About five hours after George David’s 88-foot Juan K design Rambler 88 was first to finish in the 51st Newport Bermuda Race, the two Volvo Open 70s Warrior and Wizard crossed 17 minutes apart in second and third.
The former, owned by Steve Murray, Jr. and Stephen Murray, Sr., finished in front, but the latter, owned by Peter and David Askew, easily finished ahead after time corrections were applied based on the boats’ different ratings.
With the first three boats in the harbor yesterday, today had George Sakellaris’ Maxi 72 Proteus finishing fourth, an hour and a half later. When all times were corrected, the leaders were Wizard and Proteus, less than an hour apart, followed by Rambler 88 and Warrior.
Just before dawn today, Jason Carroll’s Gunboat 62 Elvis finished first in the Multihull Division, a first in more ways than one as the 2018 race was the first Newport Bermuda Race to include multihulls. Elvis’ other competitors, Tribe and Arethusa, were still well back on the racecourse as of 1100 EDT.
As of noon, most of the rest of the fleet continued to sail in very light winds in the middle of a high-pressure area. Steve Benjamin’s Spookie was the first to sail into better winds and at 1100 EDT was making 9 knots, more than 40 miles in front of Privateer and Merlin.
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