winds.
personally i'm not that interested in adding sail area whilst heavily overpowered, but in the past i have been assured here that it is the thing to do.

on the shot of the diving boat.. you can see dean and jd
dive under quite far and not pitch in the movie "sharing the wind"
the boat comes to a stop though. most boats will pop back if no one flys forward, especially if there is a guy on the wire behind the back beam and you ease the sheets and stop bearing off.

Reply to "JC said that they had their spin up, but the approach to the bridge you had to drop it to maintain a proper course through it."

There was no way I could be on the course, but we spotted them before Peterson Bank and all across the long expanse from there to the bridge, no one was flying a spin. And it was a pretty deep downwind run from what I saw.

However, had it been me in the lead, I would not have flown the spin either. <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />
Rick

And that's all she wrote.

We were in huge breeze coming into the bridge and couldn't come close to laying it with the spin up from about a mile out so we decided to drop and reach up to the bridge. When we were a little over half way there the wind backed off and went left, as it did all day when it backed off, so yes we could have popped the chute at that point. However, we were almost to the bridge and we knew that there would be big breeze on the other side and a sandbar to the south, so we decided to take it easy and cruise under the bridge. When we popped out the other side the breeze really came on and we reached all the way out the cut (about a mile) until we could put the chute back up again and start rockin the outside. On this day we really had to be careful because of the knockers coming down really hard and when you are close to a bridge it is often hard to see a knocker coming. There were four times we put the chute down on that day, once when we flipped on a sand bar, once to find a prop channel, once to get under the bridge and once when we pitched it almost at the finish (overstood). Overall a very fine day indeed!