Congratulations Argo on smashing the Pineapple Cup course record!
by Pineapple Cup 31 Jan 2019 14:12 PST
31 January 2019
In near perfect conditions Team Argo and their MOD 70 owned and skippered by Jason Carroll, and sailed by a number of the world's best sailors, crossed the finish line of the 2019 Pineapple Cup - Montego Bay Race smashing the longstanding course record!
Argo's elapsed time of 2 days 7 minutes 44 seconds slashed the previous record by 10 hours 16 minutes and 58 seconds. Their time also breaks the multihull record set by Steve Fosset's ORMA 60 Lakota in 1999 by 20 hours 21 seconds. Argo sailed a distance of 869nm at an average speed of 18.05 knots.
What They Said:
Jason Carroll, owner, Argo, "It was a really fun race, it had a lot of different things happening. The start was the best part, it was so exciting, that first 60 miles across the gulf-stream was just a handful, it was really fun it was fast, it was the biggest waves we've ever sailed in as a team.
This is a new adventure for us sailing the MOD 70 so we're all kinda working up through all of the different regattas we can do over the course of the year to practice and see what we ultimately want to do with it and frankly I think that the Pineapple Cup, the Caribbean 600 are both great training regattas for the Transpac, which we want to do in July.
Overall we are pretty thrilled, I have to say we kept setting challenges for ourselves along the way and we thought there was a chance we could go sub 2 days and we missed it by 7 minutes, so aside from that it was exhilarating to cross the line and head to the dock!"
Anthony Kotoun, crew member, Argo, "I think this is a combination of a lot of good things. This race is famous for being one of the best ocean races. Didn't Ted Turner say it's the best race ever? Then we have one of the coolest, fastest boats ever, and we got some really good weather, which wasn't supposed to be there, but in the end did come so that was a bit of a surprise. In the end all three things came together and here we are...drinking Red Stripe!
If you divide the race into thirds the beginning was supposed to be really good, the middle was supposed to be light and dodgy and the last third was supposed to be ok, so we really didn't know until the end...so it was a bit of a waiting game. The wind was very unstable, the climate environment was unstable with a lot of clouds and squalls so you just never knew what was on the other side, so we just never knew what was going to be on the other side."
To track the teams visit www.pineapplecup.com