ST. GEORGES, BERMUDA After six long days of sailing upwind from Charleston, SC, Dr. Mike Finn and his crew aboard the J/160 Kativa crossed the finish line off St. David's Lighthouse on the northeast end of Bermuda early Friday morning May 23 to end a 777-mile race that seemed much longer. Finn and his 10 crewmembers arrived at almost four in the morning Bermuda time, spent yet happy to be on terra firma and the first team to finish among the 16 that began the race on Saturday, May 17.

     A veteran sailboat racer from Slidell, LA, Finn said this was the longest ocean race in his career. It also turned out to be the longest edition of the Charleston to Bermuda Race on record. “This race was tough," he said, "we had wind on the nose almost the entire time, but the boat performed admirably and the crew was marvelous, they really never let down, and I think they proved themselves to be very capable.” Finn said he was particularly proud of his two sons Ryan and Jeff, both made the trip with him and the former served as Kativa’s navigator. 

     Kativa was predicted to be among the first finishers, but the boat never held the outright lead until late in the race when she jumped ahead in the final 40 miles approaching Bermuda. Rex Conn’s 48-foot trimaran Alacrity out of Still Pond, MD, traded the lead with Charleston’s Teddy Turner, Jr. and his 40-foot trimaran Troika over the first five days of the event, but Conn managed to leave Turner behind on Thursday night and crossed the finish line just under three hours after Kativa. Though Turner and his crew did everything they could to get to the finish line, their boat missed the mandatory time limit by just over an hour, and thus only two boats are officially scored as finishing.

     Almost from its first mile, this race presented a challenge with blustery 22-knot breezes sweeping in from the east right before the start. The crew on board Ken Sawyer’s S&S 46 Lionhearted saw the boat’s headstay tear out of the deck less than five miles into the race. They were fortunate not to suffer a dismasting and returned safely to the dock. Then, just outside the jetties, Conn and company aboard Alacrity saw their mainsail shred to pieces. They spent the better part of an hour switching to their old baggy, Dacron mainsail, and fell well behind the fleet.

     The conditions continued to be rough for the next several hours, and with the winds coming right out of the direction where Bermuda lay, no boat made much progress. Susan Ford’s all-women team on board her Hinckley Bermuda 40 J/Henry was among the first boats to turn back for Charleston. J/Henry initially experienced minor rigging problems. That, coupled with the lack of progress and one case of severe seasickness on board, forced Ford to turn back. By the end of the day on Sunday, an additional three boats had abandoned the race and turned back to Charleston (Bill Buice’s Moody 419 Far Horizon, John and Trisha Flanagan’s Bristol 53 Tsunami, and Mike Kapp’s Sabre 38 Ghost). Then by Wednesday, three of the 11 remaining boats in the race had opted to engage their engines in order to make better progress toward Bermuda, effectively eliminating them from competition (Albert Mintz and Jerome Abernathy’s Beneteau 473 Victory, Pierre Manigault and Franz Baichle’s S&S 10-Meter Twilight, and Brad Law’s Gulfstar 50 Shenanigan.) Ultimately all the boats in the fleet except for the two trimarans and Kativa engaged their engines to reach Bermuda.

     This was a race where the winds rarely shifted more than 40 degrees off the nose, meaning the entire course to Bermuda was upwind, a phenomenon veteran sailors in Bermuda say is a true anomaly. The crew on board Kativa said they flew spinnakers for almost six hours midway through the race, but that was as much off the wind sailing as any of the boats in this contest experienced.

     According to several competitors the night passages were particularly challenging. Rex Conn estimated the seas at one point to be almost 25 feet, though others gauged them to be 15 feet high at their maximum. Crews later related that they were shaken from their berths as the boats continued to pound the seas while sailing upwind. On Tuesday, the night watch aboard Kativa noticed that the boat’s bow was extremely low in the water as they sailed along through eight-foot seas and strong winds. The crew rapidly discovered that the boat had shipped aboard almost 4,000 pounds of seawater due to the fact that a spinnaker they briefly flew was covering one of the critical bilge pumps down below. Skipper and owner Finn says they quickly cleared the pump, engaged their manual pumps, and “got a guy down there with a bucket to bail. There’s nothing more efficient than a scared man with a bucket.” It took 20 minutes to rectify the problem and Kativa continued on course.

     Petersen’s No Barriers also had some gear issues. On Wednesday night the steering cable on board parted, causing Petersen and his five- person crew to sail off course for the better part of six hours while they worked to repair the steering system. No Barriers ultimately arrived in Bermuda the same day as Buddy Darby’s Hinckley 51 Solitude, Bob Turner’s Kaufman 46 Kiva, Victory, Tyson Bernthal’s Hylas 45 Es-Alee, and Law’s Shenanigan. As that evening’s prize giving wound to a close, several of the crew from Twilight ambled into the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club, having arrived just at dusk. Just one boat remained at sea as of late Sunday, May 25, Mike and Tracy Harler’s Roberts 43 Rio Luna. They were expected to reach Bermuda by late Monday.   

     At the official prize giving, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford was joined Bermuda’s Governor Sir John Vereker to present the awards to Finn and his crew on Kativa and Conn and his Alacrity crew. Kativa captured first overall and first in Class A, and Alacrity finished second overall and first in the multihull class. Kativa’s total time on the course was 133 hours, 55 minutes, and 5 seconds and for Alacrity it was 137 hours, 23 minutes, and 39 seconds.

     Though the race was longer than all the competitors had anticipated, most of them deemed it a valuable experience. And a little shore time, a few libations, and the superb hospitality of the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club helped to sooth bruised egos as well as bruised bodies.