Newport Bermuda Race 2014 - Shockwave beats Bella Mente by 7 minutes
by Newport Bermuda Race on 23 Jun 2014
Bella Mente. Daniel Forster/PPL
Newport Bermuda Race 2014 - Hamilton, Bermuda, June 23. 6 a.m. After sailing nearly side by side over 635 miles and two and a half days, George Sakellaris’ Shockwave nipped Hap Fauth’s Bella Mente at the finish line at St. David’s Lighthouse, Bermuda, by seven minutes to win line honors in the 2014 Newport Bermuda Race.
Shockwave finished at 5:33 a.m. Monday, and Bella Menta at 5:40. The third boat on elapsed time, Alex Schaerer’s Caol Ila R, is expected to finish by 9 a.m.
Hamilton, Bermuda, June 22, 9:30 p.m. In a repeat of their dramatic duel in the 2012 Newport Bermuda Race, two 72-foot Mini-Maxis, Shockwave and Bella Mente, are within two miles of each other on the final sprint to the finish of the 635-mile race.
So close that they sometimes appeared as one boat on the Pantaenius Tracker, Shockwave was 88.7 miles from the finish at 9:00 and Bella Mente had 90.2 miles to go. A third Mini-Maxi, Caol Ila R, was more than 20 miles behind the two leaders for the race’s first to finish honors.
If they keep up the pace of the nine to 13 knot speeds reported on the tracker, the two Gibbs Hill Lighthouse Division boats may cross the finish line off St. David’s Lighthouse by dawn Monday. In 2012 Bella Mente beat Shockwave on elapsed time by two minutes, three seconds, and both boats broke the previous elapsed time record for the race. Shockwave won the Gibbs Hill Lighthouse Trophy on corrected time in 2012.
The tracker calculated at 9:30 that, this year, Shockwave would be the top boat in the fleet under the IRC Rule, with Christopher Dragon, in the St. David’s Lighthouse Division, second ahead of Bella Mente.
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