Velocity Sailing

I figured I might as well give my thoughts regarding the weather forecasts for the race this year.  At this point, the only reliable forecasts I can really credit with speculation are for the first two legs.

From Islamorada, the boats have to travel North East to get around the gentle curve of the Florida Keys.  As they get around North Key Largo – the land mass all of a sudden leaves their port side and sights of Miami’s skyline can be see off the port bow.  This is also when you can start heading almost zero degrees due north if the wind allows it.

As the forecast models have been refined over the past week, the direction and the speed have expectedly changed.  However the breeze has tacked to the ENE and increased in velocity to 15 to 20 knots for Monday.  This could mean that the sailors might have to do some short tacking to fetch around the barrier islands.  Once they get to Miami, they should not have to tack anymore – and it will be a race between the N20′s and and the F18′s as to who can carry their chutes the highest  - again – for a second year in a row.  I think even the F18′s would be hard pressed to carry their spinnakers that high and in that much wind.  Comments are welcome to impart more F18 knowledge upon me.

Tuesday is about as typical beachcat reaching weather as you can get.  Wind out of the East at 18 to 20 knots.  The wave buildup will give swells from a meter and a half to two meters from the ENE so there might be an interesting launch out of Hollywood.  The hotel we are launching from this year however, has more of a sand bar off the beach than the hotel of past years and could very well block a lot of the bigger swells from reaching the beach.  Remember to watch it all on our Live Streaming page!

I can’t say that I’m altogether comfortable with two legs where there will be a lot of reaching.  The boats are pretty highly loaded on a reach, specifically the rudders and rudder castings and if the skipper isn’t careful to keep his rudders clean of seagrass then he could find himself in a situation where the castings might fail.  The venerable Todd Hart once broke a rudder casting on the leg from Hollywood to Jupiter in 2008 when he was sailing with Karl.  After cursing the manufacturer of said part for many many hours – he imparted some wisdom to the me, which he is apt to do oftentimes.  He said that you can’t push the boat to 100% of its performance 100% of the time.  It will break.  The good sailors know when to let the pedal off so the boat stays together.  Broken boats are slow.

Last week I announced that we would be streaming live video from the starts.  I with-held more information so I could legitimately test the system before I put it to the ultimate trial on the beaches of Florida.

My Verizon Droid is running a program called “Ustream Broadcaster”.  It will stream low quality but LIVE video over its 3g connection to a server where you, the consuming masses can view it in real time.  All videos will also be uploaded to our youtube channel upon successful broadcast.  We’ll link to that when the first videos are uploaded and available.

Every morning, we should begin the live broadcast at just before 9:55AM.  Since I am pushing TVS 2 (Tad), my lovely wife has agreed to hold the camera and catch as much action as possible during the actual starts.  When we go live, an update to our twitter account @velocitysailing will be made.  A couple of disclaimers I have to make:

1) Even though I’m using Verizon, I cannot guarantee that I’ll have adequate data coverage to provide this at every stop.  I cannot guarantee that Ustream will be a good connection for you.  In other words, the whole thing could fall apart on a technical level – but I’m giving it the college try.  Any complaints will be refunded their money.

2)  The work will be completely amateur.  Please do not complain about a shaky camera or wind noise blowing into the microphone because there’s likely nothing that I can do to fix it.

3) I’m doing this because, as far as I know, no other videography is taking place for the race and this event requires that someone capture the drama on the beach as it happens.

To view the live feed – you can click the LIVE FEED tab at the top of the main page – or click here.

And so it begins… another year, another round…

As I type this, caravans of vehicles from Raleigh NC – laden with sailors and their vessels are headed south to the picturesque venue of Islamorada Florida for the start of the Tybee 500.  They will arrive Friday afternoon – and begin to put together their steeds for their grueling gauntlet of a marathon race ahead of them.

Be safe drivers – you have a long drive ahead of you and remember that you’re leaving early so you can take your time getting there! That goes for all teams making their voyage south.

Lollipops and moonshine

For those who aren’t part of the distance catamaran scene – the logistical challenges presented for a team to complete the Tybee 500 are pretty daunting.  For sure it is much more complicated than hooking up the boat trailer to the family SUV and heading to a weekend regatta.  Multiply the logistical challenges for four separate boats and you have the making of a bona-fide snafu if not handled in a professional, business-like manner.

Fortunately, this isn’t our first rodeo – and we have people on the team who have been doing this now for five years.  I think that between all the team members on Velocity, we have over 30 years of distance racing management experience.  However, nothing can replace the surgical-precision-like management skills that Allison has been able to provide.  Continuing her stellar work from last years’ campaign, she already has the worker ants lined up and marching to the beat of the queen of the colony.  All thats left now is boat preparation.

And in that vein, this weekend Team Velocity is having a practice weekend on our local Lake Lanier to get the boats ready to rock.  After the boats are gone over with a fine-tooth comb, we will be doing beach drills and on the water training with coaching boat.

Altogether things are looking good for our campaign this year and plans have progressed at the pace that we are comfortable with.

TVS 1 Showin off! (Nice Protector!)