Velocity Sailing

From Allison Jones, the superstar Team Manager -

optical communicationsAs I am still trying to recover from last week, I can now start to reflect on my week as team manager for the biggest team for the Tybee 500 2009!  For my purposes, we had seven teams (TVS 1-5, Pirates/TVS 6, and Team Whike), which meant 9-10 hotel rooms at each stop, and LOTS of bags of gear.  I want to first thank, the sailors for wanting to sail, the ground crew for doing just about everything else, Trey’s grandparents for providing hot breakfast each day, and lastly the girlfriends/wife/sister for taking care of their sailors.  I would not have been able to do my job each day without any of you guys.   
I started in this role sometime in March, I think.  Trey called and asked if I were up for the job- I didn’t think twice and signed up.  I started with hotel reservations- that was easy.  I had those hotels down, I had the confirmation numbers all in one place, and everything was organized.  Excel spreadsheets are my friend!  Then we added another team, so I made more reservations, and probably confused all the hotels along the way, changing room types, adding rooms, but somehow it all worked out perfectly.  About two weeks before we left, I realized that we had about half the team in Raleigh, NC, but yet the cars were suppose to leave from Greenville, SC and Atlanta, GA.  This started my second “job” of figuring out how 23 sailors, ground crew, and girlfriends/wife/sister were getting to the keys.  Eventually that got figured out too, but not without some last minute changes.  I thought once we got on the road it would be “smooth sailing” from there.  Little did I know that I would need a vacation after getting back!дивани

Once getting to Florida the “real” work began.  Each day was spent helping rig each boat, making sure everyone had everything they needed to leave for the day, and tracking people down.  After the start the next task was loading all the sailors stuff into the first two cars leaving, and the rest of the stuff into the last few cars.  Luckily I had a lot of help with that part as well, and didn’t usually have to carry more than my own bag. I then would spend the next 20-30 minutes trying to check out of the hotels, some took forever, others made life very easy.  Then, Kirk and I would make our trek to the next spot.  He was my official “driver” for the week.  We would then start the process all over again, checking into the hotels, unloading the bags, bringing them to each respective room, checking in with the ground crew, and eventually making it to the beach.  Each day I also got to be the “cat track person” and as the boys would catch the boat, and pick it up, I would put the tracks under to get the boats ready to go up the beach and get ready for the night.

The week on the whole was very successful, and I owe it all to the people on our team.  The ground crew worked their butts off and all deserve a vacation, but they did great!  After 60+ hotel rooms, 10+ bank stops, 42+ times pulling boats up the beach, and lugging around 10+ bags for the week, I am worn out, but in a good, I accomplished something, and I have a little bit of a tan to prove it kind of way!