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"I love this race. One thing that keeps it exciting is that Michael Worrell keeps
changing it every year. It's always the same but really never the same. Something's
always different. This year he put us in one of the world's hottest catamarans, the
Inter 20. Next year he'll have another twist, although I don't have any idea what
it will be."
- Randy Smyth
Worrell 1000 Winner (6 times)
Olympic Silver Medalist (2 times)
Virginian-Pilot Newspaper
Norfolk, Virginia
"If the X Games had sailing, this would be it."
- USA Today Newspaper
"It was phenomenal. I give it an 8 out of 10 for danger, 10 of 10 for hard-core racing and 11 of 10 for fun."
- Rick Deppe
Whitbread (Volvo) Round the World Racer
Washington Post Newspaper
Washington, DC
"Sailing a 20-foot catamaran in the ocean requires a sensitivity and seamanship that is impossible to appreciate until you've tried it."
- Rick Deppe
Whitbread (Volvo) Round the World Racer
Quokka.com
"Like other adventure-laden competitions, such as the Whitbread Round the World Race, the competitors went from part-time sailors who wanted to try something different to Olympic-caliber sailors who wanted to test themselves against the best sailors in the harshest conditions."
- Sun-Sentinel Newspaper
Fort Lauderdale, Florida
"Someone asked me once, 'How it feels?' It hurts to do the Worrell 1000. It hurts, it's not a fun race. For two weeks and 1,000 miles it's going to hurt, but when you sail across that finish line - there's just the sense of accomplishment, there's a sense of having done what you set out to do - that sums up what the race is all about."
- from the National Geographic Explorer
Worrell 1000 TV Documentary
"It hammers you and takes over, mushes up your mind, makes you very happy when it's over, makes you wish it wasn't when it is. It's a little bit of controlled madness, really, and competitors who've raced the Worrell can feel it tugging at their sleeves all year long until a certain day in May when they push off from the beach in Fort Lauderdale and race hard up the coast, keeping the contiguous 48 states somewhere off to their left."
- Sailing World Magazine
"The Worrell 1000 takes competitors over a harrowing piece of ocean and on a special passage through the mind."
- Sailing World Magazine
"Nobody calls this race fun - it's a destruction derby for 20-foot catamarans and their crews."
- Motor Boating & Sailing Magazine
"After Thursday's launch into heavy seas ... they were literally chewed up and spit out by the relentless breakers. Mast were snapped in two. Sails were shredded. Rudders were broken off and lost. Two boats pitchpoled in reverse. As they navigated the churning seas, the boats were picked up and turned over backwards."
- Outer Banks Sentinel Newspaper
Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina
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"To me it's the personal challenge of doing something that puts yourself in a situation where only your physical ability and mental stamina can pull you through. Then overlay that with the world's best competition and you have an extreme sporting event. I don't know why these people do it, but that's why I started it."
- Mike Worrell
Founder / Director
Worrell 1000
Quokka.com
"It's one of those races that it's good that it only happens once a year. You forget how hard it is. In the early races in the 1970's, it was all about man versus the world. Now, it's about how fast we can go and still survive."
- Randy Smyth
New York Times Newspaper
Worrell 1000 Winner (5-times)
Olympic Silver Medalist (2-times)
"I've done rock climbing, I've done ice climbing, but sailing in really heavy air is the scariest. With ice climbing, you can rest. But sailing in 35-knot winds, you can't stop, you can't rest. You've got to keep going."
- Bob Gaidos
1998 Worrell 1000 Competitor
Virginian-Pilot Newspaper
"Radical when the rest of the sailing world thought 10 knots of boat speed was rocketing, extreme before extreme was hip, the Worrell 1000 is wild enough and tough enough to be its own special X-Games."
- Soundings Newspaper
"The Worrell 1000 tends to be unlike any other sailboat competition on the planet."
- New York Times Newspaper
"We navigated by the roar of the surf."
- Sergey Kuzovov
Russian Olympic Sailor
San Jose Mercury News Newspaper
Describing how his team made it through thick fog and
dangerous surf along the Outer Banks of North Carolina
"Head winds blowing a steady 25 knots forced her to tack for hours in the darkness. At dawn we tacked close to the beach. We saw people walking for their morning stroll. As the boat slammed and slammed, I wondered, what are we doing out here?"
- Susan Korzeniewski
1st Female Skipper in Worrell 1000
Sailing Magazine
"To me, the Worrell 1000 is like your final exam in every subject that you've taken that year; weather, navigation, tactics, boat handling. You can race around the buoys and learn how to go fast, but that's just one portion of it. Winning the Worrell takes all the elements required to win in buoy racing, plus the ocean-racing survival skills you need to finish and succeed. That is the real challenge: taking all those skills and prioritizing them."
"You are very vulnerable when you are out there. One little fitting can break, and it can leave you in a completely different state. You might be upside down, or sinking, or stopped. It does not take very much to have things go wrong out there. That is the crazy part of it."
"You ask yourself, why are we going upwind again in these waves? You have 40 miles to go and you've already been out there three, four hours ... Any honest person would ask, Why am I out here when I could be doing something else, anything else? Anything else but torturing myself?"
- Randy Smyth
Worrell 1000 Winner (6-times)
Olympic Silver Medalist (2-times)
Quokka.com
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From Worrell 1000 Staff Writer Zack Leonard's account of the 2000 race.
"A leg start of the Worrell 1000 is like no other sailboat race. The beach is sectioned off into 20-foot gates. Each boat is assigned a gate based on a drawing at the skipper's meeting. The gates to the north are advantaged, as they are closer to the eventual finish. In the subsequent days of racing, the gates will be reassigned based on the finishing position from the previous day. The Winners will be assigned the advantaged northernmost gates as a bonus for their performance."
"The start is a cross between a horse race, a stock car race, and a bobsled race. The gates are reminiscent of horse races where the gates fly open at the start and the horses rush out looking to establish a lead by the first turn."
"As the boats idled on the beach with main and jibs full they reared forward like wild horses as ground crews dug in like tug-of-war champions trying to keep the boats from surging over the starting line."
"Smyth and Struble hoisted the sail with five seconds to the start signal, and the boat jumped forward so quickly that Smyth was dragging in the water by the chicken line, holding on for dear life as his pusher and crew tried to hoist him aboard the boat."
"There are some rules in this subculture. The first rule is that the racers come first. Lazy shore crews are not permitted and the work ethic of the group tends to pick up the stragglers and bring them into line.
The second rule is that all the teams come together when the going gets tough. This is a race and everybody wants to win, but safety is a much bigger factor in the Worrell than most races. Sometimes it takes the whole community to save one boat from danger. Everyone understands that.
"The Boston Marathon has "Heartbreak Hill" to test runners endurance when it's running low. The Worrell 1000 has leg 5, a 121-mile jaunt from Jacksonville, Florida to Tybee Island, Georgia, which test the sailors endurance limits and navigational skills."
"No one wants to miss the finish, not just because we need to provide assistance to the racers, but also because the finish is the coolest part of the race. The whole day of waiting is a buildup of anticipation that is resolved with the finish. When the leaders surf up on the beach you are let down from a climax of speculation and your heartbeat slowly returns to normal."
"The fleet approached Cape Hatteras at terminal velocity, actually killing speed to avoid pitch poling in the short, steep chop. No one flew chutes as the wind angle was too tight and there was no room to bear off in gusts to keep from capsizing.
Smyth, however, approached the white water and amazed the 1,000-plus spectators gawking from the dunes when he hoisted his spinnaker while entering the rapids. Blockade Runner shot through the rough water with Smyth holding on for dear life."
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