Marion Bermuda Race course record set

by Liz Stott on 23 Jun 2011 Marion Bermuda Race 2011.

More than half the fleet has made it into the Royal Hamilton Amateur Dinghy Club and is celebrating their race to Bermuda.
  
The big story of the race is Lilla (Class A), a Briand 76 (Skipper Simon Di Pietro) who set the Marion Bermuda Race course record with an elapsed time of 68:58:45 and a corrected time of 71:48:26. Previous course record was 72 hours. With a crew of 12 multinational crew members hailing from as far and wide as Ireland and South Africa, they enjoyed quite a romp to the onion patch, making 10's and 11's consistently, with top speeds reaching 13.5.

De Pietro's Class 'A' entry started the race at 1:30pm EDT from Buzzard's Bay Marion, Massachusetts last Friday and officially crossed the finish line at St David's Head, Bermuda at 11:28am on Monday, June 20.

Two formidable competitors came in behind Lilla, and all of the top three boats, including Lilla, hail from Mattapoisett, MA. 
  
Pescatore (Class A), a Hinckley SW 59, Skipper George Tougas, arrived in Bermuda with an elapsed time of 86:50:57 and corrected time of 78:20:17. 
  
Skipper Chip Johns (Commodore Beverly Yacht Club, one of the three sponsoring clubs of the Marion Bermuda Race) brought Margalo across the finish line with an elapsed time of 87:43:42 and corrected time of 78:46:48.

From Lyra – June 22 @ 1:27pm

We’re in our (what we hope to be) our final approach to Bermuda! We were again becalmed yesterday in a low pressure system that we tried to take as a sort of 'short cut'. Unfortunately, it didn’t fare well. We didn’t move from about 9 AM until 3 PM when we finally caught a breath of a breeze and got Lyra through the low and out into the wind. Last night was rough, with some pretty big swells and a lighter-than-we’d-like breeze that kept the sails flapping and the boat rocking heavily side to side. So, for the night we decided instead of making a straight shot, we would tack back and forth every few hours, much like skiers will do going down a ski slope. It’s longer, but it made the ride a little more comfortable and in the end gets us to the same spot.

This morning the backing breeze continued (coming from the north), and instead of tacking we chose to point downwind and use the wing-on-wing sail configuration. This set-up has the wind coming directly behind the boat over the stern and up to the sails, but the main and the jib sit on opposite sides of the boat so that they each catch the breeze instead of blanketing each other. Imagine Lyra’s middle as the body of a bird and each sail as a wing, you’ll get the idea.

Anyway, this configuration has us moving the same speed as when we were tacking BUT we’re headed in a straight line so we will arrive sooner than if we tacked down. There is also a forecasted wind shift to the west, so eventually we will have to switch the jib over- but we will still be headed the right way!

We finally heard Bermuda radio over the VHF radio last night in the cockpit. We think we heard a class A boat with a name that starts with 'O' finishing at around 12:30. The class A boats are the fastest in the race, so if we’re coming in 18 or 19 hours behind him, we could end up beating him with corrected time!

We’re keeping our ears to the radio and our eyes on the horizon…and one eye on that sneaky, shifty Bermuda wind!

Marion Bermuda Race website