Despite mostly marginal sailing conditions, competitors in the seventh edition of the Charleston to Bermuda Race continued to squeeze incremental progress out of their boats as they endured their fifth day at sea and their fourth in winds under 10 knots. For most of the day on Tuesday, the conditions some 500 miles east of Charleston remained largely unchanged – calm seas and winds less than 8 knots.

The fleet in this biennial race to Bermuda experienced some reprieve in the sailing conditions late Monday. In a 5:00 p.m. satellite phone conversation with race headquarters, Ken Johnson, who is skippering the smallest boat in the fleet (his C&C 40 Grateful Red), mentioned that he and his crew had sufficient wind to move the boat at five and six knots. At that time, the two other boats in the race were making slower speeds, but the performance of both Dave and Shelly Warter’s 50-foot Cadence and Jay Cook’s Beneteau 432 Tohidu had improved relative to their pace earlier in the day. According to sources at race headquarters, on Tuesday night, it seemed likely that the increased winds forecast to arrive on Wednesday might be showing up a little early.

By daylight today, that assessment appeared to be the case. The meteorological data for the region indicated that southerly winds had begun to fill in, but only lightly. This change of conditions was almost certainly a case of too little too late for the fleet. As of the 8:00 a.m. position update, the lead boat – Cadence, still over 288 miles from Bermuda – had more than 190 miles to sail before reaching 67 degrees west longitude. According to the event’s rules, if no boat reaches that point by noon today, the race committee will effectively shorten the course and call the race at that point. If that occurs, the boats will be scored relative to their positions at that time. At the skippers’ briefing prior to the start, the skippers participating in the C2B voted unanimously to adopt this measure. As of 8:00 a.m. today, there was little chance that any of the three boats would reach the 67th parallel by noon and prolong the race.

After spending much of the night on a convergence course with Grateful Red, the crew on board Cadence maintained a tenuous 13-mile lead over their closest rival at 8:00 a.m. Tohidu had also managed to close some of the distance, and was approximately 42 miles behind the lead boat at that time.

This race will be scored using the Performance Handicap Rating Formula. With a rating of 78, the 50-foot Cadence owes the smaller, slower Tohidu some 48 seconds per mile (Tohidu rates 126). Cadence owes Grateful Red just six seconds per mile. Though Tohidu appeared to be significantly behind early Wednesday, there remains an outside chance that Cook and his crew can claim a corrected-time victory in this race.

Meanwhile, at the head of the fleet, the 140-foot schooner, the Spirit of South Carolina and the 63-foot Little Harbor Spray, continue to close on Bermuda under power. Both vessels were roughly 150 miles from the island as of the 8:00 a.m. position update, and were expected to arrive some time after midnight Wednesday, or early Thursday morning.

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