Ft Lauderdale to Key West Race, Bella Sweeps

Good to report that all went well on the race to Key West on Wednesday.  Hap won the start with a gybe hoist and right out to where the wind was blowing 2-5 knots more.  Aided by a 15 degree shift, we came back ten minutes later to a mile lead over the fleet.  And so it started, 50 some gybes later about half way around the Keys we started to harden up and the speed came on.  Wind range was 12-23 knots over the race.  We heard report of up to 30 behind and believe we were staying ahead of the main pressure.

The Gulf Stream was pretty far off the coast above Miami.  This let us stay out in the pressure till we got down to Fowey Rocks.  Then it was gybing almost every 5 minutes or so.  Big work for all the grinders on the boat, they worked all the way down.  Sails we used started with the A2 and Spin Staysail.  When the wind came up to 20 knots we changed to the A4.  At time reaching speed of over 22 knots.  Really fun sailing.  We went through the A3 and onto the fractional code 0 we call the Fro.  This sail along with the GS really pushed the BM along sailing over 18 almost all the time at wind angles of 130-120..  The short beat into KW with the J4 and all was goo in 11 hr 11 minutes for an average of 14.38 knots.  Not bad when you count the 50 gybes and the average 1 knot of current against.

After KWRW the big Bella goes to the west coast for the Cabo race in March.  Looking forward to getting back to my roots out there. 

 

Results:

 

Yacht Name

Owner/Skipper

Elapsed Time

Corrected Time

Class

Fleet

IRC A
1	Bella Mente	Hap Fauth	0:11:10:59	0:17:12:38	1	1
2	Vela Veloce	Richard Oland	0:12:42:34	0:17:26:14	2	2
3	Privateer	Ron O'hanley	0:13:00:07	0:17:51:52	3	3
4	Decision	Stephen Murray	0:13:22:15	0:18:17:28	4	4
5	Denali	Michael Damelio	0:14:58:37	0:19:54:15	5	7
6	Bella PITA	Jim Grundy	0:13:47:59	0:20:27:53	6	8
7	Beau Geste	Karl Kwok			8	14
IRC B
1	Tonnerre de Breskens 3	Peter Vroon	0:15:21:36	0:19:07:23	1	5
2	Sjambok	Michael Brennan	0:15:02:26	0:19:40:22	2	6
3	Kalevala II	Tapio Saavalainen	0:20:01:12	0:20:48:02	3	9
4	Rim Shot	Russell Dunn	0:20:44:27	0:20:53:09	4	10
5	Hot Ticket	Jim Hightower	0:18:57:17	0:21:17:10	5	11
6	Santarella	James Scalise	0:19:55:20	0:21:34:32	6	12
7	AMHAS	MacKenzie Davis	0:19:44:34	1:01:58:53	7	13