Brian Carr was up in a helicopter this morning to film the start, and he just called in a report to me. They followed the fleet up to Port Everglades, and at that point Team Tybee was well in the lead, followed by Accelerated Chaos and Marley's Orange (Jared and Colin).

Bad news was that right at Port Everglades Trey Brown and Alan Stewart on Team Velocity broke their tiller crossbar in the middle, and Trey fell off the boat. When the helicopter left the scene, Alan was trying to steer the boat with one rudder to return to pick up Trey.

It appeared that Cat Fever was heading back to the beach.

An unidentified white boat appeared to have broken its spinnaker pole and they were stopped, trying to fix it.

I don't have any more fingernails!!!

Three boats have finished at Jupiter, all within seven minutes.

Team Tybee finished at 1:42 (Kenny Pierce)
2nd was Marley's Yellow (Steve Lohmayer)
3rd was Marley's Orange (Jared Sonnenklar)

Three or four more boats are on their way.

4th boat is Marley's White (Dennis Green)

Here is the whole list of finishers:
1. Team Tybee
2. Marley's Yellow
3. Marley's Orange
4. Marley's White
5. Sea Cats
6. Accelerated Chaos
7. Team Moose-Burd
8. Cat in a Hat
9. Team Velocity

Cat Fever is expected to arrive in about an hour and a half. They broke something early in the race and had to go to shore to fix it.

Gumbo Party Directions

www.teamcyberspeed.com/party.pdf

I am heading to the finish shortly. I have not seen Cat Fever yet. I might have missed it cooking though.

In case you haven't checked yet, the finish story and photos are now up on our Tybee web page.

the full story of the velocity encounter is at velocitysailing.com

Thanks

Waiting for the start of Leg 3 from Jupiter to Cocoa Beach. Could be difficult for ground crews today because TV said that parts of I-95 and U.S. 1 are closed in the Palm Bay (Melbourne) area due to all the grass fires going on -- and with winds from the west-northwest, the smoke is all blowing toward those roads. Schools in Palm Bay have been closed today because of this problem with road closures.

Also, the firefighters think these fires are being started by arsonists because a new fire starts in a new place exactly every 45 minutes.

In his morning story on our Tybee 500 page, Rick said that we now have it set up to watch the live tracking from Team Tybee and Cat Fever, as well as the three Marley's boats.

I checked it out, and apparently there is more work to do to get all three of these three different tracking sites working properly.

After the start Rick will see if he can get it straightened out for Cat Fever and Team Tybee. The Marley's tracking site is still working fine.

They started at 10 a.m. but nobody told me until now.

Wind has shifted to 15-20 out of the north. For the start there were small breakers near the beach and huge breakers farther offshore. Everybody got through without problems.

Team Moose-Burd on the F-18 had to return to the beach because the carpeting in their daggerboard trunk bunched up and they couldn't get their board down. They cut out the carpeting and are on their way again.

Watch for Rick's story and pictures, probably, at our Tybee page (or link to it from our catsailor.com home page.

On the Marley's tracking site, it looks like the Marley's Orange tracking device is not working again today. I just see Marley's White and Marley's Yellow on the move.

Wow! thanks for the update Mary! We would have plodded along unknowingly right into the snarl.

Jake, stay on rt. 1A, as close to the beach as you can. Yes, you will have to go in and around Stewart but there are no fires there, you could jump on 95 to get around, then get back to 1A as soon as you are north of Stewart. But stay away from 95 when you get near Cocoa.

I just told Rick what Timbo said. Rick is on I-95 right now passing Stuart, and he said he doesn't see any sign of smoke yet. We'll see what route works best, I guess. More strategy involved for the ground crews today than for the sailors? <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

All the tracking links are working now. It's pretty tricky trying to look at all three of them and figure out where the boats are in relation to each other. Looks to me like Team Tybee is in the lead (at least of the four boats that are being currently tracked).

As I mentioned earlier, in the tracking site with the three Marley's boats, Marley's Orange (Jared Sonnenklar and Colin Page) is not tracking today.

jensen beach at 1pm
tybee
velocity
chaos
marleys yellow

velocity was close to tybee and were at least 7mins ahead of the other boats but then the closer in boats got a huge lift and wew tracking right up the beach. hard to say whose winning but we saw velocity tack in front of tybee, then saw tybee get ahead again.

thank god for self-tackers.

just heard on the radio that fires were spotted near the turnpike now. teams may want to start hoofing it.

velocity and tybee have respectively pulled ahead of the rest of the fleet at the nuke plant 10 miles north of Jensen.

We're on fort pierce jetty _ about to call runniing order at teamseacats.com