I didn't.
And does anyone know what the deal was? Did the cray boat go in early? Was it drifting? Did it put itself at the wrong co-ordinates?
Last year I found it easily:
This year I had no idea where it was:
From these I'd say that it was where it always was, but the wind was more south than last time.
Nup - it was MUCH further out this year, but it was there. I only found it by following the chopper.
This made the race heaps longer; just look at the times. Bjorn won in over 33 minutes, whereas last year Voltmeter did it in under 28 from memory. An extra five minutes is worth around 4km, so I reckon the boat was around 2km further out than normal.
That last leg out was pure torture!!
I followed the sails- saw a glint of a boats windscreen, looked harder and saw the kite over top of it. It was a loooooonnnngggg way that leg!!. Crash tacked around it, waterstarted for the umpteenth time and then I looked for the pub- beer smells steered me across the finish.
Shame you missed it DL. It was full of topless promotions girls giving out Severne sponsorship deals (or maybe that was a hallucination brought on from back leg pain).
I heard the boat had to head to Madagascar to refuel before it could make it back into Lano.
I thought it could have been due to someone typing in the wrong number into a GPS, but now it doesn't look like it:
(pin position taken from people who sent in their GPS tracks)
Interestingly the distance between 2010 and 2011 is exactly one nautical mile.
How I missed that boat completely when I was so close to it is a mystery.
Agree - the last mark was much further out this year compared to recent years. Only found it because of the kite that was hovering above the boat.
Noticed that when I came in towards the finish line on the last leg there were heaps of sailors that came in upwind of me. Would anyone know if the organisers keep count of sailors rounding the marks?
Looking at my tracks i didn't sail far enough, combined with large swells it was hard to see much. It's think i must have thought i was further out than i thought as by the look of other sailors tracks i was pretty close. Spewing i should have kept going.
What i want to know is, what the hell was a largish (yellow) boat hanging around where you would expect the marker boat to be(the one i gybed around)to be.
Lastly why the hell did they change the position of the last boat from where it has alway s been???
I now feel as though i have cheated in claiming i have finished the race
The fishing was better further out... 
Clearly it was a mistake to have the last marker boat so far away from the usual position.
I'm told the race was 4 km longer than usual.
All marker boats need to have a very large kite flying above them to make them more visible and distinguishable from other boats.
Commiserations to those who thought they finished legally only to discover they didn't. That's a heck of a lot of effort to put in only to discover you've missed the last mark.
yep i found it.
I also know a number of ppl in front of me skipped the mark and still claimed a finish.
Not rounding all the marks and claiming to have finished 
This was common amongst a few well known sailors around 10 years ago and is what lead to a lot of people becoming disillusioned with the event.
Very interesting.
How's this for an idea: ditch the idea of having to round marks, and make it a point-to-point race. Ledge to Lancelin, as quick as you can, by any route.
This would reward those that can point deeper.
Could use the cray boats as an outer boundary to stop people doing the race on 2 tacks.
I was heading out towards the last marker and saw people turning around in front of me, then i went past the small sea rescue boat and thought maybe they had moved the last marker in coz of the swell or something so i gybed around it.
Then i was heading back in and saw they kite flying way out and had to turn around and head back out to it.
Funny how they put the smallest boat the furtherest away in an area with the biggest swell. It was disappearing in the troughs of the swell when i rounded it.
Still ended up finishing though so was happy with that.
1 min of longitude equals 1 nautical mile only at the equator.
At latitude Lanclin, 1 min of long equals approx 0.88 of a nautical mile
I thought each marker boat checked off the sail numbers that rounded them to confirm that the correct course was sailed by competitors.
This was obviously not the case and the event organisers are now relying solely on the Blue chip electronic timers to confirm start and finish. Not very reliable it would seem.
Bit of a bugger for those who sailed so much further to complete the course properly.
Well done to Dansy for pulling out after he realised that he did not round the last boat.
Just spoke to the race director, he was aware that the last mark was well offshore from where it should have been, but was only made aware of this after it was too late.
So it was where it was due to a mistake... he did indicate that in previous years it was a bit closer to shore compared to where it should have been, and this year it was too far offshore.
He's got no way of knowing who rounded it, and indicated that people wouldn't get disqualified if they didn't round it.
Of course if you're one of the top ten then it would be pretty obvious if you took a short cut... but then again if you're in the top ten you've got a helicopter to follow!
I'm amazed at how well organised the whole thing is, and the way that they can say for certain that all sailors have been accounted for. I tip my hat to all the organisers, job well done
