still at the island.....

nice wish i was there.. i forgot u got a floating condo there..

You know by now that Todd Haig won in record time, 50:45 (prox) behind Jack Lynch's full beaked Fountain. All the official results will come tonite at the awards dinner, but I do know a few records were broken, and there was an F-2 Outboard way up front. Until the times are adjusted for the 7 minute lead by the small boats, nothing is for sure.
One report was that the water was very smooth (naturally if records were set) but that a giant roller upset a lot of the lead skiers, and in fact Marty Wells may have stepped off (last years winner).
There will be a lot more posted tonite and tomarrow after the partying is over...

Chuck Stearns is the BAbe Ruth of the Catalina Ski Race....he is around 60 years old now and has not competed in years. He has won the Catalina Ski Race overall something like 13 times!!!!! Mostly in the 70's in 80's I think. There were no 42 Cigs pulling Stearns...in those days, it was nothing but 18 to 20 footers with an occassional 24 foot day cruiser. He use to do his practice runs at midnight under a full moon...just him, his little boat and some knucklehead driver....Long Beach to Catalina and back under the stars. He said it made him a lot better skier because his body reacted to the swells and wakes without seeing them...it gave him an extra strong sense of balance and coordination. It must have worked because no body could touch him.

DMan

It was a good time... the water was very flat and the weather was not bad. It ended up being a nice warm day on the island after the morning fog cleared.

That was one hell of a race.
I cannot say enough about our skier. Congrats to all on the board who ran and finished.
MD

This was an awesome experience, I pulled doubles in Saturdays race, this was my rooky race and it was a great experience, I only met my skiers on Friday night, one of them I met early in the day and was able to practice a few starts late that day, come Saturday morning it was time to go race...and what a race we had

These guys could ski, we hit a perfect start and had a perfect race, we ended up finishing 60th overall and first in our class, we had a time of 1hr. 24min, I know it seems like a little bragging, but for my first time I had to share, I did not really realize the excitement of it till it was over, this was really cool.

Big thanks to Steamin Rice (Greg) who was my Navigator, and to Mark skier 1, and Drew skier 2, and Drew's brother Derek who was a great observer

Thanks for letting me share...this really was very cool

Jimbo!!!

Saturday was a great time. It was my third time participating, but the first time navigating for Jimbo and our Double-up team. I met one of our skiers and the observer for the first time on Fri afternoon, and I met the second skier at about 6AM on Sat morning.

Jimbo did a great time driving through the breakwater at the start and we had a clean line the entire way out. The skiers and their observer worked well together during the entire race. We hit the turn boat at Avalon with no issues and moved up a couple of places on the trip back from the island.

Thanks to Jimbo, Mark, Drew, and Derek for everything.

Greg

Jim,
I heard from many on the docks that you did a great job driving.
Congrats to your whole team!!!

Thanks Matt, we had a great time, and some great skiers

As far as the driving goes, I took the advice from the veteran drivers who have run the race for many years, and in doing so we had a successful safe race

I have not talked to Greg about it yet, but I think we are going to to have to go and do the San Francisco Alcatraz race in October.

Jimbo