We're set to go! Calling for 10 - 15 out of the South East tomorrow. That means a spinnaker run almost all the way to Jacksonville. The forecast seems to be be windling here lately however.
There's a pair of RC30s, 2 RC27's (I think), at least one RC22, 2 Marstrom 20's (wow!), 7 I20's, several 6.0s, two Mystere 6.0xls (10' beam), Prindle 18-2, Prindle 19mxs, several Hobies (18's predominantly), Hans' new G-Cat 5.0 Turbo, bunch of 'bat boats' (Farrier and Corsair tri-marans), and then there's countless monohulls. The monohullers seem to be pretty interested in the catamaran technology out here - we've been answering questions for a while!
Stay tuned, we'll try to post tomorrow night!
Holy Moley! Geeshh. Awesome spin run for the first couple of hours! Windward hull only tasted water in-between flying for minutes at a time! I20's started at 10:16:42am and commenced chasing down the fleet! The RC's started within 16 minutes later and the Marstroms 4 minutes after them. The wind was honking there for a good while. After blasting through 32 miles of race course in about about 2hours 15minutes the wind started to fail us before the thunderstorms starting rolling in. The wind got very fluky and some serious rain started falling. Lightning was popping around us for a while before the storm clouds moved out and the windstarted building again. It seems, however, that David Ingram was fast enough to be just ahead of the storm clouds and caught a conveyor belt to the finish. The rest of the I20 fleet duked it out and all finished within 5 minutes of each other (after 38 miles!). That was amazing.
My appologies for rambling. Jenny deserves props for manning the beer tent throughout the storm squalls - this even after a blast of wind stole the tent from over our heads, over the roof of the rudder club, and threw it into the rigging of their VHF antenna! There was some serious carnage on the course after the I20 fleet finished. Masts broken, boats capsized, boats abandoned, and the coast guard was busy. The Mug race folks were absolutely amazing in handling the calamity and trying to account for any missing boats. At this point it appears that everyone is accounted for and nobody is injured.
It was a wild ride in the Mug Race this year!
Here's the top 10 finishers. There were 190+ boats registered but it was certainly a day for the catamarans! Remember that the start is stagered based on each boat's handicap. First boats over the line win and every boat you pass on the water gains a position. Sorry for all the blank space below..I can't figure out why it's doing that.
|
Skipper |
Boat |
Finish Time |
Elapsed |
|
Eric Roberts |
RC30 |
3:05:36p |
4:35:03 |
|
Mike Tierney |
RC27 |
3:09:36p |
4:40:26 |
|
David Ingram |
I20 |
3:23:19p |
5:06:37 |
|
Pete Haley |
H21 |
3:26:18p |
5:29:14 |
|
Tom Worthman |
I20 |
3:26:30p |
5:09:48 |
|
Mike Kelley |
ARC22 |
3:27:07p |
5:03:06 |
|
Goran Marstrom |
M20 |
3:27:16p |
4:50:33 |
|
Blake Macdiarmid |
I20 |
3:28:47p |
4:50:33 |
|
David Mosely* |
I20 |
3:29:25p |
5:12:43 |
|
Terry Loewen |
I20 |
3:29:35p |
5:12:53 |
*Team Seacats
Jake, Thanks for the wonderful report! Sounds wild! My congrats to Dave Ingram! Glad nobody was seriously injured! I hope you and Dave are ready for the big race cause I will be rooting for you! I'm rooting for Nate and Chris in the second half! Brian
Thanks Brian! It really was a fun run up the river! We put a full story on our website at www.teamseacats.com we saw Roy Laughlin walking around with his camera bag too. I trust that he will have some great photos as usual at www.floridamultihullsailor.com.
I got caught in the same line of thunderstorms except I was trying to go up muddy paths in my truck.
Definitely was glad I wasn't on the water. Happy to see you guys are ok, and hope you didn't break anything really really expensive 😛