The Newport-Bermuda Race and the Great Lakes - Sail Magazine

The Newport-Bermuda Race and the Great Lakes

Author:: Adam Cort
Publish date:: Jan 18, 2016

The trophy won by the Lloyd W. Berry

This year marks the 50th running of the iconic 635-mile biennial Newport-Bermuda Race, and if the past is any indication, expect to see any number of freshwater sailors taking part in the “thrash to the onion patch.”

In fact, Great Lakes sailors have been racing to Bermuda for almost as long as there’s been a race, with a crew from Lake Erie’s Rochester Yacht Club chartering a Gloucester schooner to take part in the second running of the event in 1907. Soon thereafter, in 1910, Demarest Lloyd, a sailor with Chicago newspaper roots, raced the schooner Shlyessa with Mrs. Lloyd in the afterguard, making her only the second woman to take part in the event.

In 1924 a crew from Detroit’s Bayview Yacht Club also sailed the Lloyd W. Berry to victory in the schooners and ketches division, bringing a trophy back to the Midwest that then served as a prize in the Bayview-Mackinac Race, which they created soon afterward.

More recently, a regional prize for the best performance by a Great Lakes boat was introduced in 2014, with the inaugural honors going to Chris Van Tol of the Bayview Yacht Club aboard his C&C 35 Eliminator. And with no fewer than 16 Lakes boats having taken part in the race between 2010 and 2014, it’s a safe bet they aren’t the last.

“Our Newport-Bermuda Race featured, for the most part, beautiful weather and good sailing conditions,” said watch captain Paul Van Tol. “The winds approached 20-plus knots for only one 12-hour period, with large swells of up to 12ft, but we otherwise enjoyed clear skies and decent winds. Pilot whales that swam under the boat, breaching whales and dolphins that left gray phosphorescent trails along our bow, were an added bonus to our journey.”

For more on this summer’s Newport-Bermuda Race, which is organized by the Cruising Club of America and the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club and starts on June 17.

Based on an article originally published on the Newport Bermuda Race website,bermudarace.com.

February 2016

Related

9781472947666

Jane Russell & the RCC Pilotage FoundationIf you have a yen for sailing across the Pond to explore the delights of Northern Europe or the Mediterranean, you’d best do some homework first. There’s no better primer than this weighty tome, now in its 7th edition. It’s crammed with ...read more

shutterstock_63705382

Electronics and Navigation

Well GelledEvery so often you run across a product you never knew you needed, and then you wonder why it took so long for someone to come up with it. Thus it is with the Gelbox line from Raytech. These reuseable plastic boxes for low-voltage connectors are filled with gel, so ...read more

shutterstock_295810247

I have rarely had a cruise that wasn’t different from my expectations, and my Nova Scotia travels have borne that out. For my friend and shipmate, Steve White, and me, our 2017 trip to Cape Breton Island and the Bras d’Or Lake on One Timer, my Sabre 362, was a much anticipated ...read more

ElanGT5-a

Aboard many modern yachts, it can be hard to remember exactly what boat you’re on until your eye happens to light upon a logo. However, this is most definitely not the case with the Elan GT5, a performance cruiser with a look all its own and style to burn.Design & ...read more

01-Lead-P1060210

Electronics and Navigation

For many sailors, cell phones have become their primary means of both ship-to-shore and ship-to-ship communication. Even the Coast Guard will often ask for a cell number after it receives a distress call. None of this, however, makes a VHF radio any less important—and this goes ...read more

Seascape24

Since its inception in 2008, Slovenian builder Seascape, founded by a pair of Mini Transat sailors, has focused solely on creating boats that are both simple and loads of fun to sail. With their 18-footer and then a 27-footer they succeeded in putting out a pair of trailerable ...read more

01-Trash-Tiki_in-partnership-with-Subtch-Sports_starting

If you were in Gotland, a popular island vacation destination off the coast of Sweden, on the morning of July 3, your holiday might have been interrupted by a startling sight: a tiny island of trash approaching shore with people aboard. It was, in fact, a sailboat made from ...read more

atlantic-cup-trailer

Atlantic Cup 2018: TrailerThis past spring, SAIL magazine was on-hand to document the 2018 Atlantic Cup, a two-week-long Class 40 regatta spanning the U.S. East Coast and one of the toughest events in all of North America. The preview above will give you a taste of the four-video ...read more