Any reports from Coastie? They appear to be going backwards and no tracking since last night. Hoping all is well with them.
Coastie?
(10 posts) (8 voices)-
Coastie
MemberWe are ok!
The saga of Coastie and ClamCounter: First of all, we would like to thank Chief, PaddleDancer, and SailBird Mike for their outstanding support. Chief, as we are sure does every year, coordinated an outstanding event. Thanks for the great inspection and words of wisdom and working with us on our first SPOT and second SPOT. PaddleDancer, thanks for assisting with our second SPOT and your super moral support. SailBird, thanks for the super service and floor space at CP2. We thoroughly enjoyed the start of the race and every single day. It was our first challenge, but as everyone else, we have spents hours and hours of sailing together as a father and son team for the last year. Our goal was merely to have fun and complete the event in the alotted time. We partially completed that. Well, we totally completed the "having fun" part, but came a little short on the "completing the event" part. Weather was our first challenge, but our real enemy was "equipment failure" beyond our control. Just an hour outside of Indian Key Pass, one of our bridle wires that secure the fore stay snapped. Using mooring lines and the simple bowline, we fabricated the quick, but effective fix. Our bridle was fine as we depart CP2, but as a safety precaution was having a new bridle shipped to meet us at CP3. We left CP2 with high spirits and in a short 50 minutes with favorable winds and current we were out Rabbit Key Pass. Our game plan was to sail straight to Cape Sable and camp at our "officially approved Wilderness Permit site" for the night, and then proceed to CP3 on Thursday night. Our only concern at that point was how to protect our water bottles from the evil racoons that the Park Rangers warned us about. We planned to stay at CP3 overnight, and enjoy a fine day of sailing to the finish challenge on Friday. All plans were going smoothly with a beautiful full moon and cruising at 7-11 mph perfectly on course to Cape Sable......when snap, pop, oh crappola....the fore stay snapped. Immediately the mast started to sway and swing uncontrollably. We held on to the mast and tried to add some extra lines of support, but the weather elements and natural weight of the mast was making that challenging. We realized we were hosed. With concerns of the mast crashing with the choppy seas, we knew we need assistance. We eventually lowered the mast with the use of some support lines, after we hit our SPOT SOS buttom which we indicated we needed assistance. Our cell phone and marine VHF radio were worthless as we were in "nowhere land" basically 25 miles south of CP2 4 or 5 miles offshore with an easterly wind. Our ability to express our need for assistance could only be solved with making that dreaded decision to activate our personal EPRIB and SPOT. If this equipment failure would have happened off Tampa, Venice, Sarasota or Key Largo area, a vessel could have been easily reached by my handheld VHF radio and/or flares. Both were tried in the situation, but of no use. As expected, knowing that there were no close shore Coast Guard or FWC marine resources, we expected to eventually see a Coast Guard helo. Once the Coast Guard receives a report of an EPRIB "satellite hit" they our responsible to immediately launch a unit to check it out if the location is in their maritime area of responsibility. We had registered our EPRIB with all the information about the Miss Marie and her safety equipment and personnel onboard. Long story short, the helo arrived, we talked on the radio to verify the situation. The Coast Guard was very complimentary on our safety gear (thanks Chief for creating an excellent requirement list....and no, the word WaterTribe or EC12 were not uttered:). Within about 45 minutes TowBoat US arrived on scene. We then enjoyed a 7 hour tow job to Marco Island (and by enjoyment, I mean cursing the fore stay and trying to figure our how we could stay in the race.....finally coming to the realization our challenge had ended). By the way, when signing the paperwork for the tow job we found out that payment starts when the towboat is launched....and that means I paid for a 10 hour tow job (talk to me later or look it up on line for the hefty hourly charge). After some sleep today, we are now cleansing our body and soul with Corona Extras in the business center of the Marco Island Hilton. We wish luck to everyone remaining and enjoyed all our new friends. For those that enjoy sailing, the Hobie Getaway is a fine durable boat.....at least until the fore stay breaks. Coastie, ClamCounter and the "Miss Marie" will return again....but we need a while to figure out how to get ClamCounter off on vacation during the busy tax season.
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
--Mark TwainDone!
Posted 1 year ago # -
Hey Coastie, Very happy to see the team safe.
Posted 1 year ago # -
ClamCounter
MemberCrazyRussian,
We sent the mainsail of our Hobie Getaway to Andy LeVine at Tackle Shack Water Sports. Andy’s sail maker was able to sew reinforced reef points into our mainsail. He has a wealth of knowledge about Hobie’s and is very familiar with the Everglades Challenge. His contact info is below.
Feel free to shoot me any additional questions about the Getaway.
ClamCounter
(Crew on the Hobie Getaway “MissMarie")
Andy LeVine
Tackle Shack Water Sports
7801 66th St. North
Pinellas Park, FL 33781
Toll Free 1-800-537-6099
Outside the USA 727-546-5080
Fax Line: 727-541-3478
Hours of Operation:
Monday-Saturday: 9:30 AM - 8:00 PM EST
Sunday: 11:30 AM-5:30 PM EST
Web Site: http://www.tackleshack.com
Personal Email: andy@tackleshack.com
Posted 1 year ago #
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