It was a race to get to the T200 in the first place. We started in January and were really pressing to get it finished up enough to take.  Rather than detail the race to finish up here, I'll add that stuff on the build page.  We decided to lay down some primer or some rattle can paint to keep the S. Texas sun from making the ply super hot.  That was done Thursday night before we left.  We also had to alter the H18 trailer to let the Tamanu hulls ride securely.  Although we wanted to get an early Friday start, with all the last minute stuff to do we actually left about 4 pm on Friday.  We figured we'd just drive till we got tired and then pull off.  We ended up driving through the night to get to Port Mansfield by Saturday evening about 8 pm. We left the boat stuff on the trailer and got together for a late dinner with Pete and his crew.  Laurent and Yves stopped by but the kitchen had just stopped serving dinner so they left for the other restaurant in town.  This year, rather than stay at the less than appealing Fred Stone County Park we stayed in the clean and relatively empty motel right in town.

SUNDAY--With all the assembly we had to do on the boat (it's 9' beam precluded driving down assembled), I thought it would be best if I stayed and assembled the boat.  We didn't have some mission critical pieces for rigging the boat as we had never assembled the whole boat or stepped the rig before.  I know, I know it's kinda dumb to have a maiden voyage be a 20+ knot wind affair with an 80 mile run before civilization.  However, we were committed to making the Tamanu hulls work.  Chuck had the skipper's meeting which emphasized the remoteness of the setting and the need to be ON TIME for the shuttle.  Brian dropped off the stuff and headed to Corpus Christi Waste Marine for some amsteel line to lash the stays since we needed a bit of extra stay length due to the wider beam.  Between that run and a stop at Home Depot, and a quick direction issue, Brian was late for the bus--which did in fact stay thankfully.

Meanwhile, with the crew of Pilgrim helping out a bit, I assembled the double Tamanu/Hobie 18--hereafter referred to as the double Tamanu.  It was hot windy work and took most of the day to accomplish.  In retrospect it would have been immensely better in almost all respects to have the boat be 8'6" and transport it fully assembled.  After wrestling with it for about 5 hours it was together and had the rig temporarily stepped.  Naturally I forgot to remove the trailering flag from the masthead which came back to bite me in the butt on Monday.  Brian made a profuse apology to the rest o the busload and was able to secure a seat despite my making him late.  Brian and I had dinner that night with Kevin, Laurent, Yves, Pete, and Tom.  After crashing again at our motel, Monday morning left quite a bit to do to the boat to be ready to launch.  We had left our gear in the under renovation Port Mansfield Marina building which will be up and running by late summer.  Thanks guys!

MONDAY--Despite hearing a bunch of reports from the year prior, we decided to set up and launch from the North parking lot.  If you've been to S Texas that means its to Leeward.  Note to self launch from windward ramps.  Both Laurent and Brian and I had a tough time getting out of there as there was tons of wind and some nasty concrete and rip rap on either side of the ramp.  That means some upwind sailing right of the bat.  We were parked in a ramp from about 9-12 with Laurent.  We needed about 6 to carry the boats from the parking lot to the water in the ramp, so we had to do that before we were ready to go.  As such, Laurent's proa and our double Tamanu had some last minute packing and rigging to get ready to go.  Sadly, we blocked Laurent in and kinda rushed to get out under jib alone.  Anyone who's sailed a H18 knows they don't go to windward under just jib with the stock board location.  so as soon as we poked our nose out of the finger piers we were blown unceremoniously across the three ramps and into the finger piers with startling force.  However, we were no longer blocking Laurent, so we helped him pull his proa around so he could sail of on one shunt.  That meant flipping his boat end for end and tying up in front of the concrete wall about 5' off the water level.  Eventually we were able to get him off and his boat was quick and weatherly.  Brian and I learned a little something from his attempt.  We had to try with full main in order to get upwind.  Remember this is the first time this boat has been in the water.  Also remember that little trial stepping of the mast and forgetting to remove the trailering flag?  Well the main wouldn't go up with the litle wire blocking the halyard's clean run.  With some amazing help all morning from _______, we unstepped the rig, removed the flag, restepped the rig, and hoisted sail.  Everything had been stowed and there was only getting off the dock between us and a nice downwind slide.  My heart was in my throat (as I didn't know if my leeboard placement would work under main alone to get upwind, off the dock, and away from the boat eating ugliness to leeward) we got a running start and made it!  We headed out of the Port Mansfield harbor as my pulse began to settle a bit.  We headed out towards the ICW and scandalized the main since we were hitting 11-12 knots with every wave we surfed.  While messing with the halyard to let the head of the sail down past the stupid comp tip, my fingers began to cramp up.  I was super dehydrated.  Dangerously dehydrated.  95 degrees and 20+ knots of wind will take it out of you.  I turned over the helm to Brian, crawled under the bom and the pile of sail covering the leeward side of the tramp and drank fluids.  And drank. And drank. Eventually I had to urinate, but as I got up from my tramp my legs got into the cramping action as well.  My dehydration issue was serious, but I had lots of shade and fluids.  Eventually after a couple hours I felt better and was able to share the helm with Brian.  We were listening to the VHF and heard Laurent had dismasted.  We were coming up to his location and offered any assistance we could.  He was concerned his rig, which he had been able to get aboard, might damage our boat if we came too close.  His plan was to paddle to the King ranch taking care to stay below the high tide line and walk back to Port Mansfield.  I was pretty concerned about that plan, but trusted his judgement.  I should have attempted to anchor and tied him off so we could have had a more thorough discussion, but I did not.  Stupid of me in retrospect, and forced him into the later heroics only madmen and Frenchmen are capable of pulling off.  We continued down to the land cut and passed only a couple boats all day.  We saw the Tupperware Tri's and the the homebuilt tri that had dismasted.  He was on the leeward shore and didn't hear our hailing on the VHF or our shouts as we passed.  Not wanting to get pinned on a leeward shore we continued.  Eventually, we got to the land cur late in the afternoon.  We decided to land quite a ways up the "beach" to avoid what we knew to be foot sucking mud down on the point to Hap's cut.