Is the Caribbean Club on board this year? Is it the same deal as last year? What is the weekend trailer storage fee? Who do we pay?
OR
Are we on our own to find launching?

yeah, what he said...

We have always had really good relationships with Gilberts. If you have a room, the beach is free. There is a place for the trailer and a nice bar.

The dockmaster can probably fit you in on the beach without a room reservation (for a small fee like a rolled $20 or two), but the rooms are reasonable. Perhaps a little tacky, but a place to sleep without a lot of hassle.

In the past we had to pay on top of the room at Gilberts... if we get free storage with the room it's worth the rate there.

The past 2 years ,I showed up at the Carribean club first and they had no idea what was going on. There are some communication issues between the owner's and the bartenders, that take awhile to sort out. I got the info for the owner's and forwarded the contacts to Rick last year. I can probably dig them up again if you need them ,Ding. I'll try to forward to Rick and Mary again also.

Todd
p.s. Gilbert's doesn't have the room to fit the entire fleet, I don't believe.

For the past couple of years, most of the fleet has launched from the Carib (thanks to Tawd for getting there so early and working out the details). The finish, awards, and food on day 2 were also at the Carib. If this is what Rick is still planning, I will rig and launch at the Carib, if he plans to have the finish and ceremonies at Gilbert's, I will rig and launch there. IMO, the Carib is a much better location. Maybe Rick can chime in with his plans.

I too would prefer this arrangement. Not having Todd there to run interference will be a bummer indeed, if nothing else he is a people pleaser.

I will be setting up Spot tracking for the Steeplechase like I did for the Tybee 500. TrackLeaders will have units available for rent and if you have your own unit send me a link to your tracking page and you will be added at no charge. Let me know if you want one for the race.

I met with the public relations manager for Spot at the Ft. Lauderdale boat show and they are going to try to get TrackLeaders rental units upgraded to the newer ones. Might not happen for Steeplechase but probably for Tybee.

Craig,
You PM box is full and will not receive any more messages. I need a unit for the race.

Great!

It said I still had over 100 left in my Quota. I deleted a bunch so I should be set now.

Series Contact Form >>>

Craig... the new ones are half the size! Pretty impressive... you can buy them at west marine right now for $150 with a $100 mail in rebate... then you need the service obviously.
How much for the rental?

Wow, Gus that is great.

One launching, last year The Caribbean Club did not want folks wandering in one at a time, and asked us to collect from everyone. At th is moment I am away at a conference, but If I remember correctly, Mary said she would go down and work this out with the Crib. That is where we finished last year.

Gilberts has always been so iffy.
Rick

I am not as concerned with the size as the better antennae.

I had a long talk with the PR person. I learned a lot during the Tybee 500 and he was surprised at some of my findings. He also verified that TrackLeaders, the company I have been working with on the internet interface, have a direct line to their programmers. They are the only company that Spot is working with for online applications. I really got lucky hooking up with those guys.

Did they ever figure out the problem where a unit wouldn't update for like 8 hours?

1 update right after the start.

1 update right before they finish :P

Probably just blocked signal. As each boat came in, I pulled them off the boat and made sure it got a final signal. The most consistent location was on the mast rotation limiter bar. The newer spot beacons have a better antanae and will transmit the last two locations in case the prior location was not uploaded via satelite.

There was also a problem with supplied black foam cases. Once they absorbed water, they would not transmit. I figured that out in one of the legs that I tried them on a few of the boats. The SPOT PR person was really shocked at that. I told him if he needs some prototypes tested, send them on.

bump...
Rick... how come you don't have anything on the front page or this forum about this race?
I love this race (apparent by the effort we go through to come!) and I wish it would hate to see attendance dwindle. Tradewinds is obviously the event to go to and it's great seeing a blurb about it here and there, but it's not your only event.
Right now there are 6 boats pre-registered, 3 are from New England.
Who else is coming? Jay unforunately can't make it this year... not sure what that means for the rest of his 20's.

Mike and I are coming on the F20c.

Pre-reg is never good for Steeplechase.Numbers are always pretty good though.

15ish boats.... Tradewinds has what... 60?
Maybe the Steeplechase doesn't have room to grow like Tradewinds, but it would still be cool to have say, 30 boats.
I guess i'm just wondering why everyone wants to come to tradewinds but no one wants to go through the effort we do to sail both steeplechase and tradewinds. I think a lot of it is because it's just under the radar and in the shadow of tradewinds. What Ding has done with the F18 Southern series could bring interest in doing several events, instead of just 1.

Apples and Oranges, my friend.