[CalebD]

Thanks Pschoonveld. I enjoyed the guest blog at the Raritan YC that you linked as well as your own description.
I decided to try to track down the buoy stats for 7/23 by the starting line. The wind speed data are given in meters/second which translate to miles/hour by multiplying a factor of 4.47 to m/s.
YYYY M D hr mi Wdir m/s Gdir Gspd Gtime
2009 07 23 22 50 077 15.9 80 19.0 2231 wspd = 71 mph gusts = 84 mph
2009 07 23 21 50 077 15.3 90 19.0 2135
2009 07 23 20 50 079 13.2 90 17.0 1958
2009 07 23 19 50 091 12.8 90 16.0 1945
2009 07 23 18 50 090 11.4 90 14.0 1842
2009 07 23 17 50 093 9.4 100 13.0 1655
2009 07 23 16 50 104 9.9 100 12.0 1635
2009 07 23 15 50 101 9.4 100 11.0 1541 wspd= 42 gusts = 49, start time
2009 07 23 14 50 088 7.4 90 9.0 1447

I believe that my calculations are in miles per hour and not knots but you get the idea that it was blowing stink from out of the east. It only got worse as the day wore on until the wind veered from the N/NW the following day.
Now I know why so many boats bailed out on this race without even checking the wave height/direction historical data.
I forget exactly where I was on 7/23 but I was probably on LI and we have had so much bad weather blow through that it is hard to tell one bad day from the next. Interestingly the 45 days of historical wind data show that 7/23 - 7/24 was some of the strongest over the whole period.
I would still like to do this race or route but not in weather like that. I can't blame anyone for DNF'ing or even DNS'ing. In fact, you have got to wonder a bit about the crews that did finally finish; was there a Captain Blye on board?
Any other personal accounts out there?