Excerpted from AYC Newsletter:
The second century of this prestigious ocean race began on June 20th, 2008 in Newport with the second largest turnout in the history of the race. More than 200 boats crossed the 635-mile stretch of Atlantic Ocean to Bermuda, racing in 5 separate divisions, including the largest division and most common one for AYC boats, the Saint David’s Lighthouse Division for amateur-driver boats. A complex – and in the view of the winners, fair!– scoring system “corrects” each boat’s elapsed time so that different boat designs can be scored against each other.
The course is simple: start in Newport, hold a bearing of 149 degrees true, expect to be out of sight of land for 3 to 6 days depending on the size of your boat and weather conditions...look for a lighthouse on the horizon and don’t forget the coral reefs! However, taking the rhumb line to Bermuda is rarely the fastest route: there are favorable and adverse currents along the course (to be sought out or avoided!) and there is the mighty Gulf Stream: a huge river within the Atlantic ocean, moving Northeast from the Gulf of Mexico, whose energy and warm temperatures generate frequent squalls.
In 2008, there was a large clockwise-flowing eddy to the West of the rhumb line which was critical: every boat that got into the eddy rode it down like an invisible conveyor belt, picking up a few knots of current for many miles, while boats that sailed the rhumbline sailed fewer miles but substantially more slowly. (This year, boats that sailed east of the rhumb line had the worst of all worlds: longer distance and no current advantage).
Jeff Feehan, AVRA Navigator, commented: “With S-SW winds forecast for the first half of the race, the first question for many boats was whether it would pay to sail high enough to hit the large warm eddy located west of the rhumb line. On AVRA, we decided it was a good bet and found two to three knots of favorable current down the eastern side of the eddy. Current in the Gulf Stream for this race was dominantly West to East, at up to 4 knots, near the rhumb line. With winds out of the SSW, but predicted to veer into the SW and strengthen, many boats - including AVRA - chose to preserve their “westing” by crossing the Gulf Stream on port tack. Once through the Gulf Stream, boats that had stayed West could easily fetch the tower at Kitchen Shoals and the last leg became a drag-race, with exciting finishes as the boats converged off of St. David's Head.”
