Team Seacats

Wow what a long and tough day yesterday. Every inch earned was hard fought. We set our boat up for heavy air expecting to have extensive thunderstorms but that never came to fruition and we struggled in the light air to maintain position – I suspect we weren’t alone in missing the setup though. After the sun went down, we were in a gybing dual for hours with Tygart and Castrol II and the lead (for 2nd place) must have changed hands 12 times. Frank and I nearly got caught inside a break water we didn’t notice until we saw an 8′ breaking wave right next to the boat. We eventually broke from the other three boats, thinking we saw an advantage and lost touch with them for hours. With the finish line 10 miles out, we finally had a fresh breeze and were tight reaching with the spinnaker single, sometimes double, trapezed in the blackness (and I was still having trouble keeping my eyes open!). We were using pinpoints of light on the horizon to maintain course and sailing by feel. The moon finally came out and we could make out a boat behind us – it looked like it might be Tygart. With 2 miles to go, the moon was covered by clouds and we lost contact with Tygart but kept plugging away straight at the finish. With about 1 mile to go, Frank spotted Tygart underneath us and in clear air as we struggled to get though the spoiled air off the buildings on the coast – they had made a brilliant move! We footed to cover and were bow to bow with them for the last run in – only inches away from being able to steal their air. With 100 yards to the finish, we couldn’t close the door on them and they broke out ahead! We safely made the last tack for the beach – not wanting to put on a full fight for the finish line (the fight was mostly over at that point anyway) that could lead to potentially unsafe landings, we tacked comfortably for the beach allowing Tygart room to cover us to the beach. As we approached, just seconds behind Tygart, we noticed a head bobbing in the surf just as a large wave picked up our boat and accelerated us quickly to the beach. Someone put a spotlight on that person in the surf which resulted in blinding us since we had been sailing in pitch black for hours. With our energy low, our vision impaired, and our focus distracted on not hitting this person, we didn’t get our weight back on the boat in time for the landing and we plowed the bows of the boat into the sand causing the boat to come to a violent stop. Frank landed hard on his knees and I rolled forward on the trampoline. Frank has some bruises but I think the boat is OK.

It looks like an upwind run today – we’re sore from the long day yesterday but a few minutes of trapezing in a head sea should loosen us up quickly.

Originally uploaded by Team Seacats.