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Just in case you haven’t quite had your fill of Carolina Cup goodness, here’s the cherry on top: Awesome drone footage from the “Graveyard Race” on Saturday.

As you can see, there are waves in Carolina. The 2-3ft swell certainly caused a bit of chaos (and at least one particularly memorable photo), adding one more element to a race that was already well and truly living up to its name.

Watch above and enjoy, then check back tomorrow for more photos, video and analysis of the 2016 West Marine Carolina Cup (including an updated world rankings leaderboard).

Couple of special mentions from the start of the race:

– That’s Chuck Glynn with the holeshot, while Beau O’Brian and Travis Grant rounded the “Golden Buoy” right on his tail. Chuck worked hard all race and scored a well-deserved top 10 finish in one of the most competitive races we’ve ever seen.

– Giorgio Gomez also had a lightning fast start before holding pace with the leaders right til the closing stages of the race.

– And as if Titouan Puyo’s monumental victory wasn’t amazing enough already: Pause the video at exactly 20 seconds and have a look where he is (white shirt, blue board – just to the left of the guy in orange shorts, black shirt and yellow board). Titou got sandwiched behind a flock of boards as soon as the horn blew, and basically had to stand still in waist deep water as the other top contenders sprinted away.

It was a horror start. Titou was probably in 80th position at that stage — the leaders were halfway to the buoy before he’d taken his first stroke. But the NSP team rider didn’t panic; Titou got to his feet and charged out through the waves to round the buoy in about 30th position. Half a mile later he was in the lead.

It was an incredibly quick comeback that setup a monumental victory, and it was just one of many amazing stories hidden within this great race. I’ll share a few more insider anecdotes over the next couple of days, including Ryan Helm doing the whole race *without* a fin, Annabel winning on a three day old race board, and Kelly Margetts trying to learn French in the draft train.

– Another shout out needs to go to Chase Kosterlitz, who had an even worse start than Titou but managed to slowly but surely claw his way back through the field over the next 13 miles to finish 16th.