A Look Back At A Lively Race

The most interesting single aspect of the Bermuda race in retrospect is that invariably there comes a moment of decision. Somewhere along the line, skippers and crew will encounter an opportunity, a choice, and what is done may well determine how they will cross the finish line off St. Davids Head, perhaps days later.

In 1950 Argyll inched her way toward a squall, where she found wind to work into a new weather system and went on to victory. Ten years later Finisterre, with bare steerageway, jibed toward the rhumb line and was in a favored position to drive for the finish when heavy winds struck. But decisions do not always pay off. In 1954, while racing aboard Finisterre's, predecessor, Caribbee, we made a choice of tacks beyond the Gulf Stream and finished far behind, while Malay, apparently lost after gambling on a westerly shift, picked up her wind to top the lot.

Yet perhaps it is this very quality of uncertainty that makes the Bermuda race the most intriguing event in ocean racing. No other course of comparable length offers greater variables of current and wind. Off to starboard lies Cape Hatteras, famous as a weather breeder, the dividing line between cold fronts sweeping down from polar regions and warm air masses drifting northward from the Gulf of Mexico. And about one-third of the way from Newport to Bermuda lurks the Gulf Stream, a complex phenomenon of flow and counterflow.

Against these varying problems there seems only one practical, long-range plan of attack for the skipper of a good boat, and that is to play percentages. Yachting Historian Alf Loomis summed it up once by writing, "The boat most likely to win is the one which keeps closest to the rhumb line and which never stops in the calms or shortens down unduly in the gales." In other words, cover the least possible number of miles while keeping the boat moving at its best in the winds of the moment. Perhaps in all ocean racing the latter is the key—going at maximum potential speed at all times through the optimum combination of sails and trim. In this the smaller boats have an advantage in sheer human capabilities that will be difficult to legislate out of existence by rule.

Playing percentages begins with a strategic concept determined in advance. The most obvious and perhaps most likely-to-succeed plan is to lay a course from the start off Brenton Reef to an entry point on the continental side of the Gulf Stream. Temperature readings establish entry into the warm flow of the Stream; once in, the boat's heading should be altered to bring the flow on the beam. With luck, the point of entry will be just far enough west of the direct course to allow the current to set the boat back on the rhumb line at the point of exit. There is then a straight shot to Bermuda if the wind is free. If not, playing percentages requires tacking across the rhumb line and not indulging in a long-shot gamble toward an anticipated wind shift.

While official weather forecasts should not be ignored, it is well to remember that during the last race in 1960, within hours of receiving radio reports predicting continued light winds to the finish, the fleet was shortening down in a gale. The wise skipper will pin more of his faith on the action of the barometer, the look of the sky and the trend of the wind than on words of wisdom emanating from the weather bureau. As a rule of thumb, in recent races the overall action of the breeze beyond the Stream has been clockwise—lifting and freeing boats on the starboard tack, allowing those on the rhumb line to lay the finish. Those who take flyers to the east or west are therefore going against the percentages, investing in extra distance without assurance of compensating returns. Yet the most daring gamble may occasionally beat the percentages. This race was once called "The Great Atlantic Lottery" by John Nicholas Brown after a typically exasperating trek on Bolero. Proof of his point is the 1954 victory of Malay, which remains as haunting memory.

But whether playing percentages or taking a long shot, there comes the big moment—the point of decision. Sometimes it is difficult to recognize. Sometimes it comes on the wings of a cold savage squall pelting and screaming in the night. Or it may arrive from a bright, sunny sky, spinnaker barely filling, the crew indolently padding around the deck in shorts. But come it will, the moment of what-might-have-been, later to be analyzed and bewailed in the bars of Hamilton.