Tybee 500 Recap!

This past week, NORSA members Alan and Adam traveled up Florida's east coast with the Tybee 500 sailboat race. The race is a multi-day beach catamaran race from Islamorada, Florida to Tybee Island, Georgia. The distance is ~540 miles as the crow flies, but many teams reported sailing near 600 miles on their GPS tracks.

Alan, a three time sailor with the race, was crewing aboard Team Velocity 1/Anarchy Challenge with NORSA friend Trey Brown. Sailing in the Nacra 20 class, they finised in second place with a total elapsed time of two days, 54 minutes, and 27 seconds - only 15 minutes behind the first place finisher.


Adam was working as pusher/ground crew for a team out of Annapolis Maryland, Team Pirates of the Chesapeake consisting of skipper Keith Chapman and Alec Dauhmeier. The Pirates began planning for this race in 2005, attempted it in 2007 (but wrecked their boat in the surf during a start on the third day), and were finally able to complete the race in a respectable 11th place in the Nacra 20s.

After rigging the boats and a daily 9 AM skippers meeting, the crews would perform last minute preparations and shove off the beach at 10 AM (with an 8 AM start on the last day). The boats would race up the coast to their next waypoint and, depending on the conditions and distance, would arrive anywhere between 4:00 PM and 3:00 AM, all to do it again the next day.





Congrats to Trey and Alan and the Pirates for their excellent finishes, as well as to the entire six boat Team Velocity squadron and all competitors and ground crew. Photos, results, and discussion are available at the Tybee 500 page, the Team Velocity page, Sailing Anarchy, the Team Pirates of the Chesapeake page, and Wendy's flickr photostream.