Imagine 3 to 4 days of sailing upwind in big chop, shifty winds, large current eddies, and with folks back home second-guessing your every course change via satellite tracking, and you’ll have an inkling of what racing was like in the 2008 Newport Bermuda Race. Many a nice meal was put on hold while crews acclimated to the bumpy conditions that greeted the 200+ boat fleet as they moved through the Gulf Stream along the 630 mile passage from Newport to Bermuda. No spinnakers were to be seen and several boats reported tacking onto the layline 200-300 miles from the finish.J owners turned out in record numbers and represented 22% of the entire fleet - the first time J has surpassed Swan (14%) for the most popular brand/design in a Bermuda Race. From Doug Hannah’s J/109 OFFBEAT (one of the smallest boats in the fleet and sailing double-handed) to Jim Madden’s J/65, BRAND NEW DAY, there were 14 different J designs sailing. And J owners made the most of it. 52% of the top 25 overall finishers in IRC were J’s, and owners collected 26% of the top three places in all divisions and overall combined. That’s a lot of silver!
Performance highlights:
Lenny Sitar aboard J/44 VAMP sailed to victory in the hard fought J/44 class (the only one-design class in the fleet), and was the top J finisher overall in IRC. In fact, the top four J/44s finished within 35 minutes of each other after nearly 4 days of racing!
Tom Carroll on the J/133 SIREN SONG finished 2nd under IRC in the Gibbs Hill Lighthouse Division just in front of Mark Hansen’s J/145C SWEET LORRAINE. Howie Hodgson had his J/42 TRUE moving like a thoroughbred to finish as the top J/42 and 2nd in Class 3 under ORR. George Petrides on AVRA was top J/120 finisher and came out 3rd in Class 4 ORR.
One of the more impressive class performances was that of TABASCO a J/46 skippered by John Levinson, who sailed to victory in the Class 6 ORR ahead of the fleet of J/122s, who had a great battle on their own. With several lead changes right down to the wire, David Askew and Ken Comerford on the J/122 FLYING JENNY VI were first to finish by only 1 min 7 seconds over Marc Glimcher on CATAPULT and 35 minutes over Stephen Furnary on PATRIOT, who had been the J/122 pace-setter for most of the race. After handicaps were applied, the top J/122s in ORR were CATAPULT, PATRIOT & FLYING JENNY VI. Under IRC, it was FLYING JENNY VI, CATAPULT then PATRIOT.
Jim Madden’s J/65, BRAND NEW DAY made her Bermuda Race debut by finishing 2nd in the Class 9 ORR maxi division, against the likes of the RP80 SHOCKWAVE, Frers 80 HEXE, RP66 ZARAFFA, J/V66 DEFIANT, etc.
In the Class 14 Cruising division, the Willauer family aboard their J/46 BREEZING UP proved again just how nice an upwind sailing boat the J/46 is, by winning line honors and 2nd on corrected time (as the second smallest boat) against a Hinckley 59, Apogee 50, Swan 53, Baltic 52, and several others. Four of the 9 boats in the double-handed division were J’s, and Hewitt Gaynor aboard his J/120 MIREILLE took line honors and corrected to 2nd, only 17 minutes behind Rich du Moulin’s LORA ANN.
We congratulate all the J owners for participating in the Bermuda Race and look forward to seeing many more new faces in 2010.