Skip Gundlach wrote:
Just a very quickie for perspective:

We left Sunday morning ~11, wing and wing to the Sunshine Skyway at 7
knots. Forecasts for the entire week we left (I'd been monitoring
them for a month) were for 10-15NE the entire way down - perfect for
our cruise down. It was so perfect we kept going rather than divert
from offshore. We stood to make it in under 30 hours, before dark the
second day. Rarely dropped under 6, mostly in the 8s, and even
flirted with 10 KSOG briefly.

Things went to hell in a handbasket in a hurry. Winds built to 20+,
then got worse, with matching seas. Dropped all sails and attempted
to motor toward Cape Sable. Absolutely awful. No progress whatever in
~4 hours.

Raised to third reef main only, stabilized and sailing fine, if wobbly
due to the following seas. Wanted to sail around to nowhere until
dark got finished (the foregoing was at ~7PM), considered going around
Key West.

Delivery captain in yard we left had given us detailed instructions,
having done it over 200 times. This group and the dozen or so lists I
am on, during my extensive search for info last year (because I was
concerned about the feasibility) had countless respondents saying we'd
be just fine and to quit worrying, generally accusing us of over-
researching everything we ever did on this boat, and accept what we
were told, which was it was very doable, no problem, etc.. I've now
come to regard local knowledge as suspect, if not malicious, as, this
and too many instances have proven to be not only inaccurate but
dangerously so.

Conditions worsened dramatically - a squall line came through about
10PM - and is what did us in, in addition to some operator and
equipment malfunction.

As is my wont, when the salt spray has been washed off (no dust to
settle) there will be a complete and candid assessment and report,
including hundreds of pictures on our gallery. For now, the insurance
company isn't ready to total it, but likewise nearly certainly won't
pay for all the repairs, and if my understanding of the policy is
accurate, will leave about a 25k shortfall on the removal (salvor's
fee was 30, policy looks to cover ~7, and then there was the emergency
midnight haulout at the yard, yada yada). Flying Pig most likely will
fly again,but now has a broken wing and a broken heart - but as yet
her spirit isn't broken!

Woulda, coulda, shoulda, and hindsight is always 20-20. We're alive,
the boat is substantially intact, and there's nothing money can't fix.

On which subject, for those so inclined rather than finger-pointing,
an attorney in the Morgan sailnet list has set up a trust for us:

I've posted some traffic about that immediately following this post.
Think and do what you will in those regards - it's out of our hands,
but we know we are very well watched and watched over...

Sorry I can't do more right now - I"m pretty well over my head at the
moment...

L8R

Skip, interrupted

Don't know where you got your weather Skip, but the GRIB file I got from
sailnet.docs on 02/03 show that at by 7 pm 02/05 the wind was forecast
to be NE at 25 and seas of 7-8 feet. On a two day passage I always look
for four days of good weather.
krj