Velocity Sailing

Photo courtesy of Wendy Daunheimer

So how do I put a nice ribbon and bowtie on this whole week?  There were emotional ups and downs, and things to celebrate and things to reflect upon.  One thing is for sure, I’m definitely avoiding turning on my work computer’s email – I’m going to be going through those all morning long.

When Team Velocity came to the table of the 2009 Tybee 500, we were heeding the warnings of Race Promoter Chuck Bargeron, who sat us down prior to the 2008 Tybee 500 and told all in attendance that “10 boats don’t pay for this race, simple as that.  I’ll run it for one more year but we need at least 15 or 20 boats to make this race keep going.”  So Trey and I decided that we were going to push as many people as we knew were capable of competing in the race into participating under the banner of Team Velocity.  We brought in the blue wombat, and we brought in Alan and Brett – who would have had a very difficult time getting to the line on their own.  We are so proud of how they competed in a race that tested both the sailors physical and mental reserves.  We were proud to have them compete under the Velocity name and we look forward to racing with them in future events.

What can we say about Carrie and JC other than – wow.  We brought them into the fold to bring an extra spotlight to the event.  We knew that while nearly every catsailor would follow the race, we wanted to bring in names that appeal to the larger sailing community – and beyond.  Carrie’s status as an Olympian brings that allure that brought in spectators that would otherwise not realize how exciting this race really is.   She had a great time, despite being dreadfully ill for the first half of the race; one tough girl thats for sure.  What was even better is that they gave Mischa and Eduard a run for their money up the coast, coming in second place overall and second place in the F18 class.  Fantastic jobs you two, we are honored to have you sail under the Team Velocity name.  Thank you so much for being true team players!

Another huge thank you, goes to Allison Jones, and the rest of our stellar ground crew.  Allison managed to do the impossible, and do it with flying colors.  When Trey and I had to find someone to be in charge of what was going on while we were off on the high seas, we knew that Allison would be the perfect choice.  Our decision proved to be spot-on.  She handled the duties we assigned her, and much more.  She did it with an air of authority that the ground crew respected – but didn’t resent.  She handled the hotels, the logistics behind getting the bags in the room, getting repairs made, getting ground crews tow ork together on getting the boats ready.

The ground crew as well, worked as a well-oiled machine from my limited perspective.  Even though I’m sure there are a few gripes from the crew, overall everyone I spoke to said that they thought it went well.  They made mention of the fact that more support personell were needed per boat, so that is definitely something that we’ll look into in the future.  However, every morning, I walked out to the beach and my boat was rigged and ready to push off.  Every evening when we landed, even in Cocoa at 3AM, the boat was meticulously taken care of.  When we broke down, the ground crew was there within minutes.  Simply put, from the sailors perspective, it was flawless.  Thank you guys so much.

We also owe  a huge debt of gratitude to our sponsors.  Magic Marine hooked up the whole team with the full complement of gear that we needed to compete all week.  The thermal wear kept us cool during the hot, windless mornings, and then it kept us warm during the thunderstorms and late nights.  The gloves were bar-none the best gloves I’ve used in this race, protecting our hands from those insane double trapped spin-reaching sheet loads.  Big thanks go to them and Carrie for sealing the deal.

I need to also thank Kate and Jen for handling the website duties.  I know Kate had a whole slew of other duties to fufill and updating the website was amongst them and they always managed to get it done.  Thank you girls.  I’m sure I”ll be paying for that effort with husband points for a while to come.

I’d like to thank the seemingly tireless race committee for once again managing to herd cats.  The cats not being our boats, but the crazy fools who sail them.  Its true what they say, that you can only make some of the people happy some of the time and they managed to do that this year yet again.  Things always get very sticky during the race when someone violates that boundary around Canaveral, and this year was no different.  I certainly appreciate the fact that the committee stayed out till 3:09AM at Cocoa Beach to wait for us after our chute blew out.  I appreciate the big hug I got from John Williams when I finished, since he knew how much it mattered to me to get redemption for my failure in 2006.  Thank you guys.

In that vein, I had to transition my post into something I wish that I didn’t have to talk about, but it is something that truely put a damper on my feelings coming home after the race.  And before you read any further, the following is the sole opinion of me, Tad Pecorak.  I don’t know if it lends itself to any kind of credibility, but I feel as a 3-time paying supporter of the race, I earned somewhat if a right to say what I think.

For years, this race has struggled to pull even 10 boats to the starting line.  The logistical challenges, the money involved, the preparation needed both physically and financially – it was always difficult, and always monopolizes your life for at least 8 months out of the year.  No other race would warrant such an effort.  This race is so much more than just a race – its an adventure, and an experience that you cherish for the rest of your life. 

For YEARS, the venerable Nacra 20 class has carried this race on its back.  It was a symbiotic relationship.  The race needs the class to survive, and the class certainly needs the race to survive.

During the awards ceremony, the race organizer, Chuck Bargeron said that “I can see this race going F18 only in two years.”  He obviously felt the riot that was about to erupt and then mentioned that “as long as the 20′s keep showing up, they’ll be welcome.”  I like Chuck Bargeron.  He’s a good man, he does a lot of work behind the scenes to make sure that the race happens and happens smoothly.  He’s financially responsible with the race and is a good steward of the faith that we as racers put into him.  However, this comment has certainly soured the mood, at least from me and probably more than just a couple Nacra 20 sailors/owners.

I can certainly understand Chuck’s intentions.  The Nacra 20 is a North American based class who remains relatively strong in isolated areas.  The F18 is stronger in North America but it is even more popular overseas, especially in Europe where the competition is simply off the scales in relation to North America.  This year proved that F18s can do the race, can do it better than N20′s in certain conditions.  This is great news! In addition to the 20′s that showed up in FORCE this year, more F18 sailors will now see the light and come out to compete.  From a race organizers perspective, that is great news!  F18′s can race alongside the 20′s perfectly!  Heck, maybe a group of Tornados want to come out and play, that would bring in even more!

Instead, certain people on the internet, and in person, made the race more about the boat comparison rather than the sailors involved.  This bug got in the ear of the organizer apparently, and a line was drawn in the sand that wasn’t the finish line.  

While I can certainly understand why people chose to compare the platforms, thats not what this race is about.  I know that I wasn’t racing the F18′s.  I didn’t care about them once we were racing.  If one rolled over me to windward, thats fine, I’m not racing them.  My competition was more than stiff in the class alone.  When I spoke to Steve Lohmeyer on the beach at Fernandina, I asked him what he was going to do today.  ”Just keep Trey within 17 minutes of us, thats all we need to do”.  I found it particularly telling that Steve, multiple time OVERALL winner of this race, and by any means an accomplished catamaran sailor with an impressive resume, didn’t say something to the effect that “we need to finish an hour in front of Mischa to win.”  Whether Steve was being realistic with his goals for the day or he simply didn’t care about racing against the F18′s, I don’t exactly know – but I do know that he finished the overall race in front of Trey.

So how welcome would you feel, if you were invited to a party, but told that “unless you come with a bunch of people, we’re going to turn you away”?

Thats how a lot of us feel.  We feel like we’ve more than proven that our class is willing to support this race year after year, and then told that we are going to be phased out over time is simply insulting.  I hate to feel like that after such a great event, but it has to be said so that people understand where I stand.

Looking at the long range forcasts, it could be a light year. I know all my fellow competitors right now are beating their keyboards yelling “Damnit don’t jinx it Tad!” but, well, I don’t believe that anything I say here will do anything to placate the powers that be who control the wind.

Monday for the start looks decent with 10-15 at the start from the SE which will make it a nice reach then spin run up the coast. As the day wears on, it looks as if it will drop to 5-10, which as long as its still closer to 10 than 5, and from behind us, we’ll still make decent time.

But Tuesday looks brutal for Hollywood’s forecast. 0 to 5 but at least its from behind us. One thing that these weather sites almost never seem to get right though, is the effect of what we call “sea breeze”. Sea breeze happens when the land mass warms up during the course of the day. It heats faster than the water and it causes a temperature gradient. Energy flows from the heated area to the less heated area, and we feel this with a nice 10 knot breeze blowing onshore. The things that can suck seabreeze away are overcast cloud cover (which usually means that theres a Low Pressure system around – that means wind too) or thunderstorms that dump rain on the land mass, effectively throwing a wet towel on the thermal generation. That happened in 2006 where we had to sail 120 miles from Jupiter to Cocoa with no sea breeze.

Today I wake up, get my cup of coffee and sit down to read my googlealerts to see that Velocity was mentioned on two separate websites.

First, our media sponsor over at Sailing Anarchy ran a nice piece about how the team is getting ready for the race next week.  We don’t know who the guy was that wrote it, but it sure sounded brilliant!

Also, my good friend Kirk Jockell who I sail Wednesday night races with over at LLSC, put up a story about TVS 2 and Team Zhik, over at saillanier.com.  The site is focused around the extremely healthy racing on Lake Lanier here in Northern Georgia.  Kirk’s writing style is very infectious and fun to read. 

As for how we stand?  I can finally relax a bit I think.  Brett, Bailey, Kate and I stacked Brett’s boat on top of mine and dragged it down to Atlanta in preparation for their departure on Friday evening.  The boats look pretty slick stacked on top of each other.

Say Cheese Bailey!

New Diamonds – Check
All new rudder hardware – Check
New Bottom – Check
New jib – Check

Today’s last minute list of things to fix is:
Fair the filling on the daggerboards, and then replace both tires on the trailer.

The boards were rough with chips. While its not a show-stopper, chipped daggerboards do not make the boat fast, and this is a race afterall. You can see where I took some bite out of the chips and have since filled them back in. Now I’ve got to sand all that down while taking care not to breathe in all that colloidal silica microballoons! That stuff gets in your lungs and doesn’t come out!

TVS is trailering a total of four boats on two trailers down from Upstate South Carolina and Northern Georgia. This means that we’re going to stack a boat on top of another. Its a fairly common practice that isn’t that much of a big deal but it can put a bunch of stress on the trailer tires. I decided that since the round trip will end up being over 1500 miles, that I want to go ahead and put a fresh set on the trailer so that the ground crew doesn’t have to deal with it.

 This past weekend, Trey and I spent some quality time together and put some massive vinyl graphics on the team sails.  We’re hoping to avoid putting them on when we arrive in Islamorada since we’ll be strapped for time as it is.  There’s nothing more frustraing than having to deal with things at the last minute, and personally I’m starting to feel the pinch.

This year, the live updates on velocitysailing.com will be handled by Jen and Kate.   They’ll be making updates to the website throughout the day and making sure that our followers both here and on twitter are informed of what is going on.  We’re also going to be followed by the famous “MR. CLEAN” from Sailinganarchy.com the whole way up the coast.  He’ll undoubtedly have some insights, commentary and criticisms the whole way up the coast.  He should be doing some “On the Water Anarchy” coverage with his video camera every day as well.  We look forward to seeing just what kind of coverage that Clean can provide for the week.  Hopefully the weather gods will shine upon us with some photo starts and finishes.

Nasty Chips = SLOW

Lets get this race going!

Team Velocity Sailing is a group of young, enthusiastic beach catamaran sailors with humble roots, but grandiose plans.  Defying the skeptics from the start, its woefully inexperienced, underprepared founders Trey and Tad competed and finished their first Tybee 500 while still in college.

They say life is a learning experience, and Team Velocity has learned as it has grown.  We’ve competed in national and international events, growing from a single boat held together by college student intuition – to a four boat “syndicate” whose members can proudly boast of their many accomplishments on the water.  At its core, Team Velocity is a group of young individuals who thrive on spreading the excitement and thrill of multihull racing to as many people as possible.

We all remember the days of the Worrell 1000 – where teams lined up to take a crack at being the hardest, fastest bastards on two hulls.  We remember when legends from the monohull world, from the America’s Cup world, from Europe, Australia, and New Zealand  – would line up bow-to-bow against some of the best (and some of the worst) in North America to shove off through the breakers into the Atlantic every morning.  We want to bring that back – we believe in this race and the life experiences that it gives everyone who participates in it.

The members of Team Velocity Sailing have put together an outsourced logistics program for the 2009 Tybee 500.  Anyone who has tried to compete in a race like this knows that the preparations begin months in advance, and that getting to the beach is half the battle.  Even outside of preparing boats, hardware, and sailors, the logistical planning that goes into this race is often the one hurdle that intimidates most people out of competing in this epic event.

If you are a cat sailor and you’re on the fence about competing, give TVS a shout about handling your logistics.  We can arrange your hotels, reserve your ground crew, arrange meals, and handle race paperwork on your behalf.

So get in touch with us,  and lets make it happen.

Yesterday, the members of Team Velocity Sailing converged on Trey’s new house in Greenville SC to conduct our first preparatory meeting for the 2009 Tybee 500.  This year marks a special occassion for Team Velocity in that we’ve officially become a racing syndicate.  Since 2005, there has been a Team Velocity Nacra 20 on the starting line for the Tybee 500.  This coming year, we will not only have one boat present, but 3 boats on the line.  More information on the teams will be provided shortly.

Supporting this race team is a group of hardened ground crew veterans who have all helped us in the past.  We’ve grown up as a team together, and are looking forward to putting our best foot forward this year.  Team Velocity looks forward to promoting the sport of sailing to the masses in this year’s Tybee 500 — so stay tuned to this space for more information.

Get that boat ready James - The start is coming faster than you think!