Slowboat to Bermuda - race record not under threat

by Talbot Wilson on 23 Jun 2008
George David owner of Rambler and Alex Jackson on Speedboat, the two men vying for line honors in their respective classes, will have to put their record-breaking ambitions on hold for two more years.

A light wind blowing up the rhumb line directly from Bermuda has dashed their hopes. Speedboat’s navigator had predicted an ETA of 1500hrs on Sunday. Now, it may be 1500 on Monday before they reach Bermuda, a day late and a little short.

The race has two records, one for Open Division boats, 48hr, 28min, 31sec set by Hasso Plattner’s Morning Glory in 2004, and the ‘official’ record for traditional designs set by Roy Disney’s Pyewacket at 53hr, 39 min 22 min.

Both Rambler and Speedboat will have to settle for line honors now. But we have to remember how the much smaller 66 foot Bella Mente skippered by Hap Fauth slipped over the line well ahead of the 98 foot super-maxi Maximus back in 2006. The new 69 foot Bella Mente is within striking distance if the big boats falter.

Race commentary 3 by Chairman Nick Nicholson

Late Saturday, Thirty-two hours into the 2008 Newport Bermuda Race, two entirely different strategies emerged. The fastest boats have chosen to effectively ignore the characteristics of the Gulf Stream and concentrate on sailing the fastest angle, using Bermuda as the waypoint. Alex Jackson's 99ft super maxi Speedboat has gone well to the east—about 25 miles--and it appears that navigator Stan Honey is gambling on two things: a weakly-defined area of southward-flowing warm water south and east of the stream, and a potential wind shift into the southeast as the boat approaches Bermuda Sunday afternoon. Andrew Cape, Puma‘s Il Mostro navigator, has been closely following in Speedboat’s wake, but the Volvo 70 can’t match the speed of the new Juan K designed 99-footer.

George David’s 90-foot Rambler, the Gibbs Hill Lighthouse division scratch boat, has sailed a more conservative course, and lines up about five mile east of the rhumb line some 25 miles behind Speedboat and eight miles closer to Bermuda than Puma’s Il Mostro at 2000 EDT Saturday. In the amateur-helmed St. David’s Lighthouse Division, Andrew Short’s Shockwave 5 has a 10-mile lead over Hexe, her closest rival.

The best action, however, is further back in the field. The Double-Handed Division is tightly packed to the west of the rhumbline, with Bjorn Johnson’s Valkyrie dead even with Jason R Richter's Paladin, some 452 miles from Bermuda. Bruce and Dorsey Beard’s Sabre 386 Esmeralde is close to her rivals, some 13 miles behind. Paladin, a J/35, appears to have the better of her rivals on corrected time at this point.

In Class 1, the smallest of the of the St. David’s Lighthouse Division boats, CCA Vice-Commodore Sheila McCurdy’s McCurdy & Rhodes 38 Selkie is dead even with Hiroshi Nakajima’s Swan 43 Hiro Maru on both rating and distance to go. The two boats are leading their Class 1 rivals at this point in distance to go. Selkie’s average speed over the last two hours suggests that she has found the heart of the warm eddy to the west, and is making more than 8.5 knots over the bottom.

Those chasing the warm eddy may have paid a high price to get there, with Paul McMahon’s Tartan 41 Family Affair reporting biting the bullet to take a hitch away from Bermuda to the west in order to catch the positive current. Now that she’s in it, the big question will be whether the gamble of tacking away from the rhumb line will pay off.

Given the way that the bulk of the fleet is spread out to the west of the rhumb line behind the faster boats to the east, some are likely to be losers with this strategy, but a race winner may lurk among this group.

In the Cruiser Division, Erling Kristiansen’s Swan 56 Mensae—scratch boat in the division—has a 15-mile lead over Arent H Kits Van Heyningen's IMX 45 Temptress, her closest rival. Temptress won the Gibbs Hill Lighthouse Division in 2006, but her new owner has elected to compete in the Cruiser Division in 2008.

Late Saturday night and early Sunday morning is the time when the main portion of the fleet reaches the Gulf Stream, and the water quickly rises in temperature from the cooler slope waters to the 80-plus degree water of the main portion of the Stream. Before the days of through-hull temperature transducers, veteran sailors knew they had reached the Stream when the water hitting them in the face was warm rather than cool. Today, constant tracking of surface temperature allows navigators to fine-tune their course relative to the warm, fast current.

This year, the goal is just to get across the stream at right angles to the main axis as quickly as possible, as there is no benefit to be had from spending time in the northeasterly-flowing main body of the current.

For most of the fleet, it’s a clear night with a nearly-full moon, but local convection over the stream itself is always a threat. Ken Campbell of Commander’s Weather is predicting S to SW winds of 10 to 15 knots for most of the fleet Saturday night.

On Sunday, winds should back more into the south and gradually build, with boats expected to have a bumpy ride late that night and on Monday. Today’s close fetch for westerly-placed boats may turn into a dead beat for the first part of the second half of the race.

By that time, the biggest boats will already be tied up at the Royal Bermuda YC. Cold beers and a warm shower will be the reward for hitching a ride on a big, fast boat.

The Tucker Thompsom video and commentary of the start of the Newport Bermuda Race is on www.t2p.tv/ and you can follow the race through commentary by Race Chairman Nick Nicholson on the race website www.bermudarace.com and through the iBoattrack official web site found at www.iboattrack.com/racetracking.html