News & Events | Noticias y Eventos

Five Stars for Inaugural Safe Harbor Race Weekend

Stark Raving Mad IX Wins ORC Class and Overall Honors

Photos by NANCY BLOOM | Text by BARBY MACGOWAN (Media Pro International)

The inaugural Safe Harbor Race Weekend, recently held in Newport, Rhode Island is now in the history books and has made an indelible mark in the log books of 46 sailing teams from around New England and across the country who competed in it. A Superyacht class sailed on Friday and Saturday on Rhode Island Sound while another six classes for ORC, PHRF (A, B and C), and Performance Cruising (Spinnaker and Non-Spinnaker) extended their racing into Sunday, sailing mostly on upper Narragansett Bay. “It was a good show of boats,” said Jim Madden (Newport Beach, California), skipper of the Carkeek 47 Stark Raving Mad IX, which clinched victory in its ORC Class and was named Overall Winner at the event, “so we never took anything for granted.” Madden explained that after finishing 1-2-1 in a decent sea breeze of 8-12 knots on Friday, Saturday was a different story. A race around Jamestown (Conanicut Island) began downwind in a fiveknot southerly near Rose Island, and when teams struggled to keep spinnakers flying as they sailed north under the Pell Bridge, the Race Committee shortened course at the north end of Jamestown,

only a quarter of the way into what otherwise would have been a scenic and much-anticipated 18-mile navigator’s race. “It was a short and highly challenging race,” said Madden, adding that his team finished last that day. “We knew we had to be on our game (for the next day).” Saturday’s setback gave them only a one-point lead over Donald Nicholson’s (Weston, Mass.) J/121 Apollo going into Sunday’s final two races. Wellversed in perseverance, however, the Stark Raving Mad IX team finished 2-1 in a dying 9-10 knot northerly on the final day to win, posting what translated into an impressive lead of 7.5 points over second-place finisher Entropy, a Swan 42 skippered by Patricia Young (Jamestown, R.I.). (Apollo fell to third overall after finishing 4-7 to Entropy’s 3-2.) Winning the two-race Superyacht series was the 60 Metre (197’) Perini Navi Perseus 3, which had been third overall after Friday’s race. By winning on Saturday, it toppled the 56 Metre (183’) Perini Navi Zenji from the lead it had claimed on Friday and further scrambled the results so that the 36 Metre (118’) custom HJB Whisper, which posted a 2-3 for the series, secured a second overall. Zenji finished third overall after finishing fifth on Friday. Other Winners In PHRF A, the J/121 Incognito, with Joe Brito (Bristol, R.I.) at the helm, edged out Settler, a Tripp 43 owned by Tom Rich (Middletown, R.I.), by one point in final standings. In PHRF B, Mark and Cory Sertl’s (Rochester, N.Y./Jamestown, R.I.) Farr 30 Das Blau Max won both races on Sunday to overtake early leader Divided Sky, which is owned by Vincent and Kristina McAteer (East Greenwich, R.I.) and finished second overall. Hawk, the Evelyn 32 owned by Richard and Katie Barker (Newport, R.I.), led its series from day one to win PHRF C, the largest class with nine boats. Two Performance Cruising Classes, one for Spinnaker and one for Non-Spinnaker, each sailed three races: a navigator’s race around government marks on Friday; the shortened Around the Island Race with the rest of the PHRF fleet on Saturday; and another navigator’s race on Sunday. Winning these classes, respectively, were Stephen De Voe’s (Jamestown, R.I.) Swan 46 Galadriel and David Brodsky’s (Newport, R.I.) 47-foot wooden sloop Odyssey. Said De Voe: “As far as regattas go – from construction to organization to execution – this was the best of the best.”

Arey’s Pond 14’s Worlds and Cat Gathering

Two catboat events, AP14 Worlds and Cat Gathering, took place in Orleans, MA. Over thirty 14’s gathered for the first AP World’s event. The Arey’s Pond Gathering, now in its 29th year, is a just-for-fun sail from Little Pleasant Bay, through The Narrows and into Pleasant Bay. Over 86 catboats and classic sailboats came together for this parade of sail. Proceeds from the event went to the Friends of Pleasant Bay and Sipson Island Trust. The Featured Artist award went to Julian Cardinal with his work ‘Catboat’ that pictures an Arey’s Pond Caracal.