On the second day of the Texel Dutch Open, Darren Bundock and Glenn Ashby (AUS) were unbeatable. The Hobie Tiger-duo took three bullets. The weather conditions were fine with a north-eastern wind, force four and a considerable wash of waves. In total 43 teams started this morning. Mischa Heemskerk and Sander de Boer (NED) finished three times behind the Australians, with their Nacra F18 Infusion. Koen de Koning and Sacha Larsen (NED), also sailing with the new Nacra, are in third position after today.

June 14, Leg One Results:Team Cuba Libre Wins First Leg Of the 2006 Great Texas Catamaran Race on a Hobie Tiger, "Read More" to see full results.

June 14, 7:00pmTeam Wild Wild West is the only boat out. Winds are 15 and steady. Team San Diego had a heck of a run with making up huge amounts of time after having to return to replace a rudder and came in the second group of boats.

Team Chums II had a mishap after the boat coming in behind them crashed into them right on the water line. The boat only got a dimple and all the crew was not injured. Now we are just waiting on the last team to arrive.

June 14, 4:30pm A couple of teams have reported in from the water and most of the ground crew has arrived. Blowing 10-15 here on the beach on Mustang Island with nice formed white caps on the water. The last team to leave the beach Wild Wild West, after repairs this morning, left at noon. We are looking for the first 5 teams to finish before dark.

Reports indicate that the race started off at a slow 5 knots from South Padre and have been building since. The head group of tearms, as of the last report, was R3, Team Chums I, McBok, TPR, Yost and Nautigear. Not in order. All but one team were hugging the coast.

Excellent conditions here and lets hope for a good finish before dark. Photos will follow tonight, late, so check back soon.

June 14, 10:00am There off! 14 boats off with 4 left on the beach. 1 broken rudder cam and 2 with various other problems. As of 10:47 CT, one boat was still on the beach redrilling/mending their rudder cams.

Surf, 2-4ft, winds 8-10. Weather system coming in fast. More soon, gotta hit the road, 109 miles to cover for us ground crew.

See you in Mustang Island.

June 14, 9:00am Some talk last night of pushing back the start but the race is going on as scheduled at 10 am

On Wednesday, 14 June 2006, the 64 entered teams did not leave the beach to sail the first races of the Texel Dutch Open 2006. An approaching rain cloud with heavy gusts of wind made the racing committee decide to keep the competitors ashore. Eventually, it turned out to be not that bad and the dreary weather stayed on. The Open Dutch Catamaran Sailing Championships, which are officially acknowledged by the Royal Dutch Sailing Federation will last until Friday. On Saturday the 29th the Round of Texel is expected to kick off with 450 competitors.

Pre-Race Practice Day, June 13, 2006 Today winds were out of the East, which is not typically for this area, and blowing 5-8. The beach here in South Padre Island is quite shallow for a distance out and produces a nice series of breaking waves which teams must navigate through to launch.

Today started off very hot, humid and slow, but the pace picked up as crews prepared for the safety inspections and some managed to get some sleep and still hit the beach. There is a great turnout of the F-18 class and a few are running the new F-18 European style chutes.

Four teams attempted to launch through the surf today; only three were successful. It made for some great photos. Tomorrow will be interesting as the tropical storm that is crossing Florida is changing the typical local weather patterns.

The teams look pretty prepared as of this evening and are now attending a mandatory meeting and team check in followed by a dinner and meeting later tonight

More to follow...

--Connie Brown
Photographer, Great Texas Race

On Monday June 12th 2006, the organization of the 29th Zwitserleven Round Texel Race received 418 pre-entries. As of Wednesday June 14th, sailors from all over the world will drop in and the annual catamaran spectacle will start on the Dutch Wadden Island Texel. The complete national multihull top is present, among which last year’s overall winners Mischa Heemskerk and Sander de Boer and record-holders Wouter Samama and Jeroen van Leeuwen. Zwitserleven Sailing Team Booth/Dercksen, part of the Dutch Olympic team, will try again its luck in winning the line honours. A helicopter will give the famous smokey starting signal on Saturday June 17th at about noon.

Round Texel Co-ordinator Edwin Lodder: "For now, the pre-entries are less than in 2005, but we expect late comers. Especially with the good weather forecast for the coming week. After last year’s rough conditions, many participants decided to wait and see what will happen this time." At the moment, the fleet represents ten nationalities. Former overall winner and silver medallist of the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Darren Bundock (AUS), and French top sailor Jean-Christophe Mourniac are back to challenge the Dutchmen. The young winners of the Texel Dutch Open 2005, Kearns and Bearns (GBR), will defend their title. This championship, officially recognized by the Royal Dutch Yachting Association, is to be sailed from June 14th until June 16th and exists of course races. Many sailors consider it as a good training for the Zwitserleven Round Texel on Saturday. On Friday afternoon, ten teams will participate in the first TNG Short Track. They will sail knock-out races and the last two boats will battle against each other in the final.

Just Swell! MBYC Cat Fight, San Diego, California, by Connie Brown

What is cold (51 degrees), has a sizable storm swell, rains and has sun? A great weekend of Cat racing!  On Saturday wind direction was due west at 270 degrees and blowing in the teens with swells from trough to peak from 8-10ft. Event coordinator, Carl Teyssier, noted that it was, “an educational day for skippers and crew”.

I had a different platform for this year’s Mission Bay Yacht Club Cat Fight. Usually, I would be hanging off the side of a cat catching a stiff breeze but this year I had a great ride on a 36ft Monohull Committee boat photographing the days events and the photo opts kept coming.

The swells on the first day crested one right after the other and sent several committee boats riders to the side rails more then once.  Racing was a hard and fast. With several boats capsizing and a few completely turtled, some needed chase boat assistance. By the end of the second race on Saturday, more then half the boat had heading in. The other diehard teams wanted more. The Race Committee obliged.

When it comes together in Santa Barbara it comes together. Racers woke on Thursday morning to blue skies and a moderate breeze from the west. The collective thought in the makeshift parking lot campground was “Let’s go racing!” The committee boat headed out and set up a course about 1.5 nautical miles long. We again had all boats on the line at once and the competitors were getting more aggressive as the competition was coming to an end this very day.

So far the field had been pretty random with no real competitor standing out as the team to beat. Larry Harteck had shown his mettle as well as Greg Thomas, but others such as Nigel Pitt seemed a bit out of sorts for the week and still trying to get a handle on the local conditions. On Thursday one team would stand out, and their performance would lead them to a victory for the series and the title of world champion of the Hobie Tiger.

The swell was negligible and the wind waves at a minimum giving the racers a flat open course to play with. It was beginning to look like NASCAR at the stern of the committee boat as some of the less experienced teams got into trouble with dirty air and bad positioning for the start, which led to some “Bumpin’ and Rubbin’” along with some very colorful language. Suffice to say Damon, Eric and I can now say a variety of insults in Italian, Spanish, French, and German! Most of the big boys seemed to head for the middle of the line or the pin, leaving the rest to duke it out for the left over real estate. Enrique Figueroa somehow managed to make the committee boat end his own though, weaving in and out and predicting when and where a hole would open up to make to start line at the horn and in the lead. His chartreuse sail would be the one to look for the rest of the day.

Race one saw 17 year old Taylor Booth take the old guys to task as he led the pack off the line on a port tack towards the beach, but it was Enrique who was the first to “A” mark and by the time he passed through the downwind gate he was a full 20 seconds ahead of the second place boat. The sailing was flat and fast and everyone had their chutes out for some blistering downwind runs that were averaging about 6 minutes to cover the 1.5 nm course.

Race two saw Enrique Figueroa out in front once again and leading the entire race. Greg Thomas and Jacques Bernier were in the hunt as well and Mischa Heemskerk from the Netherlands was looking very fast as well. The top contenders were beginning to emerge and there were very few points separating the top three boats.

Race three brought some exciting finish line action as there was a port / starboard confrontation between Mischa Heemskerk and Greg Thomas. Team Thomas (USA) came into the finish line vying for second place on a starboard tack with team Heemskerk (Netherlands) on port. Thomas started calling for rights and Heemskerk failed to give way causing Thomas to change his course to avoid the inevitable collision – Thomas and Bernier end up capsizing their boat on the finish line. As Thomas and Bernier struggled to right their boat Heemskerk does his penalty 360 and finishes the race all the while not losing any places. Meanwhile Thomas and Bernier lose 9 places and see a possible second place in the series slip away.

A protest was filed and at first glance it looked as though Thomas and Bernier would be SOL as there was no boat damage caused, and the penalty turn done, creating no cause for redress. The question will always remain – was this in intentional act of dirty sailing? Was Mischa Heemskerk merely using the rules and hoping for the right outcome? We will never know, but ultimately it didn’t work out in their advantage as they were ruled as DSQ in race three which dropped them to 6th overall, but Thomas was still scored a 9th, which dropped him from a possible 2nd place overall to 5th. I can’t imagine that Thomas and Bernier were all too happy with the outcome.

Race four was run with out incident and Figueroa walked away with another bullet. He ended the day with three bullets and a third, and a Hobie Tiger world championship trophy. All in all a good four days of racing, and I do believe that the best sailor out there won. Some places down the line are in question in this reporters mind due to some questionable tactics on the course, but this is a different playground than what I am used to, and not everyone plays the game like I do when there are jobs and sponsorships on the line.

The awards ceremony was a pretty swanky affair, held at Café Nu on State Street. They had produced a video of the week’s events combining still and live action for our entertainment. I hope that they offer copies for sale as I would certainly buy one, besides; it shows your trusty reporter on the signal boat in a few scenes! I have to say Damon, that the girls on State Street at 11 pm on a Thursday night are quite a site! Eric was quite impressed – but you know what they say, “You can take the boy off the ranch, but you can’t take the ranch off the boy.” Or something like that.

Again, Damon, sorry for this being so late. When we got the private charter plane ticket for our trip home we had to sell them for some refreshments on the island with our new friends. You would not believe how much they want for a Buffalo’s Milk these days, and well, when you buy the whole place a round it tends get a little expensive. Hey, what’s the deal with cutting off the credit card? Do you know how embarrassing it is to have a $475.00 dinner bill rejected by the card company? Eric and I spent two hours washing dishes before we could sneak out the back.

And now I leave you with a surreal moment from the signal boat that pretty much sums up our experience for the week. In the cockpit stands Paul Ulibarri, PRO for the event. If any of you know Mr. Ulibarri you will remember him as very conservative and very serious when it comes to putting on a good event for the competitors. Now meet Daniel, first mate on the signal boat, and best described as the quintessential California soul surfer. Now picture Daniel coming up from the bowls of the 45 foot cruising cat dressing in an adult sized panda suit, complete with head (I’m not kidding about this…) and the following conversation ensues –

Daniel – “Good morning Paul!”

Strained silence.

Paul – “Daniel, I am not feeling the Panda suit!”, and Daniel turns around to head back to the berths below.

The last we saw Oggie and Daniel, the cat was speeding along the shore of Santa Barbara at what had to be close to 3200 RPM, diesels screaming under the strain with music blaring through the speakers and the disco ball flashing in the main salon. Oh, and Oggie and Daniel enacting the battle between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader on the forward tramp with light up light sabers. As Daniel dropped his light saber into the bay the last thing you could hear as they motored out of site and into the sunset was Daniel saying “Luke, I’m your father…”

Until next time Damon,

Dave Atwater and Eric Finley – Good Night!