Light winds for New England SOLO/TWIN
Published on July 26th, 2020
The New England SOLO/TWIN Championships is an annual shorthanded sailboat race with classes for singlehanded monohull sailboats and classes for doublehanded monohull and multihull sailboats, with the 2020 edition having 50 boats starting at noon on July 24 in Newport, RI.
This race has been run yearly since 1986 and is run by the Newport Yacht Club. The race starts in Narragansett Bay and heads south into open waters between Block Island and Martha’s Vineyard before finishing off of Castle Hill in Newport.
Light winds and an outgoing tide got the racing underway, but due to the very light winds predicted, the shorter than normal course were assigned; the longest being 77 nautical miles long. Light winds and adverse current impacted the fleet at several of the rounding marks, with only 24 boats finishing, aided by increasing winds late in the morning on day two.
The first boat to finish was doublehanded spinnaker Class 1, 77 nm course, Alchemist sailed by the brother team of Ken and Brad Read in the new Jeanneau SunFast 3300 after just over 24 hours elapsed time. The first boat to finish in doublehanded spinnaker Class 2, 77 nm course, was Vamoose a J/133 sailed by Bob Manchester and Tom Scott but on corrected time it was Young American, a J/105 sailed by Peter Becker and Serena Vilage, which won.
The first boat to finish in doublehanded spinnaker Class 3, 77 nm course, was MoonDog a C&C 115 sailed by Brian Abbott and James Arrighi. The first boat to finish in doublehanded spinnaker Class 4, 70 nm course, was Aggressive, a C&C 35-2 sailed by Ray Renaud and Kristen Wenzel but they lost by 5 minutes on correct time to first place Yankee Girl, a Morris Justine sailed by Thomas Vander Salm and Bart Littlefield.
The first boat to finish in doublehanded non-spinnaker Class 5, 60 nm course, was Kitty Hawk, a Nonsuch 33 sailed by John Corbishley and Winthrop Sanford. The first and only boat to finish in the singlehanded spinnaker Class 6, 77 nm course, was SeaJai a Benetear 40.7 sailed by James Hennigan.
The only boat to finish in the doublehanded Multihull Class 7, 77 nm course, was Zibure a Contour 34 SC sailed by Francois Mazaud and Ian Ray. The last boat to finish was Class 3, 77 nm course, Momentum a Hinckley Sou’wester sailed by Paul Kanev and Dave Faulders with an elapsed time of almost 32 hours.
Source: Roy Guay