TEAM CYBERSPEED is officially entered in the 2018 Florida 300 which will be run May 8-12. Because the Islander Resort in Islamorada suffered major damage during hurricane Irma, the starting line has been moved to Palm Beach Shores. St. Augustine and Fernandina Beach stops have been added to complete the 300 mile course. Craig Van Eaton, Rob Behrend, Mark Herendeen and Mike Shappell are the core of the Singer Island based team and looking forward to having the start a few hundred yards from where the boat is based. TEAM CYBERSPEED is looking to improve their 3rd place in class and 9th place overall results from 2016.
This video brings back all the memories. We were hit with major storms three out of the five days. Despite all of the storms, neither Mark Herendeen nor I wanted to go ashore no matter how crazy it got. We had a near pitch pole; I went overboard but was able to hang on to the main traveler and many other adventures. Despite boat issues caused by the storms, we were able to get the boat to the finish line and Mike Shappellll was able to get the boat back on the starting line the next morning.
Sorry I was not able to post the last two legs until now. I was getting ready to do a post on Saturday morning about Friday's leg when I realized the waypoints in the Sailing Instruction were incorrect and had to figure out the correct ones. Then the tracking server had issues and was not tracking and locked me out. I spent till about 30 seconds before the start on my laptop trying to get it sorted to no avail which made the start a bit more hectic being thrown into the mix.
Today was a better day than yesterday. We started with really light air with spin and lost a lot of ground to the main fleet. We had some issues with our spinnaker pole and could not run it "hot" but did not have enough time to sort it along with our other fixes from the previous day's survival run. Eventually it got faster and we were single trapped on a reach, to double trap reach, to single trap spin to double trap spin. With the better wind we were able to catch up to Cat in the Hat and Team Tiger and mangaged to pass both in the last five miles through some good tactical decisions, great wind, Mark Herendeen doing an awesome job pulling lines and Mike Shappell getting the boat back on the line after all the priority items we had on our "Must Do" list. We caught a bit of weather toward the end but made it in before the big stuff hit.
These are some shots from our helmet cameras. Too busy to do more.
From Florida300.com
Massive thunderstorms hammered the fleet mid-leg, some continued through and some beached and then continued when conditions improved. Two teams, Tavernier Creek Marina and the Ducth team, Dutch Rockerz, suffered broken masts during capsizes.
Read more: Team Tavernier Creek Rescued Themselves With An Assist From Team Cyberspeed!
Rough day on water. Light wind to start, battling storms the rest of the day with crazy winds. Almost pitch poled and rescued the tavernier boat after we finished. They had a broken mast and drifting past finish line with strong current pulling them back out to sea.