Congratulations to Neil Calore (aka LeatherLungs) on winning Class 4 (small sailboats) of the Watertribe North Carolina Challenge (NCC 2012) in late September!  He finished 12th overall out of 54 entries.

Neil writes:

The race threw a little bit of everything at us: no wind, a lotta wind, current with and against us, hot during the day, cold at night, shifting sand bars all over the place.

The video below is of the 7:30 a.m. Friday, Sept. 28th start , where all boats must launch unassisted from the beach, above the high water line.

The 1st day was mostly all rowing (phew!), rested for 45 mins at the 1/2 way check point (at 10:34 p.m. Friday), then kept going and sailed through the night. The sun rose with dolphins playing around the boat for about an hour, which gave me a second wind.

 

The photo above is when the Race Manager told me that, at 10:52 a.m. Saturday, mine was the first class 4 boat to reach the finish line (including single- and double-handed crews) and 12th over-all out of 54 boats of all kinds.

The photo below is rowing through the Harlowe canal with mast unstepped to clear the 3 low bridges.

100 miles in 27 hours, 22 mins, roughly split rowing and sailing.

Again, the dory proved to be the perfect boat as it is an excellent rower and a pretty good sailor with the Lug Rig that excelled in the flat, no-wind conditions and handled the 3-4' confused seas that we faced for the last few hours of the race.

Neil won Class 4 of the Watertribe Everglades Challenge earlier this year.