Bouwe Bekking’s Volvo Ocean 65, Team Brunel finished the race this afternoon to claim second place after IRC time correction. Jim Clark and Kirsty Hinze-Clark’s Comanche tops the class having taken line honours early his morning. Class honour is still very much in the balance in several IRC classes. Proteus now leads the RORC Caribbean 600 overall after IRC time correction 63 yachts are still racing but the time set by Proteus will be hard to better for the overall win. The watch system was six hours on and then three off, but if anyone got three off, they were very lucky.”
The inside of the boat was full of water and with all the manoeuvres and corners it was hard work for the crew. “These boats are not designed for a 600 mile race, they have very little concessions for sailing offshore. At the end of the day, we managed to slip past Bella Mente at Guadeloupe and you have to get a bit of luck, and we did there. All four of us were battling it out at times during the race. “The race between the four Maxi72s was always going to be intense and it certainly proved to be the case. For this race, we had the boat configured as the highest stability boat and that really showed on the race course whenever the conditions were pressed up, we felt we had a little edge in speed. We have a great team on board so we focused on sailing the boat well and tried to minimize the mistakes we made. We were a bit late arriving here and our preparation was not ideal, so our plan going into the race was to do things smartly, but try not to be too clever with fancy stuff as we had not practiced a lot, we wanted to keep things simple. Proteus afterguard, Stu Bannatyne commented after the finish: “Our game plan for this race was to try and not get beaten by ourselves. Proteus is a powerful boat which helps, but it is all down to the team.” “During the race we had boat-on-boat action with all of the Maxi72s Bella Mente, Jethou and Momo, and their teams are all great sailors. “We have beaten some great boats and the sailing was great and we had a beautiful venue,” smiled George Sakellaris, Proteus’ owner.
Last year’s overall winner, Hap Fauth’s Bella Mente retired with keel problems. With the lead changing hands on numerous occasions, George Sakellaris’ Proteus was the first Maxi72 to finish the race, just over 20 minutes ahead of Dieter Schön’s Momo with Sir Peter Ogden’s Jethou third. Proteus, George Sakellaris’ Maxi 72 finished the RORC Caribbean 600 in 2 days 0 hours 22 minutes 16 seconds © RORC/Emma Louise Wyn JonesĪ thrilling race between four Maxi72s came to a conclusion on the third day of the RORC Caribbean 600.
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