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The Texas200

By the time you read this, the 2009 Texas200 will be just about over. Today, will be the 5th day of the event and will see the boats that are still sailing will be making their way from Army Hole to the finish line at Magnolia Beach and a big shrimp boil. Later, there will be pictures and videos and stories galore, but for now, there are a couple of websites that will have some news.

The first is a tracking site - www.watertraks.com - which will track the Spot satellite locators that are carried by some of the boats that are sailing with us. This is a brand new website that is still under development so please let us know how it works for you.

Some of the participants in the Texas200 have organized a series of races to take place concurrent and after the Texas200. In order to get news of those races and other information about the Texas200, Kevin O'Neill has organized a page on the Wikiproa webiste. He calls it the 2009 Texas200 Blog. There should be pictures as well as reports there through Saturday's races and beyond.

What the heck is the Texas200?

The Texas200 is a 200 mile downwind sailboat event that takes place over 5 days along the South Texas coast. We sail South to North within the bay and estuary system located behind the barrier islands in that area.

Click the image at the right for a larger overview of the route. For more details about the route, CLICK HERE

Where can I read more?

This, the second annual Texas200, came about due to the success of last year's inaugural event. In these days when everyone has a digital camera and a blog, last year's Texas200 was likely the best documented boating event in history. It sure seems that way to me. Here is a list of the accounts. The first one is really a cautionary tale.

The Texas200 is not all fun and games. There are long distances over very remote places involved. The Millers were lucky to have been found as soon as they were.

Three of the guys who participated last year drove PDRacers, those boxy little boats that look like they could not sail 20 feet, much less 200 miles. They all made it too.

Click the image at left for Andrew Linn's illustrated account.

Here are written accounts for each of the three PDR jockey's themselves:

John Turpin kept a video journal that is very interesting:

Kevin O'Neill put a really funny report together:

This is a good example of how tough this thing is:

Bill Moffitt and his son Paul came with a brand new unsailed boat - now that is gutsy:

We posted several articles in Duckworks about the big adventure:

And for anyone who still wants more pictures and videos of the Texas200, here are albums and YouTube links:

Videos

Photos

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