By Talbot Wilson
Dateline- Hamilton, Bermuda: June 19, 2016 — Skipper Ken Read said that there were four main factors that led to Comanche’s record run to Bermuda which ended early today with the 100ft racer chopping almost 5 hours off the previous best time. He pointed to the total commitment of the owners Jim and Kristy Hinze Clark, to a boat that was built especially for breaking records, to a crew of seasoned professionals, and to Stan Honey, who Read called the world’s best navigator.
Comanche had just set a Newport/Bermuda Race line honors record with Read, Honey and a group of sailors who make up a good portion of Who's Who in offshore sailing.
Read called the tactics on Jim and Kristy Hinze Clark’s 100-foot screamer which crossed the line off St. David’s Lighthouse June 19th at 4:22:53 EDT. Her elapsed time is a provisional 34hrs 42min 53sec, almost five hours ahead of the previous 39:39:18 set by George David’s Rambler in 2012. It was Honey who found a crack in the high pressure ridge stretching across the rhumbline on the opening night that trapped the rest of the fleet north of the fresher breeze above the Gulf Stream.
By John Rousmaniere
Dateline Hamilton Bermuda: June 18, 2016 — 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, some 7hrs ahead of the record.
The existing (and probably soon to be old) course record is an average speed of 16 knots and an elapsed time of 39 hr. 39 min. 18 sec. That record was set four years ago, in the last “reaching race,” by George David’s 90-foot Rambler, which clipped a spectacular 14 hours off the previous best time set during the previous “reaching race,” in 2002, by Roy Disney’s Pyewacket. “These were perfect conditions,” David told Colin Thompson of Bermuda's Royal Gazette after collecting the bottle of champagne that’s the traditional reward for the line honors winner.
Rambler not only slashed the race record. She easily beat the next two boats by more than 90 minutes—the Maxi 72s Bella Mente (owned by Hap Fauth) and Shockwave (George Sakellaris), with Bella Mente winning by just 2 minutes on elapsed time. Shockwave turned the tables on her in 2014 by a margin almost as small—7 minutes.
With the Maxis opting not to race this year, when Comanche finishes on Sunday, whoever is observing will have the right to quote the sailor who told Queen Victoria about the yacht America in 1851: “Madam, there is no second.”
By John Rousmaniere
Newport, RI. June 18, 2016. 10AM. The first night of the 50th Bermuda Race found the 130 boats in the fleet reaching comfortably in a light westerly wind, most tightly bunched well behind the leader, Comanche. Jim and Kristy Clark’s 100-foot all-out racing sloop covered the first 181 miles in 13 hours. Some 80 miles behind her was the Hubbard family’s Siren, and then the pack. Surrounding them all was concern about upcoming weather.
Sheila McCurdy’s 38-ft Selkie, one of many smaller boats in the Newport Bermuda Race, crosses the starting line in the St. David’s Lighthouse Division. (Daniel Forster/PPL) The New York Yacht Club race committee, which started the race in 16 classes over three hours on Friday afternoon, reported a total of 133 starters in flat water and a 10-knot breeze gradually clocking from South to Southwest. Three boats later withdrew—Challenger, Momentum, and Soulmates—leaving 130 in the race on Saturday morning. Most are directly in Comanche’s wake, but a few have sailed off to the west, undoubtedly with a strategy of making the best of Sunday’s changing weather that has been anticipated all week in forecasts.