Well Team St. Louis Cats made it to the finish. It really is a long haul, don't let anyone kid you. However it's very rewarding to complete the race.

I'd like to thank Chuck and the Race Committee, The Feldmans, Jim and Roxanne, The OLN crew, Key Sailing, Rick at Catsailor, and my ground crew, Tom Paoli, and Tom Pinkel.

Don't even think about doing this race without a solid ground crew.

It was hard physically. All of the upwind sailing with the chute up takes it's toll on a body. We were in it but off the pace for some reason. You definitely get a lot of experience that you would never get in a bouy race.

Now look over your right shoulder and keep looking for 8 hours.

We have got some more pictures from the team camera on the website now.

Don't ever try to upgrade from windows 98 to XP on the drive to Florida. Lesson learned there.

Mike Hill
www.stlouiscats.com

Thanks to Carl and Brian for your kind comments above. Also thanks, as always, to Rick and Mary for all of their work covering this event. My complete list of Thank You's can be found on the SailMax site. I really appreciated Mike Krantz and Dave Lennard for letting me come along and help out. It was a great experience for me personally and I was honored to be a part of it.