Newport Yacht Club Offshore 160

Published on July 17th, 2016

Newport, RI (July 17, 2016) – The Offshore 160 is a 160 mile singlehanded sailboat race that started at noon on Friday July 15. The race is run by the Newport Yacht Club and starts in Narragansett Bay just outside of Newport Harbor and runs south into open waters past Block Island. Seven skippers started and five finished.

The first boat to finish at a buoy off of Brenton Reef was Inigo Montoya, an Elliot 35ss in Class 1 sailed by Mike Piper, at 12:28am Sunday morning July 17. Nineteen minutes later, the J/35 Breakaway sailed by Paul Grimes finished and won on corrected time in Class 1. Wild Goose II, a Jeanneau 40 sailed by Dan Walsh, finished first in Class 2 at 6:53 am Sunday morning.

The boats had periods of up to six hours becalmed and other times of beautiful winds between 12 and 16 knots. Three skippers reported getting hooked on lobster trap lines. Two were able to get off fairly quickly but one boat, the Tartan 4600 Meridian, had a line fowling both rudder and prop and skipper Murray Beach was forced to go into the water to rectify the problem.

Event details – Results