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How to Win a Bermuda Race

Everybody knows there are plenty of ways to lose a Bermuda Race, but only a very few people actually know how to win one.  We'll pass along their wisdom in a series of articles culled from the race’s official history, A Berth to Bermuda, by John Rousmaniere.  Other contributions are welcome.
     

Use the Gulf Stream - Richard du Moulin

How To Win		    
2/4/2010 2:12 PM
“Especially in a smaller boat, you’ve got to go into it in a way that will optimize the current. You have to throw away the ‘sail the favored tack’ way of thinking.You’ve got to be willing to make radical deviations of course so you can sail from doughnut to doughnut, from cold eddy to cold eddy. If another boat seems to be doing better than she should, she must be in better current. In 2002 we looked around and found ourselves in weak current, and so we very painfully squared the spinnaker pole and ran off for an hour. If we hadn’t, we would have missed 15 hours of 4-knot favorable current.”