2016 Newport Bermuda Yacht Race start. COMANCHE skippered by Ken Read, blasts away from the start at 25knots, in the hope of breaking the course record of 39 hours 39 minutes Barry Pickthall / PPL
Less than 24 hours into the race, Comanche is already through the Gulf Steam and pressing to break Rambler’s elapsed time record from 2012. “We’re in Champagne conditions, making 20-25 knots,” said skipper Kenny Read. At press time 7:00PM in Bermuda, Comanche was 213 miles from the St. David’s Lighthouse finish in Bermuda doing 20kts. At that pace she would cross the finish line as early as 3:00AM
We are in day 2 of the 2014 Newport-Bermuda race and while there has been some really nice sailing at times, we are currently “parked up” as the saying goes, waiting for the “re-start”. We are about 200 miles out from Newport and only about 38 miles from our target entrance to the Gulf Stream, the river of hot, fast water within the ocean that crosses at nearly a right angle to the rhumb line course from Newport to Bermuda. We were expecting to be there tonight but …
During the 2012 race, Seahorse Magazine Editor Dobbs Davis is providing a twice-daily video commentary of the action.
The Bermuda Race, or Newport Bermuda Race, is a biennial yacht race from Newport, Rhode Island to the island of Bermuda (in odd years, the Marion-Bermuda Yacht Race occurs), a distance of 635 nautical miles (1175 km) across open ocean … read more @ wikipedia
Among the features of the 635nm Newport to Bermuda Race is the changeability of the race track. Between the Gulf Stream and the weather systems, what the 90-foot Rambler saw in route to crushing the elapsed time record was much different to what was seen later in the race.
Matthew Gregory was onboard Bretwalda 3, a Rogers 46 owned by Bob Pethick, which finished just over 19 hours after Rambler (39:39:18 versus 58:59:41). Here was their race…
The highlight is the paradox of risk management from a routing perspective. Sail fast – really fast and furious – straight to the finish or sail an extra 30-40 mile to the west to go find (or maybe not find) a 40-60 mile long sliver of Gulf Stream that’s only 5-10 miles wide but would give your already 15 knots of boat speed a bonus 2-4 knot push towards Bermuda.
Sounds like a simple choice. However, all of the 160+ boats were told about the Gulf Stream gains to the west in the pre-start briefing. Hence many will go to the west of the rhumbline, and maybe, maybe stumble upon that sliver of Gulf Stream core.
So hence the paradox. Low risk is to point at the finish line right out of the blocks and focus on max VMC sailing based upon the boats sail inventory and performance characteristics. But since you’d be bucking the advice of the Gulf Stream experts, you’re probably going to lever up on the fleet by being one of the few rhumb liners. Hence the low risk move becomes the highly levered one.
Ultimately this Bermuda race came down to the low pressure system in the last 80 miles of the course (at least for our Class 8). That’s the position we played out of the blocks. For me, this race was about setting up for the wind condition (the low over Bermuda) at the end of the race, rather than it was to roll dice in the Gulf Stream.
Nearly all the boats are now finished, and by matching the elapsed time to the corrected time, the 2012 edition proved that the faster boats in each division tended to be the winners. This was certainly the case in Class 3, where Rives Potts’ McCurdy and Rhodes 48-foot ‘Carina’ won both their division and the St. David’s Lighthouse Trophy as the corrected time winner of the entire amateur division
The Spirit of Bermuda is a modern-built Bermuda sloop. She is a replica of a Royal Navy Sloop-of-war, depicted in a well-known 1831 painting.
History of the Bermuda Sloop
The Bermuda sloop was a type of small sailing ship built in Bermuda between the Seventeenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Fitted with Gaff rig, a combination of Gaff and Square rig, or Bermuda rig, they were used by Bermudian merchants, privateers and other seafarers. Their versatility, and their maneouvrability and speed, especially upwind, meant they were also jealously sought after by non-Bermudian operators for both merchant and naval roles. Bermudians built large numbers of them for their own merchant fleet and for export before being obliged to turn to other trades in the Nineteenth Century. At the end of the Twentieth Century, no Bermuda sloop remained anywhere in the world, and most Bermudians had no practical or romantic connection to the island’s long history as a maritime economy. These were among the facts that prompted the construction of a new Bermuda sloop, the Spirit of Bermuda, and the creation of a sail training organisation, the Bermuda Sloop Foundation, to utilise her in instilling an awareness of the sea and of Bermuda’s maritime heritage in her youth.
Design and Construction of the Spirit of Bermuda
Unlike the original vessel, which would have been built primarily from wood, the Spirit of Bermuda was manufactured from modern materials.
“The vessel utilizes modern wood composite construction (seven layers of wood and epoxy), it has carbon fiber spars, outside ballast, and up-to-date systems to ensure longevity, performance and comfort. She was designed by Langan Design Associates of Newport, Rhode Island.” rockportmarine.com/boat_details
She was built in the US for the charitable Bermuda Sloop Foundation (BSF) to serve as a sail training ship for Bermuda’s youths.
Bermuda sloops were built with up to three masts, although purists might insist the term sloop be applied only to single-masted vessels. The single masted ships, with their huge sails, and the tremendous wind energy they harnessed, were demanding to sail, and required large, experienced crews. The Royal Navy favoured multi-masted versions as it was perennially short of sailors, at the end of the Eighteenth Century, and such crewmembers as it had, particularly in the Western Atlantic (given the continuing wars with France for control of Europe), received insufficient training. The longer decks of the multi-masted vessels also had the advantage of allowing more guns to be carried.
The Bermuda Sloop Foundation chose a three-masted design for one of the reasons the navy had: it was easier to handle (and less dangerous) for the inexperienced youths who would crew her. A design with Bermuda rig was also favoured, although the majority of Bermuda sloops historically built probably were fitted with Gaff rig.
The final design, naval architecture and engineering of the vessel was accomplished in Newport, Rhode Island by Langan Design Associates, headed at the time by company founder Bill Langan.
The Bermuda Sloop Foundation
The BSF was founded in 1996 by Malcolm Kirkland, Alan Burland and Jay Kempe. During the next eight years, the Foundation grew as donations were sought, and the design decided upon. Bermudian singer-songwriter Heather Nova recorded the single Sailing to raise funds for the project. Rockport Marine, in Rockport, Maine, was contracted to build the ship in 2004. The Spirit of Bermuda was completed in August, 2006, and sailed to Bermuda that October. Since then she has operated locally and internationally on sail training cruises.
The Bermuda Race, or Newport Bermuda Race, is a biennial yacht race from Newport, Rhode Island to the island of Bermuda (in odd years, the Marion-Bermuda Yacht Race occurs), a distance of 635 nautical miles (1175 km) across open ocean.
Early History
The first Bermuda Race was started by the Brooklyn Yacht Club started in 1906 from Gravesend Bay, N.Y. with three entries. It ended that year at the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club off St. David’s Head, Bermuda. The winner (and one of the two that finished) of that first race was a 38-foot yawl Tammerlane, commanded by Thomas Fleming Day, then editor of The Rudder magazine. The race was held several more times in the 1900s and 1920s.
At the close of World War I Royal Bermuda Yacht Club Vice-Commodore Eldon Trimingham met with a group of New Yorkers, including Herbert L. Stone, editor of Yachting. The result was a revival of the Race, and in 1923 22 boats started at New London, Connecticut, and every one finished.
Starting in 1926, the Cruising Club of America (CCA) and the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club (RBYC) have co-organized the race, setting a regular schedule for holding the race in even-numbered years. That schedule has continued to the present except for a hiatus during World War II. In early years, the race started at Gravesend, Marblehead, Mass., New London, Conn. and Montauk, N.Y., but since 1938 it has started at Newport. Over the past 100 years, some 4,500 boats and 46,000 men and women have raced to Bermuda, most of them with little real hope of winning. One founder, Tom Day may have hit the reason so many people join the race, they are seizing the opportunity “to get a smell of the sea and forget for the time being that there is such a thing as God’s green earth in the universe.”
Recent History
“The Bermuda Race is the pre-eminent distance race on the East Coast,” to quote Gary Jobson, Honorary Chair of the event’s 2006 centennial race. “It’s a feather in every sailor’s cap to have done the race, and many consider the Lighthouse Trophy the most coveted trophy in distance racing.” With 265 yachts the 2006 edition was the largest yet. Winners, that year, received trophies from The Princess Royal at Government House, the residence of the governor.
The 1906 race was won by Tamerlane, a 38 ft (11 m) yawl, captained by Frank Maier in a time of 126 hours. The current record of 54 hr was set by Roy Disney’s Pyewacket in 2002.
