Team Seacats

The first cluster of boats is well over halfway here. Our evil GPS lady has steered us to East Hell and back so we haven’t even gotten checked into our rooms at Fernandina. We’re almost there now though. Seacatas White and probably every other Ground Crew are unpacking to make ready for the arrival of the teams on this, the penultimate leg of the 2009 Tybee 500.

My in-laws have come down to greet us with their grandkids, our beautiful twin neices who live not too far away from here. I’ll be spending some time visiting with them but will continue to update from my Blackberry should I hear something exciting.

I will say that Royal green has either lost their transponder or has had a breakdown because they are still showing up at the same spot as they were in my earlier post. I hope they’re alright and will be underway again soon.

According to the transponders found on the live tracking found on the the official Tybee 500 site, it looks like Royal Green has dropped to last place, a well ways behind Cat in the Hat. Royal Green had a great start and were the third to pop their spinnakers behind Royal Yellow and Seacats Orange so I’m only guessing that Jamie and Leondro may have encoutered some technical difficulties. This map from Topofusion isn’t an indicator of the overall positions since only about six boats are covered by the technology although it is quite nice to estimate the general position of the fleet. As it stands from the last time I checked TCDYC, Royal Yellow, and Royal Orange were rounding up the top three.

I forgot to mention that there was a good bit of contact between two sets of boats as they got turned sideways in the surf while trying. I think Cat in the Hat was in the mix with Chums and then earlier two other teams did a fair bit of bumping and grinding as well. I apologize for the vague nature of this intel but I was taking photos and not notes this morning, plus carrying a bag with ground crew phones and sunglasses.

Here are a few:

Pre-race man candy (aka Tripp Burd), just for my friend Karen.

Lee Wicklund and Jake Kohl

Todd Hart of Catfever

Catsailing is sometimes a contact sport

Ready for the first start

TCDYC and Royal Yellow

Cluster at the Daytona start

Mind you that not all of the following information will be precisely correct. There’s so much happening on the beach during the starts (and so many teams) that it’s difficult to check and recall every detail. Sadly, Team Cat in the Hat broke a rudder arm, it sounded as if Mooseburd had pintle issues they were trying to straighten out, and one of the Velocity teams got backed up in the low but irritating surf and bent both pintles beyond the point of straightening and may need entirely new rudder systems. On up the beach, Zhik had trouble, and Seacats White just couldn’t seem to push through as David fell off the boat at one point while trying to paddle out. They are out and away now, however. I hope that Zhik’s problems’ weren’t many or severe. I didn’t walk all the way down as, by that point, some of the boats were three football fields length away and I need to post and pack up the room. It’s a tough job but someone’s got to sit in the hotel room, without running through the surf and getting sand his crevices like Daryl does. Too much information? Sorry. Speaking of sand and while I’m uploading this morning’s pix to our photostream, please enjoy this sand angel from Daryl Moss while we were on the beach waiting for the boats yesterday evening. Later, he put a halo on top but I think it needs some devil horns as well!

…but Bonnie is now officially off the clock. It’s dark and I’m done. Bjorn, Robyn, and Tim have taken the trailer and gone to pick up Seacats White at some park up the road where they’ve limped up. Jake, Frank, Daryl, and I are going to go grab some dinner. I’ll upload the finish photos later.