There will be no problem. Karl has the permits for those of you who need them.

I have the weekend permits for Dunedin Causeway and will give them out Friday afternoon/Saturday morning. Also, I have received permission from DIYC to leave the boats inside their gates on Friday night.

K power. werd

Thanks for getting them, and also the permission to park the boats inside the club. Any idea as to what the field make up is and how many boats?

The class breakdown appears to be as follows:

Karl/Karl – F18
Dave/Bob – F18
Peter/Mike – F18
JC/Dalton – F18
Matt Krogstad/? – F18
Brian/? – N20
Catman/Headhunter – M6.0 (Dunedin guy)
Dennis/? – N20
Forrest/Stank - N20

I have heard of one other F-18 that may be coming. All this is preliminary, more may show, some may not show. Either way, it's shaping up to be a nice day and will be a great sail.

Current predictions for sat are:
light winds (6-8) out of the north, 75-80*, sunny, with a few hangovers on sunday

Before some fair weather sailors get discouraged, there is a seabreeze forecast.

Brett already said he's not going, something about an A cat regatta this weekend.

Very true, they have not accurately included the sea brease into the forcasts all year.

The plan is to meet at the Tilted Kilt at 8:30 PM. This time is very weather dependent, today the breeze didn't fill in until 4:30 PM so it could be a very long day for our bachelor.

Tilted Kilt

First boat in (JC and Dalton) at about 7:45 pm. That's about 12 hours! Several boats still out after dark but they should be in soon. Festival atmosphere on the croweded Dunedin Causeway, lots of boats, live band, full moon rising, Jupiter and Mercury setting... all of it very cool for the beach greeters but the sailors looked pretty beat!

More results soon.

whose fireworks were those?

True to the name, this event demanded a lot from the boats and sailors. Everthing from picking your way through a mooring field, sailing 270 degrees on the same tack, double trapped tight reaching, and a beautiful sunset on the water (for some of us).

It was all about predicting when the seabreeze would fill. Boats spread out all over the bay past Gadsen point (McDill?), and our boat in particular caught a "Zero to Hero" lane about 12 miles to the Skyway, setting us up for a nice line to be first under the bridge.

From Mullet Point to the finish (about 30+ miles) was an uphill horserace. JC/"Steve" and Mike(?) were literally within a boatlength the whole way. The two N20s were within spitting distance all the way to the Clearwater spider marker wherein Fondrick found "fourth mode" and pulled about a mile ahead.

And again true to form, our boat found the shoal at Dunedin pass shortly after sunset. Of course it had to be a double-trap reach at the time. Suprisingly, no damage to daggarboards (thank you soft sand!)

Props to Forrest in his first official race. This race isn't for quitters (bachelor boy), and he toughed it out way better than I would have if it was my first sojourn...

That "stealth mode" neon yellow mainsail did make it hard to slip by the competition without notice however...

We pulled into the beach just after last light, and I saw two more boats pull in after us. Any idea who they were? And we know Karl had to quit to make his "field trip". Where did Ding end up?

Bob and I decided to wait until the entire fleet was safely through the Sunshine Skyway and well over the horizon before we started moving. We then spent the rest of the day chasing Peter. We saw the sunset and moonrise between Clearwater Beach and Dunedin. After the sun went down it got freakin COLD!

Nice writeup Jay, sorry you found the shoal infront of the beach. Very glad there was no damage. Hope you all had a good time.

BOY what a busy day on the causeway!!! in my 11 years sailing there i have never seen a band playing live.

We had a small group on clearwater beach waiting to cheer you on, but gave up after a few hours

There was a private party that had town approval (permits) to have an event at the causeway. I THINK the band and fireworks was part of that, but not sure.

I was wondering if the town realized there was the race as well...

It was a birthday party for several people and those that were having a party were not aware there was a race that day.

good to hear you toughed it out Ding. Didn't want you getting a bad rep for quitting. I presume you missed Bachelor Boy's field trip? He was looking for you around 22:00 hours...

We saw "all-ya'll" up in that section near St. Pete chasing dolphins while we were struggling smack dab in the middle of the sound/bay. Had we not found that first inkling of seabreeze (which gybed our spinnaker for us to wake us up), we'd probably have never made it. I expected you guys to get it first and come storming down over the top of us, but the only one who sailed by was Mike's F18 and then we caught it.

Gotta say figuring out that seabreeze is downright aggravating

I thought JC had done a horizon job on everyone until we saw him streaking toward Mullet Point with Fondrick on his tail

Nothing like going under the Skyway at 16:00 hours and thinking "yeah... 40 more miles upwind"

But, at least we were averaging 12 mph on the outside, which was a lot faster than the -2 mph in the bay...

Still, one of the prettiest sailing days and venues around.

Maybe something like DIYC around Egmont and back?

I wonder if BYC would do something like that? That way some of the monomarans might do it.

That's a mod that would make the logistics of this event a whole lot easier.

DIYC already does that race. They do it in the beginning of January. Maybe we could work to get a cat fleet. With interest, I will take it to the club to see if they would allow us in.

We could add it to the Zhik Southern Area F18 Winter Series schedule.