As we left the beach with only two legs left I said to my husband, "only two more breakers." With the first approaching, I only had time to look back and say "hold on its going to be a big one." As we sliced through the breaking crest I found myself clenching to the hiking straps with the rest of my body airborne. I glanced over the front cross bar to see a ten foot drop to the furious ocean below, realizing the only part of the boat left in the water were the rudders. We reentered the foamy sea below with a thunderous crack and spray to the third batten. I slammed back to the trampoline with no apparent injuries and called back to Scott only to see him scrambling to stay on the boat amidst a spaghetti mass of line as he attempts to steer it into the next approaching breaker. I thought, two more legs of this?

I guess the seriousness of this race first hit me when Scott limited our conditions of race to, "what is said and done on board stays on board, what is said and done on shore stays on shore, when we’re on the boat we are skipper and crew not husband and wife. If you agree to this we’ll do the race and have an equal chance of winning." What was this I was agreeing to? I found out in the following 953 miles of the Worrell 1000.

The first clue that this race wasn’t going to be a conservative husband and wife ocean passage occurred on the first leg as we approached the Jensen Beach finish. As we were threading the needle between the shoreline and an offshore thunderstorm I noticed a waterspout forming on the south side of the thunder cloud and mentioned it to my concentrating husband - sorry - skipper. His reply, "let’s stay closer to the cell for more wind and keep an eye on the waterspout track." My reply was "excuse me?" But wouldn’t you know it we got more air and the waterspout dissipated and we finished our first leg in a very proud eighth place and without mishap. Our mishaps didn’t start until the second leg - our home ground.

My long distance sailing lesson was only beginning as we passed Sebastian Inlet heading toward Cocoa Beach. One strong puff, a delayed ease, and a sliding tiller extension all came together at one precise moment to create our first swimming lesson. It all happened just that fast, one minute we were double trapped passing boats and the next I was looking for the surface of the water amidst a tangle of lines and floating sails. When I finally surfaced my shoulder brushed the rapidly passing rudder blade. Without a second thought I grabbed it and held on with a life or death grip. Immediately I was being pulled through the water at a terrific rate of speed. Fortunately, my parachute training in the Coast Guard prepared me for just this situation. I finally glanced up at the boat to see Scott scrambling to find the righting line while screaming husband and wife things - not skipper and crew things. Between Scott and I pulling at me and my forty pounds of soaked gear, I was able to climb on the hull and begin phase two of the capsize.

After struggling with the righting line for some time we came to the conclusion that the spinnaker was acting as a shrimp net and had to be gathered on board before any righting was possible. Once this was accomplished and with me standing on Scott’s chest who was dangling from the end of the righting line, the boat came right up. Scott was on board before the splash subsided and was busy tidying-up the mess. I was busy trying to pull myself and what was now close to 80 pounds of water in my suit onto the boat. The boat was starting to move by the wind dragging me beneath it, my surmounting fatigue and added weight made it impossible to pull myself on board. Just when I thought I couldn’t hold on any longer Scott grabbed the shoulder straps of my life vest and pulled me out of the water like a Golden Retriever. My daze was quickly broken by Scott saying "we just lost four boats, "COME ON "we have to get going." I thought, well, it is the Worrell and it’s back to being crew.

We were finally in sight of the finish and we made back three of the four boats when a large rogue wave washed Scott completely off the boat where he began his slow but sure migration towards the bow of the boat with tiller in hand. First came the uncontrolled jibe, then capsize number two. Remembering the training of our first capsize I was back on the boat gathering the spinnaker in a matter of seconds. I pulled out the righting line and, no Scott. I yelled for him and heard his faint response some fifty feet from the boat dragging by his trapeze wire. Unfortunately I was helpless to assist him since his bunjee had broken and he was attached to the boat only by his trapeze wire at the top of the mast. His safe return to the boat was dependant on him pulling himself up the wire to the masthead then down the mast through a suspended tangle of drifting line to the boat, all while drifting at five knots down wind. Before I knew it he was at the boat dangling from the end of the righting line. Up came the boat, we were back on board and sailing to the finish, without the spinnaker and with a new pact; NO MORE CAPSIZING.

In this 1000 mile race, It seemed if there was a risk of danger we had explored it, and this leg was no different. We were at the start of the ninth leg in Atlantic Beach when the worst of all sailors nightmares had occurred. Light on-shore breezes and larger than normal surf conditions created the risk for those hazardous shore break collisions. Directly after the starting gun had blown our boat pusher gave us one of our better starts - ahead of any boat around us. As we started our turn to the north a sudden lack of wind and three large breakers caused our boat to stop and turn sideways to the waves with the boat next to us still powering out through them. The next thing I heard was that crushing sound of fiberglass and the crimping of aluminum as the spinnaker pole of the boat next to us punctured the outside port hull of our boat and continued through the inside port hull with the next wave.

After a period of confusion, screaming, and risk to bodily injury we wrestled the boats back to shore, untwisted the aluminum, and assessed the large harpoon hole conspicuously placed in our hull. I looked over at Scott to see the worst look of disappointment on his face as he is kicking the sand below him. This couldn’t be the end, I thought. At that moment I heard the all too familiar words, "duct tape". Suddenly a flurry of activity arose around me as all the ground crews nearby were busy taping, trimming, and rubbing our hull. Within fifteen minutes we were back on the water just ahead of the other repaired boat who had left the beach within seconds of us.

We were reaching with spinnaker up in 15-20 knots of breeze, 5-8 foot swells, we had passed five boats, that we could see, and were catching the sixth with only fifteen miles left of the leg when Scott mentions the boat was not reacting properly. He had a short period of silence when he said "we have to jibe immediately". After the jibe was completed flawlessly, he peered over the side to discover the duct tape patch had peeled away and opened a gaping hole in our repaired hull - - WE WERE SINKING.

The first thing out of Scott’s mouth was "find the nearest land". I scanned the horizon and spotted one single clump of trees just off our port bow and nearly out of sight. We just passed Ocracoke Inlet and were steering a course for Ocracoke Island about five miles distant.

With both of us on the low hull almost aft of the back cross bar made for some very interesting contortions trying to get to the almost-submerged tramp bag that held our VHF radio and cell phone. With these instruments in hand Scott piercingly suggested we get the chart and GPS to pinpoint our exact location. I quickly retorted, "what in the h... would you like me to do first, and with what spare limb?" He answered "let me put it this way, in the case of an accidental capsize we don’t want to be scrambling for that information and equipment on a slowly sinking catamaran while trying to hail the Coast Guard - you decide." Our predicament suddenly became crystal clear.

We finally beached our mostly submerged catamaran through a very large, shore break at low tide on an island very reminiscent of Gilligan’s Island. After quickly opening the inspection port and drain plug we were perplexed to find water had completely filled the hull and was gushing out of the drain hole like a small diameter fire hose. STRANDED was our new realization.

Immediately we tried to raise our ground crew by VHF and found it inoperative. After draining the residual water out of our cell phone dry bag we found the only way to communicate with our ground crew was to call Performance Sail and Sport in Florida and have a message relayed up to our check point hotel in Hatteras Beach, North Carolina. The hotel contacted our ground crew and they called our cell phone on Ocracoke Island. Talk time was only for brief periods between static and blank-out periods, but somehow our ground crew was on their way.

Knowing our ground crew was almost three hours away we decided to search out an alternative repair. Looking up the beach we noticed several vehicles about a quarter mile up the beach, so off trekked my astronaut looking husband in search of duct tape. As he approached the first vehicle it drove away in the opposite direction - fear of an invasion maybe. I saw another vehicle approach with flashing lights and stop in his vicinity, he got in the vehicle and started towards the boat. When they arrived - to my unbelievable surprise - it was the ground crew for Team Outer Banks.

Without hesitation they tore apart their support vehicle looking for duct tape. To everyone’s disappointment none was found. Another set-back? No - the Outer Banks team suggested they go into town to purchase a roll and save the day. Upon their return, the boat had finished draining and we quickly repaired the gaping hole. Then with a good push and the break of a wave we were off the beach heading toward the finish with a renewed determination that we were going to finish this race through the face of any obstacle. As we approached the finish line, to our surprise, every team was on the beach to see that we had finished the leg safely. That evening we changed out the damaged hull, again with the help of several other teams, and were at the starting line the next morning.

The last two legs were sailed with only a couple heart stopping incidents that seemed mild in comparison to the last 800 miles. Finally, with the finish line at Virginia Beach in sight, a great feeling of accomplishment overwhelmed both of us. Seeing all the finished teams aligned on the beach for the second time, left us with an intense feeling of camaraderie - after witnessing for almost 1000 miles these Worrell teams bonding together to help each other finish this race through monumental odds of failure.