Genuuine Risk At Start Of Bermuda Race (Photo by George Bekris )

Bermuda executive Mark Watson made his first race to Bermuda memorable with a corrected time win in Genuine Risk in the Open Division for cant-keel boats. Speedboat, owned by Alex Jackson, took line honors for the race, finishing just before dawn at 3:47:56 with an elapsed time of 59:17:56, well off the course record.  Rán, the Fastnet and Sydney Hobart race winner, finished first in Class 10 and is a strong contender for the Gibbs Hill Lighthouse trophy.

Il Mostro (Puma) skippered by Ken Read, crossed the line second and corrected just behind Genuine Risk. “We were ahead of Il Mostro and Speedboat after we all came out of the Gulf Stream west of the rhumb line,” Watson said. “We decided to take a more easterly angle to avoid a cold eddy with negative current, but that let Speedboat separate from us.” Ralph Steitz, Sailing Director for the US Merchant Marine Academy (owner of Genuine Risk, which Watson sponsored), was one of many sailors who said how much they had enjoyed the race.  “This was the easiest Bermuda Race I’ve ever done and I’ve done a few.”  

Photos of Bermuda Race Start By George Bekris  HERE

PUMA Ocean Racing’s IL Mostro (Photo by George Bekris)

  Rán, Niklas Zennstrom’s JV 72, is the provisional winner in Class 10 for big professional boats in the Gibbs Hill Lighthouse Division after being pushed hard by Tom Hill’s Titan XV for more than 600 miles. George David’s Rambler matched up with Karl Kwok’s Beau Geste and took line honors for these fixed-keel boats. “I’ve never sailed a Bermuda Race when you’re head to head with another boat for so long,” said Rambler’s tactician, Jerry Kirby.  “It came down to the last tack to St. David’s Light.”
 
Vanquish, co-skippered by Bermudian Buddy Rego and Americans Russell Lucas and Jamie Hilton, crossed the line first in Class 8 for the big boats in the amateur St. David’s Lighthouse Division, but Gus Carlson’s Aurora is the provisional class winner. Some smaller boats have a good shot at winning the division. Carina, skippered by Rives Potts, has a 60-mile lead over her Class 3 competition. In the highly competitive Class 1, Sinn Fein, Peter Rebovich’s Cal 40 and the two-time defending St. David’s winner, has sailed farther west than anybody and is fighting for the lead with David Dickerson’s Lindy.
 
In the Double-Handed Division, iBoattrack showed Michael Hennessy’s Dragon at the head of the pack, 160 miles from the finish, with the four-time winner Lora Ann not far behind. The Cruising Division’s leader, Clover III, was about 70 miles out on Saturday afternoon with a healthy lead on the 80-footer Nirvana.

Genuine Risk (Photo by George Bekris)

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Speedboat Crew On Deck

Stan Honey and Crew Of Speedboat Arrive In Bermuda

It was a slow race, with Speedboat making the 635-mile course in just over 59 hours after the start at Newport on Friday.  The crew of 25 never reefed the boat. In the light to moderate conditions that prevailed through most of the race, Speedboat was hard pressed by Il Mostro, Rambler, and several boats in the mini-maxi 70-80 foot range over the first third of the course.  “We really didn’t get away from them until we were in the Stream,” navigator Stan Honey said after Speedboat tied up at the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club’s marina early Monday morning. “Then they gained a lot in the light stuff as we came into the finish.”
At 5 AM EDT the mini-maxi Rán on its blog reported less than 10 knots as she beat to windward toward the buoys guarding Bermuda’s reef.  “Titan is downwind from us and is not a threat. Rambler and Beau Geste are upwind and in front as we thought they would. We are still in a strong position although it now looks like Beau Geste is the biggest threat. Just a few more hours to go.”
At 6:30 the blog reported, “As we are approaching the finish slowly but surely, we are all on deck, no more watches, all are on duty for the final stretch. Coffee and tea served on the rail – black only as no more milk powder onboard. Very calm water. Wind speed of 9 knots –
just over – and land in sight.”

Traditional Dark n Stormys Being Prepared At The Dock For Speedboat Crew

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Speedboat From Above (Photo by Daniel Forster / PPL )

The lead boats entered the Gulf Stream at around sunset Saturday, heading upwind into a moderate southwesterly wind with as much as 4 knots of favorable current in the long, hot meander that they have been steering for since the race start on Friday afternoon. Speedboat, at 100ft the largest yacht in the fleet, was making more than 12 knots over the bottom. The earlier “champagne conditions” were behind them as they pounded into big, square, confused seas.

iBoattrack  positions at 11 AM EDT Sunday showed Speedboat averaging almost 11 knots with 175 miles to the finish. At this rate she is behind the  48-hour elapsed time race record for cant-keel, Open Division boats – She has to average 13knots for the whole race to beat this time.

Rán was 38 miles back. Following close on the heels of this English boat in the Gibbs Hill Division were Titan XV, Beau Geste, Bella Mente, Rambler, Il Mostro, Vanquish, and Genuine Risk. This tightly bunched pack of eight has been separated by only a few miles since the start.

Ran From Above (Photo by Daniel Forster / PPL )

By this morning the ‘big boat’ leaders were clear of the Stream and entering the 250-mile stretch of often confused wind and currents between the Gulf Stream and Bermuda. Race veterans wryly call this “Happy Valley,” for it is where the race is often won and lost.              

Chris Museler, on Titan XV, filed this report just before midnight:
“Now this is what we came for! The boat is literally crashing into waves close reaching onto the Gulf Stream and the water temperature has leapt into the 80s. It’s getting darker and the Aramid rigging has been humming and groaning, and the deck bounces from each loud crack when a sheet or the traveler is eased. This wild ride comes from being in a positive eddy heading south, straight into it! (Wind and current collide to stack up the seas that the boats are crashing into.) This is getting to be fun after losing a bit to competitors this afternoon. The bright sun and the flat water sailing are gone. Can’t write anymore, quite hot and uncomfortable down here. So I’m on watch and will be seeing you in the morning. Knew I wouldn’t want to sail a Bermuda Race without a proper ‘thrash,’ as Mr. Rousmaniere calls it!”

'Sinn Fein' a Cal 40 skippered by Peter S. Rebovich Sr. leads 'Frolic', a Sabre 362 owned by Peter Brown, in class 1 of the St David's Lighthouse at the start of the 635 mile Newport Bermuda Race(Photo by Daniel Forster / PPL)

The Smaller Boats

By dawn today, Rán was out of the Stream, and the team was speculating in their blog whether the smaller boats – a hundred miles astern, and just entering this zone – have had consistently more wind than the big ones.

In Class 1, the St. David’s Lighthouse Division class for boats of about 40 feet, Sinn Fein, the two-time defending St. David’s champion, has chosen a course well to the right of the fleet leaders, and her close class rivals sistership Gone with the Wind and the Tartan 41 Aurora, and charting a route 50 miles west of the rhumb line.   

In the Double-Handed Division, two of the light-displacement Class 40s, Dragon and KamoaE, have a healthy lead on elapsed time, but Richard du Moulin’s Lora Ann remains in contention. 

The Cruiser Division leader is the 56-foot Clover III, well ahead of the bigger boats in this Division.      

The Gibbs Hill Lighthouse and St David's Lighthouse Trophies (Photo by Barry Pickthall / PPL)

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Ran At Newport Bermuda Race Start (Photo by George Bekris )

The Newport Bermuda Race fleet made their upwind starts in 16 classes over a period of more than two and a half hours on Friday afternoon. There now are 183 boats, after Avatar didn’t start. In addition, Blue sailed back to the shipyard to get her broken centerboard cable fixed; she’s expected to start again after the repair.

The start found some skippers were surprisingly aggressive. Apparently forgetting that this isn’t a day race but a 635-mile marathon running several days, they also seem to have experienced a touch of amnesia about the tide table.  As the new ebb tide ran with every great velocity out of Narragansett Bay, it pushed them inexorably toward Bermuda, but also over the starting line a little earlier than their tacticians had planned.

Of the 13 boats in Class 4 (St. David’s Light Division, 45-55 footers), four found themselves over early at the pin end, with Star Chaser getting what one of her crew called “the best start in the fleet” in an email to media@BermudaRace.com. “We were at the committee boat end of the line with some of the J-Boats but higher and faster. We all chose to be slightly late on the gun: no use being OCS  on a race of 635 nm!”

In Class 8 (St. David’s Light, 65-footers) two boats were premature. One was Aurora (with Gary Jobson in the afterguard), and she had to pick her way back to the line, losing at least three minutes in the process.

The current new on the Newport Bermuda Race  is that  Speedboat took the lead from Titan XV at sunset Friday night as the big 183-boat fleet raced toward Bermuda on a fast close reach in a flat sea, clear visibility, and a moderate southwest wind that gradually strengthened and clocked toward the west.  Two boats set Code Zeros.

For current boat positions click HERE

 Chris Museler reports from Titan XV:  a collision, a Code Zero, and a champagne wake

 Friday, 2045 EDT.  What an incredible day we’ve had! When I woke up to clear skies and glassy conditions, I knew the sea breeze was setting up nicely. After our delicious hot lunch aboard Tom and Dotty Hill’s Titan XIV, we set out in a relaxed mood, everyone smiling about the conditions. The spectators were all smiles and cheers. There were so many people camped out on the Castle Hill lawn that you couldn’t see any grass.

We started well to weather of the other mini maxis in Class 10 (Gibbs Hill Division) and from then until sunset (a few moments ago) it’s been champagne sailing conditions – sailing at 13-15 knots in a steady wind.   We’ve been the lead boat for a few hours, but now as it’s getting dark, Speedboat is passing us to leeward.  She started at 4:30, an hour after we did, and it’s now after 8.  Rán (in our class) isn’t far behind.

At about 5:30 we hit a large marine animal of some kind.  It may have been a basking shark, maybe as long as 20 feet. The hit was soft and we almost stopped. The fish made a few squiggles, spun off, and swam away in our wake.  The boat appears to be undamaged.

We’ve switched to a Code Zero, and as our grinders are getting busy they look a lot bigger than before. Mark Strube, who finished second at the Star Class Europeans two weeks ago, is 250 pounds of muscle.  The crew has just had dinner – hot rice and chicken with pineapple, which took an hour to cook in two large pots, plus the usual Snickers and Pringles for snacks . . . and apples, too.

More Photos Of The Newport Bermuda Race Start by George Bekris click HERE

 The leader for several hours was Titan XV, in the Gibbs Hill Lighthouse Division. She was caught by Speedboat (Open Division, which started an hour later) at about 8:45 pm.  Other positions have been changing in the extremely competitive group of mini maxis sailing in the Gibbs Hill Division, with Hap Fauth’s Bella Mente overtaking Niklas Zennstrom’s Rán soon after midnight, and Rán then catching Rambler and Beau Geste in parking-lot conditions. The wind slowly faded during the night, swung into the north for a while. After dawn, two boats reported a very light breeze from the southeast, which is the course to Bermuda.  Later on Saturday morning the wind filled in nicely with a report of 15-plus knots, whitecaps, and the first sighting of cumulus clouds over the Gulf Stream ahead.  There also were reports of U.S. Navy exercises in the area of some boats.

By John Rousmaniere

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One Of The Classes Starting In Newport Bermuda Race 2008 (Photo by George Bekris)

Down in Bermuda, the best spot to watch the yachts finish in Bermuda is from the grounds of St. David’s Lighthouse. Visitors will find that the Finish Line Committee is very hospitable and depending on the finishing traffic, they may be invited up into the tower for a tour. It is a straight up climb and not for people afraid of heights. The view from the lawn is almost as good and worth the trip to St. David’s.

The HD Gateway Finish Line Cam is new for 2010.  From the high definition camera mounted on the St. David’s Lighthouse tower, finish line action will be streamed worldwide 24/7. Spectators can use iBoattrack to follow their boat of interest to the finish, then actually watch them cross the line when they arrive.

In Bermuda, digital spectators can watch boats finish from the comfort of the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club. A Gateway ‘SMART Board’ will be available for viewing in the Calabash Lounge and a smaller HD TV monitor will be available over the Terrace Bar.

 by Talbot Wilson

New Bermuda Race Entrants

The above list subject to change.

For More Photos of the Newport bermuda Race 2008 by George Bekris click  HERE

Newport Bermuda Race 2008 (Photo by George Bekris )

 From the June 18^th start in Newport to finish in Bermuda 635 miles later, this classic ocean race is almost a spectator sport.

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