The Hog's Breath 100, a two-day, 100-mile race from Key Largo to Key West, started this morning at 10 a.m., with 18 boats heading south. The winds were supposed to be 15-20 out of the south-southwest all day. Immediately after the start, the wind switched from south to north and became very strong and gusty. At least seven boats capsized right away. One Inter 20, Jay Roth, had a lot of damage and pulled out a very short distance south of the start area. As of 2 p.m., only four boats had finished at Marathon, and the leaders reported capsizing numerous times and said they experienced winds of at least 40 mph. There are unconfirmed reports of three other boats pulling out along the way.
The oceanside reporting stations between Key Largo and Marathon said the winds were 27 knots gusting to 30 knots out of the northeast as of the 1 p.m. readouts.
I will give more information as it comes in.
I CAN tell you that this appeared to be a frontal system, which was never forecasted on the local NOAA station. It was much more widespread than just one of the "isolated thunderstorms" that had been predicted.
Sounds dangerous.
Don't get me started on weathermen.
We just postponed our club's biggest trip of the year down to the coast because the weatherman said it was supposed to thunder and lightning all day. I look outside, and its nothing but sunshine.
Sorry, but I couldn't give any interim reports yesterday because it was too confusing. Supposedly, 18 boats were registered and started on Saturday. Rick and I were doing the scoring, so we were going on the basis of 18 boats. As the afternoon wore on, with heavy wind that was blowing offshore on the ocean side of the Keys, we still had five boats missing. This was not something that I wanted to report, because the regatta organizer told us that he only counted 14 boats actually starting the race. Problem was we did not know which four boats did not start the race. Finally, by a process of elimination, after nine boats had finished and others had called in or otherwise been reported ashore along the course, we narrowed it down to two boats still missing. We told the regatta organizer to call the homes of the skippers and crews of those two boats and try to get information from their families. It turned out that neither of those two boats had sailed the race at all.
Up until 6:15 p.m. when we had all the boats accounted for, I was still debating whether to call the Coast Guard to start a search. Darkness was coming on, and it was already very low visibility because of the overcast skies and rain. The offshore wind was a major worry.
It appears that part of the confusion was caused because the organizer had inadvertently included among the registrations some people who had pre-registered on-line but who had not actually showed up at registration and paid an entry fee.
Hopefully, for this second day of the race, we will know exactly what boats are starting -- the Coast Guard does not take kindly to being sent out on wild goose chases.
At this point I have no idea whether any of the boats that dropped out yesterday because of damage are planning to race the second day.
Rick will be posting a first-day story and results on the welcome page this morning.