(Ft Lauderdale, FL)- After last year's race that saw a massive front pummel the fleet at the start, kick up ginormous waves in what anyone
would describe as "fresh to frightening" weather conditions followed by
an ominous "dead calm", this year's event will go down in the history
books as positively benign for virtually all competitors. After a
lightish southeasterly breeze kicked in at the start, the entire fleet
took off on a port tack fetch and as they bent around the keys with
their right-turn signals flashing, and while simultaneously avoiding the
gnarly reefs to starboard, the fleet set spinnakers and flew towards
Key West in what was seen as a near-perfect, moon-lit evening for a
sail-- your basic "walk in the park" as some wags put it! 
By
the next morning, in what is a 15 hour race for the bigger faster boats
and about a 24 hour race for the 35-45 footers, the winds had abated
and got lighter and shiftier. The stragglers saw a classic NW
cold-front blow in with 30 kts out of the North, but all the J's had
already finished as had 98% of the fleet-- all enjoying the
extraordinary distractions on-shore that Key West is most famous for.
In fact, just before noon most of the J sailors had crossed the line
before the tide turned against them at 1400 hrs.
In
the IRC Class, it was the beautiful, flag navy blue J/120 REBECCA
sailed by Glenn Gault that managed a 4th place in a super-competitve
fleet of the IRC rule-beaters. In the end, REBECCA managed to beat out
an Aerodyne 38, Swan 42 and Class 40 on corrected time honors!The PHRF A Class saw two knowledgeable and fast Lauderdale-Key West campaigners take two of the top three spots on the podium. The J/122 TEAMWORK nearly pulled off a "three-peat" but managed to miss by a mere six minutes! Ouch. And, how many places could that time have been made up taking better gybe angles or shifts last night?! Most likely, too many to count as is the case so often in the offshore game. So, Robin Team's TEAMWORK crew from North Carolina had to settle for second on corrected time! Third just a half hour back on corrected was David Bond's fast, elegantly maroon-colored J/105 LOKI from Miami, FL. Sailing photo credits- Marco Oquendo- imagesbymarco.com
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