Tybee 500 - Day 5

by Lynn Fitzpatrick on 18 May 2007 Whether one has been able to watch the Tybee 500 from the beach or view it on the web, the six day multihull race has been the source of a lot of excitement. A few days of rough weather, broken rudders, holed boats and snapped masts have been bookended by calm seas during the first leg and Friday's forecast of 11-15 knots, for the final push from Fernindina Beach to Tybee Island.

On Thursday, the fleet sailed from Daytona to Fernandina Beach, the final destination in Florida. The tide was high at Daytona Beach before the start, but the race committee handled the situation and started the race in light air. Oolaalaa struck out an early lead, closely followed by the Tiki boats, Velocity, Accelerated Chaos, and Team Tybee. About 15 miles in, Tybee began to pick off boats, advancing to second place. Around Jacksonville severe weather began streaming from the West with penny sized hail and wind gusts to 55kts.

Unfortunately this was the fleet's position at the time. At the Finish, the winds clocked South at around 6kts, and the Race Committee waited for the fleet. Team Tybee finished first at 20:41:19 with Oolaalaa finishing just 18 seconds later with a broken daggerboard and traveler. Tiki Orange, Velocity, and SeaCats, finished in quick succession about eight minutes later. Apparently the rest of the fleet was separated by the weather because they began to trickle in over an hour later.

Going into Friday's final leg, Oolaalaa ( Mischa Heemskerk and Eduard Zanen sailing and Piet Heemskerk managing) has in excess of an hour's advantage over Tiki Watersports - Orange (Rod Waterhouse and Jared Sonnenklar from Australia) and over an hour and a half jump on Team Tybee (John Casey, Kenny Pierce, Judi Bargeron) So far, the elapsed time for the leaders has been 34 hours.

The first-last delta is nearly 20 hours. Tuesday's leg from Jupiter to Cocoa was so treacherous that three boats didn't start and half of the boats that started did not finish. The race committee and shore crews, while not the news makers, deserve a big hand.