The Everglades Challenge

Looks like the current/wind situation at cp2 must be terrible. Appears progress is painfully slow.

Randy finished at 6:18.

Looks like an interesting race for class 5 2nd. SOS retraced their path west out to open water and Swampmonkey is taking a more direct but potentially hazardous in-shore route. Winds out of the SE means it will be a beat of sorts. In that case, the outer path where the daggers can be all the way down might pay off. Or will it?

Have there been any videos posted to You Tube yet? I love to see all the new creations some of the competitors come up with.

What's Randy sailing? A new design or that scissors folding trimaran thing he had?

Yes the scissor was there but had different amas than last years. these had remote controlled flood/drain hatches on the stern of each ama. Looked like the same a-cat main body but i am not 100% on that.

Neat! Thanks for that. It's blowing out back right now, I'm taking my jumping dog out on the Prindle 18 for some good clean fun.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-zkjz_ubkc

What's a jumping dog Timbo? Good crew?

He LOVES the water and he loves going out on the cat (a dog who loves cats??).

He's a son of a Dingo, the Aussies will recognize him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_cattle_dog

I've got to find a trap harness for him, so he'll stop sliding off the boat!

Cool video.

I didn't check the times the SPOT transmitted, but my map seems to show SwampMonkee ahead of SOS by less than a mile?

That Steeplechase-esqe route is pretty familiar with both teams so if those tracks are correct, would make for interesting tactics in that last stretch

Thanks Pete, but you see all those horses?

THAT's why I'm still racing on a 7 year old boat, with the original mainsail!

Thank God my dog loves to sail...and drink beer! I've got to train him to get me a beer from the fridge, like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOjdnLeExIs

Swampmonkeys time is 10 min more recent, could be pretty close!

Ah Jeez! I can't wait for the grand kids to come along, I can already hear you saying,

would you like a pony

.

Looks like SwampMonkey got em. Saw the boat (and the driver - Ron White I believe - nice guy) in Sarasota last October. Boat looked really sweet. Very interesting wing setup. Some nice carbon fiber bits too such as the integrated snuffer/spin pole.

http://www.watertribe.com/Events/ChallengeResults.aspx

is the anchor for results. Ron's history in trimarans on the Great Lakes and his devotion to Johnny Lovell's and Charlie Ogletree's Tornado they used in China, revealed to me that he is a mariner... very nice guy I actually met at FWYC.

I asked Donnie Brennan, Boatwright for the Olympic Sailing Team, if that sprit for the code zero was the one he designed and built. After seeing the photo of the boat at Sarasota Sailing Squadron, he said it was.

Small world - sailing can be, hope to hear from Jake soon,
Bert

welp, we're back! What an adventure! A brief run-down:

Randy hit the creeks at CP2 just in time to catch the last bit of the incoming high tide and ride the ebbing tide out. We hit the Chockoloskee creeks at a little after 3am and were met with a ripping tide. We tried to paddle sail through it but we getting killed and every time we gained 50 yards, we would lose 100 or hit bottom (remember it's a new moon so it was pretty darn dark). We finally decided to try and tie up the boat somewhere and get some sleep. After spending an hour trying to get the boat secured (the bottom was really shelly and we couldn't get the anchor to set) we tried to sleep while still in our dry suits but it was pretty useless (shrimp snapping under the trampoline and fish or other things sloshing around in the cove...then the gnats found us). We tried to get going again once the morning light started to appear and struggled to gain anything. The current was ripping through those creeks. After about three hours of that, Alan finally jumped out and walked the boat about 1.5 miles up the sides of the mangrove creeks while I spoted for gators <img src="<>/grin.gif" alt="grin" title="grin" height="15" width="15" />. The bay coming into that checkpoint was long, upwind, and about 1.5 feet deep and it took us the better part of an hour to get across that to the checkpoint. By that time, the tide turned and we had to fight it to get out. We lost about 5 hours trying to get to CP2 and it allowed the guys behind us to catch up.

With it being so tough getting out of CP2, we were betting that the Tornado behind us couldn't get out and that we had some buffer. We figured we could shut down for about 3 hours at the Flamingo checkpoint and get some sleep. I set my sleeping bag and bivy under a tree in the grass at about 1:30am but that too was kinda silly. I could hear the mosquitos swarming at me, landing on the netting that was resting against my face, and the bivy isn't the most comfortable thing in the world - kinda like a body bag. I think I actually got about 45 minutes of sleep. My alarm went off right before Alan woke me up pointing out that Swamp Monkey had just arrived. We quickly got back into our dry suits, packed the boat, and took off.

We debated on the inside or outside route for a long time and finally decided that running aground again and again with a head wind would be a PIA and that if we took the outside route we could rip along and stay ahead of Swamp Monkey. Clearly that didn't work and we ended up doing more upwind work than we expected. Swamp Monkey and Chainsaw beat us to the finish by about an hour and a half. Those guys never stopped to sleep and sailed a great race. I don't feel so bad about getting beat by them.

I have a raging cold and am getting ready to go back to bed. I took a tone of video and will be putting those together over the next couple of weeks. Later!

It was great following you and Alan along from here. Great Job!

I'm sure the wheels are already turning for next year...

Rage On, Dude!

Nice account, and I know there are many more of us looking forward to seeing the story unfold. Posting on this forum, while racing, is a first, to my limited knowledge.

Ditto what Mike said it was great following you guys. It was frustrating as hell when the WT tracker would lock up. Alan's dad sent me your SPOT link and it worked pretty well. Lot's of different strategies on that last leg.
Get yourself well.

Looking forward to some video!

phone photos from this year (none came out well, was shooting video for most of the time and didn't know it)

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Last year





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Great picts! Thanks for posting.

Seems the trimaran type design is popular, any reason why that is, vs. a cat or an E Scow? I guess width is not as important as shallow depth?

And what about

Row-ability

of a trimaran, in those tight creeks with no wind?

That last little boat looks ideal for that, but not too fast for sailing!

I've personally got no desire to go feed the gnats for a weekend, but I'd like to follow the race from above sometime, in one of these:

mp;color2=0x010373&hd=1&border=1

That's an Opti

I thought Opti's were flat across the bottom? That looks like it's got a slight V to the hull, like maybe an El Toro?

http://www.well.com/user/pk/Stockton/073.jpg

https://www.google.com/search?q=nut... sAQ&biw=1280&bih=632&dpr=1.5

more





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out of curiosity, do they try to time the start with high-tide?

Or do you just have to hope there's not some huge low tide you have to drag the boat down to?

I like the boat ramp setup they have a short distance away (on the google earth picture). Maybe some cruising boats could follow the course for those less inclined to

rough it

?

Launching from the beach is designed to be one of the few

filters

to restrict the boat size. I don't know that there is any consideration for the tide for the start...it's usually at 7am on that Saturday. The boats have to be above the high water mark on the beach before the start signal. You can self-impose a weather hold on yourself if you the conditions are scary but I think this is the only way you can delay launching...and it needs to be a pretty understandable reason. Waiting for the tide probably won't be an excusable start delay.

Getting into and out of the checkpoints are one of the biggest challenges for the sailing class of boats. The tides at Check Point 2 are incredibly important and caused us to lose 5 hours because we got there just after the door had closed. There is also extended travel through water that's 1.5 feet deep into checkpoint 2...so a cruising boat is probably not the best fit for this kind of race.

These requirements drive a lot of the interesting boat designs - Randy's tri is especially refined for the requirements of this race and sailing single handed. Alan's tri has a lot of features built into it for these things too. I'm already scheming around a design to make it faster through some of the tough spots of the course (I have no idea if I would ever build it). I'm trying to answer the question of whether a cat or a tri is the best fit and I'm not sure what the answer is.

Checkpoint 2 is my freakin' backyard. I agree that it's a challenge when it comes to timing your entry/exit during

full

tides (in or out)with that current kicking. I'd be hesitant to do it at night, too.

Drawing only 18" does have an advantage.

Looks like your track showed you went up Indian Key Pass, and exited Turtle Key.

Swampmonkee went back west and looks like they shot out Chokoloskee pass.

Sounds like successful navigation around CP 2 and CP 3 are the keys to this race?