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Miami to Key Largo race..Lapwing 16 number 15 made it


brerrabbit

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April 20

 

Start just south of the bridge to Key Biscayne ...8 AM

 

Route all set up in my Garmin GPS with 22 waypoints

 

Wind DIRECTLY from the south, uhh  the way we must go.

 

Rules are weird in this race, the larger boats can motor south through the several very narrow channels

 

A third of the way we are thinking time to scrub the trip.....a 42.5 mile beat to windward.  Then the wind gets fluky, my inexperienced first mate Vlad says, "What's this"

 

I look behind...big storm in Hollywood Florida 25 miles north.  Pretty soon we are making a wake like a motorboat, bildgeboards up, rudder set to kick up if we hit ground, cold wind directly form the North where the storm is.. Flying south, seeing the bottom right below us.  I know it is mid tide and rising, I know these waters.  No races scrubbing here!

 

3/4 of the way there; the wind decided, well, to not be there, at ALL.  Now we are doing the Sargasso sea thing, thinking about laso-ing one of the Card Sound mosquitoes....they are BIG.  Battery dead on the GPS.

 

Vlad says, "Go find the wind!"...huh.

 

We wait, eat, tell some stories, talk the the third passenger, by parrot.   And wait....

 

Till little breeze takes us very slowly the rest of the way, finding the green flasher at the north end of Jewfish creek with chart and binoculars.  I am thinking, I gettin pretty old, I can not see squat in the darkiness.

 

Through the creek to dock-age at 1:15 AM Sunday.  Everyone has partied and gone to bed

 

Call a cab, are are none available, so they send a limo for the same price  :rolleyes:

 

Here we come Tiki Suite

 

-------------------------------

 

But the next morning, as the big guys headed back for Miami, they saw a pretty tiny cat ketch with no motor ....those guys are brave, or stupid or both

 

Thanks BandB

 

Donald Crampton, M.D.

Skipper and builder

 

 

 

 

post-2079-0-03724300-1367250948_thumb.jpg

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YUP bilge boards, leeward one down when going to windward.  I wanted people room in the forward area

Old fashioned belaying pins on masts.

 

My version of reefing is a third mast station, according to Grahams design.  You can see the "hole" in the forward thwart in the pics.

 

I have not sailed here yet with the main-in extra position.

 

I just received a Tohatsu 3.5 HP 4 stroke and plan a motorized dinghy configuration option, leaving home  the rudder and masts

 

I will post some pics of that setup when I finish mounting plates on the inner transom.  I plan a 40 pound sandbag up front for this config..

 

Hope the coast guard does not ask about flotation....answer plenty of plastic "toys-are-us" colored balls in quarters and forward behind forward bulkhead.

 

:rolleyes:

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nice job! my question is on the mizzen staysail fixing position: looks lik you placed it on the bow deck at the centerline , while usual (?)  way is to have to positions on both sides of the bow deck, and to change them while tacking (?). At least this is my case, . Well, is it just Lapwing solution or your improvement?

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