Pictures taken during the 2008 Sail-a-thon off Ventura, CA. I raced against Afterburner aboard my Tornado catamaran (CAN 99 in the photos). Sunday was a complete change from the day before (see last image of this gallery)..flat water and 10 kts of breeze. Afterburner was my competition in the annual Caregiver's Sail-a-thon. My tornado lead her around the whole first lap (~10 minutes long!!)...showing better downwind performance under spinnaker compared to AB's main & jib alone. The course legs are so short in this event, and it takes AB a long time to change sail configuration that it's a toss up to try it. We were clearly faster throught tacks & gybes, getting up to top speed within 15 seconds...while the great beast would take 1-2 minutes to wind up again...just cranking in the jib can take two guys nearly 1 minute. But, 'burner was faster on the reaching leg by the end of the second one she overtook us at the mark. We started to claw some back on the off-wind leg, but then got parked behind a wall of keel boats we were lapping. We slipped further behind 'burner and had to settle on just doing our best to make as many laps as possible. On lap 12, 'burner was about to lap us. She was right along side at the downwind mark...we made a nice quick round up on the inside and got out on the wire trapping while her crew was frantically cranking all the winches to bring the huge sails into trim. Initially she was directly abeam and to leeward...then at about halfway to the top mark only her bow was overlapping our stern. We were clear ahead at the top mark. After tacking to the reach leg, we squirted forward initially hitting 15-16 kts boatspeed, but once she got wound up by mid leg, she plowed right over top of us with only 5 or 6 feet between our heads and her hull...we had her bow wave/spray washing over us while on the wire. We could see the whites of their eyes and the winch men working furiously. We went one lap down. Another 3 laps and the horn sounded to end the day. We were some 45 seconds plus 1 lap behind burner after 15 laps in 2 hours. Team Full Tilt raised over $800 on the day for the Caregivers charity.