Smallest Champion

Finisterre's red-topped dacron spinnaker ballooned tautly in a 20-knot northeast wind, and her seven-man crew hand-rode her lovingly to catch every puff of wind as she bowled past Bermuda's St. David's Head at 9:10 a.m. one day last week. Observers were impressed with the seamanship, even though such homestretch finesse was no longer necessary--the broad-beamed little centerboard yawl had won the Newport-to-Bermuda race (on corrected time) by 11 1/4 minutes, the smallest yacht ever to win the Atlantic classic. It had been a rough, squally passage for the record field of 89 boats, and one had even gone down on a Bermuda reef. But Finisterre's owner, Carleton Mitchell, a wealth-upholstered free-lance writer and photographer, had hardly minded. Said he: "Really, it was a wonderful race. We had terrific meals, and outside of creature discomforts like water running down your neck to your navel, it was just swell."

A Mushroom Cloud. The race began almost too calmly. A fickle Rhode Island westerly died to a breeze of only two knots as the yachts edged in toward the starting line between the forward mast of the Brenton Reef Lightship and a white flag on the committee boat. But in a few hours the wind freshened, and the field scudded off on the fastest Bermuda race in history.

The rhumb-line distance to Bermuda is 635 miles, but since no sailing boat can sail the rhumb line exactly, the handicapping distance was 675. Finisterre took a starboard tack off Newport with a 163DEG compass course. In late evening the wind shifted to the southwest, and Mitchell's crew changed from a spinnaker to a balloon jib. As the small (38 ft. 8 in. overall) yawl left coastal waters, the crew took hourly water-temperature readings, knew they had entered the warm-water Gulf Stream when the thermometer rose to 78DEG. Navigation was difficult during the whole crossing because of overcast, and Finisterre navigated the last 75 miles by Bermuda radio.

Said Mitchell; "We were in constant squalls in the Gulf Stream. About 11 on the third night the glass dropped, and the weather took on all the characteristics of a tropical lull. We were still 165DEG on the compass when I looked up and saw a squall going all the way across the sky. It looked like a mushroom atom cloud, low with a black stem. The scene was eerie, with the moon not shining but giving just enough light to see. The sea was pretty big, and I said, 'This looks like the worst squall yet.' Then we had almost complete calm, a momentary clearing of the sky--and then torrential rain. Without warning, the wind bounced us like a ball and the compass went to 180DEG and finally 220DEG. We gradually pulled up until we were actually sailing away from Bermuda." All around Finisterre, the same thing was happening to other competitors, and canvas was popping on most boats. Finisterre's No. 2 Genoa blew out, but the crew replaced it and bore down while bigger yachts were reefing cautiously. Said Mitchell proudly: "After the big squall, we stayed on the port tack and just drove hell out of her . . . Between noon Monday and noon Tuesday we exceeded 200 miles while boats twice our size did only 250. We were averaging eight knots."

Gutted on a Reef. Troublesome as the squalls were, it was not foul weather but shoal water that caused the race's only serious trouble. Just before making a predawn landfall off Bermuda, the Class C cutter Elda, owned by Henry A. Wise Jr., got impaled on a coral reef and sank immediately. Wise and his crew of seven clung to the wreck for almost seven hours before a charter boat picked them up.

Finisterre was 41st across the finish line, with an elapsed time of 90 hours, 25 minutes and 55 seconds.* It was truly a champion's performance, since Finisterre was a Class D boat, smallest of the four classes entered, and was rated only two boats from the bottom of Class D. With her handicap, the yawl (designed by Sparkman & Stephens Inc. and built by Seth Persson) logged a corrected winning time of 64 hours flat. The victory was more than a plum for Mitchell; it will likely have a heavy influence on racing design. Finisterre's n-ft.-3-in. beam gives her an approximate 3 1/2-to-2 length-to-beam ratio that looks ungainly beside the sleeker 5-to-1 and 6-to-1 craft that have long dominated blue-water racing. But she had proved before the Bermuda race that beam and speed can go together. Mitchell had already sailed his lavishly oufitted yawl to 17 wins out of 29 starts. Mitchell says proudly that, even if he could, he would not make a change in speedy Finisterre. "And that's a fine thing for a man to be able to say," adds Sailor Mitchell, "whether about his wife, his job or his boat."

*Class A yacht Bolero, owned by Sven Salen, crossed first in 70:11:46, a new record for the 50-year-old race, placed second among Class A boats on corrected time.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.