On Thursday the 15 in the afternoon the awards ceremony was held at the Marina's swimming pool. We were awarded a silver plate for completing the rally. There were awards for the the first boat to arrive and for the race winners - placement in the race was adjusted with those who sailed the most - as opposed to motoring- had more points to their advantage. The large boats had had little wind so they motored a lot. In their category the winner was a boat that came in on Wednesday after we arrived.

The stories about the situations other boats endured were interesting - a few sad. One of the most shocking was from a boat in which apparently there was nearly a mutiny by the crew as the owner was very arrogant and wanted to sail the boat at full throttle, spending nearly all of its fuel after 4 days of sailing. He then ordered the boat to be sailed with full sails (which got shredded to pieces by the cold front we faced and the squalls and, in addition, the boat's engine quit after the generator failed, got out of its place and crashed against it. This was a brand new engine he had put in right before leaving Hampton because he was not pleased with the performance of his old engine. They had to sail all the way down here with little wind and arrived nearly 1 week after everyone had arrived. They had been at sail for 17 days!! For the most past, however, the stories were happy and interesting.

Our crew Nancy who had done this rally 6 other times said that our trip was the fastest time in which she had completed the rally and in the smallest boat. She also said that it was like a vacation to her as everything worked well, we did not have problems, the food was good, and we got to rest for 9 hours between watches. We did not really sleep that much but at least we had time to rest and relax. We were relieved to know that things went as well as they did in such long trip and that our crew was happy.