During the great age of yachting, in the early part of the 20th century, the premier ocean race, where boats and their crews were tested on a stage that was covered on front pages of newspapers all over the country, was the Newport to Bermuda Race.
Ben Sperry runs Sperry Sails, which has its main loft in Marion. He and his family sail and race a classic sailboat called Gentian. They often travel on the boat to Vineyard Haven where Ben has an annex of the Sperry Sails loft, above the boatyard on Beach Road.
In the summer, with three teenage kids, Ben and his wife Michelle take Gentian up and down New England where they sail in classic boat races. At the beginning of this summer, Ben took Gentian to Bermuda in the Newport to Bermuda Race. Michelle, a devoted sailor and experienced ocean racer, agreed to stay home with their two daughters, but their oldest son Noah, was offered the chance to come along.
Noah is 16. He races at the New Bedford Yacht Club and is doing some work at the sail loft this summer.
“I didn’t know if I wanted to do it at first, but then I thought about it,” he said.
After three hard days of windward sailing, Ben and Noah, along with six crew members, finished in Bermuda, feeling great. One hundred and sixty-two boats started the race in Newport; one hundred and forty-seven finished in Bermuda. Other than two boats that were abandoned by their crews because they were taking on water, the rest turned around. One boat snapped its mast and motored back to Newport without it before they were very far away.
“It was pretty strong conditions. It was really consistent,” Ben said.
“Our navigator had a dry bunk. That was it,” Noah said.
“Water just piddled in around the companionway the whole time,” Ben said, describing how hard it had been to keep anything dry.
“Food was great for two days,” Noah said with a grin.
Meals that had been prepared in advance for the crew were spoiled by water damage.
“We lost chicken parm and shepherds pie,” Noah said.
Two weeks later he was still mournful about it.
“Halfway through you’re like, I just want to get off this boat and get dry,” Noah said. “I don’t think I want to do it again, for a little bit, but I definitely want to do it again someday.”
“When we sail as a family, the fastest we’ve ever seen the boat go is 12 knots,” Michelle said.
She followed the race closely from the broadcast of Gentian’s satellite transmitter.
“Watching the boat, on our tracker, we were consistently seeing speeds of 15 knots.”
Passing through the Gulf Stream, a day to the south of Noman’s, Gentian and her crew found themselves in an eddy traveling their direction.
“We had 10 knots of boat speed and 5 knots of current,” Ben said.
“There were squalls,” Noah added.
The temperature of the moving bands of tropical water in the cold North Atlantic creates tumultuous weather.
“Yeah, we were steering around thunderstorms,” Ben said. “Pretty amazing.”
Michelle said: “We’ve been joking because if Noah’s sisters want to do the race someday they have to do it on a different boat because Gentian won; she can’t do it again.”
Gentian, a New York 32, from a fleet of 20, built in the winter and spring of 1936 for the New York Yacht club, was the most modern racing boat of its time. This summer she finished third overall at the Newport Bermuda Race and first in her class.
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