For the first 20 hours of action, competitors in the seventh edition of the Charleston to Bermuda Race made solid progress toward Bermuda after a scenic if not spectacular start off the historic city's waterfront on Friday at noon. Though the west-southwest winds were light-to-moderate in the harbor, offshore, they were gusting to 18 knots, propelling the fleet nicely through three-foot seas toward the finish.
 
The early leader in this 777-mile race is Mark DiStefano's Swan 56 Nova, which managed to log an average speed better than nine knots over the first 24 hours of the race. As of early Saturday morning, DiStefano and his Newport, R.I.-based crew were making the most of a transitional weather situation while holding a 20-mile lead over their closest rival. At the time, they had begun to make course corrections due to the influence of the Gulf Stream, which will remain a principal factor in their navigational choices for much of Day 2. An equally important factor will be the wind, which had begun to diminish shortly after dawn.
 
Twenty miles astern of Nova at the time, Dave and Shelly Warters' Able Apogee 50, Cadence, was putting on a good show as well. The Warters had managed to average better than nine knots throughout the night. Unlike Nova, Cadence's design emphasizes world cruising rather than racing, but the boat and its six-person crew have nonetheless managed to perform surprisingly well. The first indication of this prowess came at the start when the Warters and their crew crossed the line first and then engaged in a brief close-quarters duel with Nova as the two yachts paralleled the Charleston waterfront. With much larger sails, Nova easily powered past Cadence, yet for a fleeting moment, it appeared that the bigger vessel might have met her match-a rival with equal speed. It didn't take long for Nova's crew to shift gears and begin pulling away, gradually leaving all of the other entries behind.  

Earlier, when the Spirit of South Carolina crossed the line (10 minutes in advance of the other competitors), shouts of joy went up from the small fleet of spectator craft on hand to witness this historic occasion. This is the first time that the palmetto state's 140-foot tall ship has participated in the Charleston to Bermuda Race. On board are nine professional crew, including Captain Tony Arrow and Captain Ben Hall, as well as 16 other participants, who are labeled "sail trainees." These lucky individuals are gleaning information firsthand about navigation, piloting, sail trim and more, from the ship's well experienced crew and officers.

Captains Arrow and Hall initially favored a more southerly route to Bermuda. As of Friday at midnight, the iboattrack.com position reports indicated that the Spirit's navigators had taken her on a course well south of the rhumbline (the direct line from Charleston to Bermuda), establishing herself as the most southerly vessel in the fleet. Since then, the big schooner has altered course and moved closer to the rhumbline and the rest of the fleet. As of Saturday morning, the Spirit held third place.
 
The remaining entries in the race, Lee Edwards and friends on board the chartered Little Harbor 63 Spray, Jay Cook, Steve Enloe, and their Ocean Sailing Academy students on board the 43-foot Tohidu, and Ken Johnson and company on the 41-foot Grateful Red, also made good progress for the first 20 hours. As of the early position reports on Saturday, Grateful Red was in last place, some 50 miles astern of Nova.

According to an informal weather analysis furnished by South Carolina Maritime Foundation Executive Director Brad Van Liew shortly before the start, the competitors should see "decent south-southwesterly breeze for the first eighteen hours of the race, and then due to the tropical storm moving to the east off of New England, the Bermuda high will be disrupted and it's likely to be very light out there."

Positions Recorded on May 30, 2009 from 08:58 - 09:06 EDT
1. Nova, 582.6 nm to finish
2. Cadence, 607.0 nm to finish.
3. Spirit of South Carolina, 627.1 nm to finish
4. Spray, 627.3 nm to finish
5. Tohidu, 632.8 nm to finish
6. Grateful Red. 638.2 nm to finish

Meaghan Van Liew 

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Last Updated ( Saturday, 30 May 2009 )