I was just posting some promo stuff for our club's end of season marathon and I thought some of the Stormriders might be interested. It's a Le Mans start from Bayview on the northern beaches, around Lion Island at the head of Pittwater and back to BYRA. The course is about 20Km's and involves basically an open ocean crossing across the mouth of Broken Bay. There is a shorter course around the Plam Beach navigation pylon that the FE+ guys could do. Don't know if it's up your alley but thought I'd put it out there. NOR, entry form and more info can be found at http://www.byra.org.au/events/peter_loft.php and I'll be doing it but on my Finn dinghy, not the board. If you do race you can expect to be up against 18' skiffs, foiling moths and hopefully some off the beach cats.
As far as rescue boats, I'll have to check but last time we had 5 boats covering the course. You'd have to be quietly confident in your abilities while going around the island as it's harder to spot someone down in the water than a capsized dinghy. I will see what the boat situation is though and post back here soon.
, although I may be too smashed up from my mates wedding the night before. 
