Forty-six boats set spinnakers for a downwind start off Rose Island on Friday morning, opening the 21st Ida Lewis Distance Race with a run past Castle Hill onto Rhode Island Sound and an overnight test of seamanship that not every crew finished.
“This year’s challenges included lighter-than-predicted winds and periods of calm that lasted longer than expected,” said Sam Howell, who leads the event’s course design team. The team selects from 11 preset courses before the start, aiming to get every class home within 24 hours — this year ranging from 135 nautical miles for the slowest PHRF boats to 220 for the fastest ORC 1 entries. A handful of boats realized on the return from Coxes Ledge they wouldn’t make the 7 p.m. limit and retired.
Devin McGranahan’s Kernan 47 Dream Crusher took line honors Saturday at 8:11 a.m., just under 21 hours. But Bruce Chafee’s R/P 42 Rikki, in at 8:55, won ORC 2 on corrected time over the class’s 150-mile course, along with the Commodore’s Trophy for fastest corrected speed in the ORC division.
“We got a leg up on everyone with a good start and found breeze on the Conanicut Island shore,” Chafee said, describing a light northerly that died before a southwesterly filled in. At the Narragansett Buoy turning mark, Rikki crossed Bryon Ehrhart’s 88-foot Lucky, which won ORC 1 and the Lime Rock Trophy for fastest average speed. “They had to dip us because they were on port. It was pretty great, because we are less than half their size,” Chafee said.
Rikki’s course ran east to Buzzards Bay Tower, past Block Island to Montauk and under the wind turbines at Coxes Ledge before turning for home. Overnight the crew saw a meteor shower and dolphins moving through bioluminescence.
James Phyfe’s J/44 Digger of Cranston won PHRF Coronet and, with 11 of its 13 crew junior sailors, took the Youth Challenge and its Arent H. Kits van Heyningen Trophy, plus the Lime Rock Trophy for fastest corrected speed in PHRF. Crew member Ethan Brown of East Greenwich Yacht Club’s junior program said a hammerhead shark passed by mostly unnoticed: “We were busy making sail changes, because it was shifty sailing.”
“Where is sailing going to go if there are no kids in the pipeline, if we aren’t recruiting, training, nurturing, and mentoring young sailors?” said Joe Cooper, who recruits for the Youth and Collegiate Challenges. Three teams qualified for the Youth Challenge and five for the Collegiate, which was won by NEKA Sailing/Zachary Doerr’s Groupe 5 of Newport, taking the William Tuthill Collegiate Trophy.
Gregory Manning’s Seaquest 36 Goat Rodeo of Warwick won PHRF Doublehanded, a class that grew to 10 entries this year. The Baltic 50 Crazy Horse, representing the Community Boating Center of New Bedford, won PHRF Aloha, and Jeffrey Wilson’s Sabre 42 Tacktile took PHRF Bagheera.
“Overnight, it was light wind, but we never stopped, never even went slow,” Wilson said. He praised the format: “The 24-hour concept — giving the faster boats a longer course and the slower boats shorter courses — is not done anywhere else.”
Full results are at ilyc.org/distancerace.
