As the mostly English Noonmark crew of 16 celebrated at the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club marina soon after dawn on Tuesday, Carina, Rives Potts’s McCurdy & Rhodes 48-footer, finished the race at 5:55 AM EDT, more than 50 miles ahead of the next boat in her class, Class 3 St. David’s Lighthouse Division. The most experienced Bermuda Race boat in history (this is her 19^th race since her first one, in 1970, which she won), Carina appears to have a lock on the competition between boats in the 45-55 foot range.  To further emphasize her achievement, she was the 21^st boat to finish in the 103 starters in the St. David’s Light Division, beating dozens of larger, higher-rated boats. Carina represents the Cruising Club of America, whose Commodore, Sheila McCurdy, is the daughter of the boat’s designer, James A. McCurdy.

Other finishers on Tuesday morning included three boats in the Cruiser Division, Clover III, Nirvana, and Angel.


Meanwhile, nearby the more relaxed crew of the Cruiser Division Nirvana takes a post-finish morning swim.  They entertained themselves on the race by doing yoga on the foredeck and watching movies on the wide-screen TV.

A Swan 56, Clover III beat the two 80-plus footers to the finish and leads them by large margins on corrected time.  Another 36 boats are in this division for cruising boats and sailors who sail in a somewhat more leisurely fashion than the racers in the Gibbs Hill, St. David’s Lighthouse, and Open Divisions.  As for the fifth division, for 26 Double-Handers boats, the leader Dragon is expected to finish this morning.  

Will Carina survive the thrilling duel between three boats in Class 1, for 35-40 footers? They are two-time St. David’s Lighthouse Trophy winner Sinn Fein, her Cal 40 sistership Belle Aurore, and the Peterson 38 Lindy.  The 2:19 AM iBoattrack position report showed all three boats within a mile or two of 130 miles from the finish, with Sinn Fein farthest to the west and sailing sail a little broader off the southwest wind, very likely under a reaching jib or spinnaker. The boats are averaging more than 7 knots so should finish after sunset Tuesday.   

With 144 of the 183 starters still racing, anything can happen. But Noonmark VI’s success indicates that as far as overall standings go, this is a small-boat Bermuda Race. With a rating under the Offshore Rating Rule that was second lowest in the 13-boat Gibbs Hill Division, she still won very easily. After the big boats finished soon after dawn on Monday morning, the 72-footer Rán held the corrected time lead for 19 hours until Noonmark VI finished, easily beating Rán and the other Gibbs Hill boats on corrected time. Her victory margin over second place Snow Lion, owned by Larry Huntington of the Cruising Club of America, was a startlingly large 2 hours, 32 minutes. To put it into perspective, that’s 10 minutes more than Snow Lion’s margin over the next six boats on corrected time.

Noonmark enjoyed strikingly different conditions than the bigger boats, which had periods of calm and a relatively tranquil time throughout, even in the usually unsettled Gulf Stream.  The boat’s racing skipper, Mike Gilburt, said there was more wind in the early part of the race than had been predicted. “That’s good for us because this is a good boat in a breeze when we’re close reaching, which is what we did for most of the race until we took two tacks on the beat around the reef to the finish.”

The passage through the Gulf Stream had its surprises, too.  “The current wasn’t as strong as we expected, and we had black squalls lasting two and a half hours, with 30 knots of wind and torrential rains.”  The crew threw in a reef and changed down from the no. 1 genoa jib to the no. 2. That was more wind reported by the big Monday finishers, none of which reefed during the race.