Team Seacats

Riddled by technical difficulties, I will apologize at the outset that there are no photos from the finish today…yet. Bjorn took a whole slew of them but we need to get them together to get them up on the site. We’re working on it…because there were definitely some Kodak moments! I was writing finishes on the notepad of my Blackberry and was only guesstimating times between finishes so for official results (with no mistakes!) check out the official Tybee 500 site.

Royal Yellow (Jay Sonnenklar and Steve Lohmayer) had a superior showing today on their I-20, leading the pack by a good five minutes ahead of Whike (Mischa Heemskerk and Eduard Zanen) and and Magic Marine (Carrie Howe and John Casey) – both on F18′s. After these podium finishers were TCDYC followed quickly by Catfever, who flipped right at the line. Props to Todd Hart for an Olympic gymnast worthy back flip off the port hull.

Shortly thereafter, it was Team Zhik and then Velocity 1. It was a drag race between Seacats Orange, Royal Green, and Royal White; but the Royal boats were closer to shore and Royal Green made it in in first, followed by a photo finish with Seacats Orange just barely eaking out a place ahead of Royal White. And I mean close…as in two or three feet.  Seacats Orange were OCS and caught some dirty air from Chums/Corpus, who were also correcting and left them starting dead last. They also nearly flipped about five miles out, which was a bit of a tense moment and they lost some time there.

Velocity 2 was the next boat to the beach followed about four minutes later by Accelerated Chaos. Newcomers to the Tybee 500, Team Adrenalin, came in next. Then Velocity 6/Team Pirates of the Chesapeake came in hot about five minutes before Royal Orange. Colin and Jared split their spinnaker straight down the middle at some point so they did quite well, considering that it was a tight spin reach all day. Roughly seven minutes after Royal Orange, Team Mooseburd rolled up about two minutes ahead of Velocity 3.

Another first time Tybee 500 sailing team, Seacats White, were the next to cross the line. They had an issue with their spinnaker halyard, which kept letting loose. Finally they tied a knot in it and kept plowing onward. Chums/Corpus were hot on the heels of Seacats Orange with Stray Cats directly behind them. Cat in the Hat were the last boat I saw come in before abandoning the beach and Velocity 4 were nowhere in sight.

All of the teams I spoke with seemed to concur that it had been a great day of sailing. None of them looked pooped out, as I have seen on so many other legs of the race over the years. In fact, most of them were smiling broadly and seemed fresh and exhilarated. I’m guessing that this good first day (with relatively few malfunctions) gave everyone a sigh of relief, both to finally get underway after days of preparation and gave them a boost with such good conditions to kick things off.