Newport Bermuda Division Winners Named

51ST NEWPORT BERMUDA RACE DIVISION WINNERS NAMED

Grundoon, Wizard, Orca, Yankee Girl, Kawil, Elvis, and Maverick top the seven divisions in 2018.

Most of the division silverware in the 2018 Newport Bermuda Race was in doubt until the bulk of the fleet finished Tuesday night and Wednesday morning after a slow and relatively uneventful race. Five big boats had finished on Sunday night and Monday morning, starting with George

David’s maxi, Rambler 88, crossing the St. David’s Lighthouse finish line just before sunset. One other boat finished late on Monday night and then it was a further 18 hours before the rest of the faster boats reached Bermuda. That’s how intensely windless the high-pressure zone was that enveloped the rest of the fleet for more than 24 hours in the middle of the race.

The good news was that nearly all of the 169 boats that started in Newport on June 15th completed the 635-mile race; there were only three retirements. And after making very slow progress in light to non-existent winds in the middle of the racecourse, most finished quickly on Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning.

Cruising Club members fared well in several classes: Ronald Rossetti’s Selamat and Rick Oricchio’s Rocket Science won Class 13 and Class 7, respectively. And Dreamcatcher, the Swan 48 donated by Stephen Kylander to the Mudratz Sailing program, flew a CCA flag with John Winder sailing aboard as an advisor to a youth crew that earned a Class 5 win and 7th overall in the St. David’s Lighthouse Division.

The yacht Grundoon, a Columbia 50 skippered by Jim Grundy of Doylestown, Penn., received the St. David’s

Lighthouse Trophy, the main prize awarded to the first finisher on handicap corrected time among the 85 entries in the St. David’s Lighthouse Division. Grundoon completed the course in 112:12:19. Grundy sailed with his daughter and two sons in the crew; his father purchased Grundoon as a new boat 50 years ago, in 1968, and first entered it in the Newport Bermuda Race in 1972. “This win,” said Grundy, “is for the family!”

Proving that the race is for sailboats and crews of many sizes, speeds and styles, Orca, an Island Packet 38 skippered by Harold Guidotti, of Westbrook, Conn., won the Finisterre Division—a 40-boat fleet for amateur entries using cruising sails—and Wizard, a Volvo Open 70 owned by brothers, Peter Askew of Riderwood, Md., and David Askew, of Sandy, Utah, won the 22-boat Gibbs Hill Lighthouse Division, for highperformance, professionally crewed boats. Orca completed the course in just over five days, finishing in the early hours of Thursday morning with a time of 123:19:13. Making the trip in less than half that time, Wizard finished with an elapsed time of 55:37:02, correcting ahead of New Yorker George David’s Rambler 88, the first boat to cross the finish line, in a time of 50:31:51, just before sunset on Sunday night.

Topping the 15-boat Double-Handed Division was Yankee Girl, a Morris Justine 36 sailed by Zachary Lee and Leif Counter, of Vineyard Haven, Mass., and Pelham, N.Y., respectively. Yankee Girl sailed the racecourse in 116:30:12 and finished first on corrected time by less than eight minutes ahead of Corvus, another Morris 36. This was Lee’s second consecutive double-handed win aboard Yankee Girl.

“A high-pressure area slowed most of the fleet significantly,” said Race Chairman Jonathan Brewin, of St. George’s, Bermuda, “but it made for a very strategic race. We were delighted to see all the boats arrive in Bermuda safely, maybe not too swiftly, but ultimately all were successful in arriving. Hopefully everybody had maximum fun. On behalf of the Cruising Club of America and the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club, I’d like to congratulate the fastest in the fleet— from our traditional lighthouse trophy champions to the first winners in the Super Yacht and Multihull Divisions.”

Multihulls were invited to join the race for the first time in 2018, with three boats competing. New Yorker Jason Carroll on Elvis, a Gunboat 62, not only won the division but completed the course as the fifth finisher in a time of 63:25:32.

Two superyachts competed, with the 112-foot Kawil, skippered by Harold “Spook” Stream of Lake Charles, La., winning on corrected time by more than five hours. The

Temptresssatisfaction of crossing the line six minutes ahead of Kawil on elapsed time went to Daniel Van Starrenburg, of Bedford Hills, N.Y., who sailed his 110-foot Aurelius in an elapsed time of 104:27:32.

First of the two boats in the Open Division was Maverick, an Infiniti 46R DSS skippered by Quentin Stewart of Guernsey, GBR. The light conditions did not favor the radical 46-footer, which is outfitted with lifting foils that provide extra stability and speed when the wind is up, but the sleek British boat nonetheless completed the course 10th fastest, in 97:03:56.

Story courtesy Newport Bermuda Race Media Team (media@bermudarace.com).