Roughly one-hour before Saturday morning’s 10:00 a.m. start, Race Officer John Culter decided that the nearly 140 sailboats competing in this year’s Round Bowen Race would head south off the roughly 1.5 kilometer start line just north of Snug Cove. There was a strong wind as the boats maneuvered into position, but no one could’ve predicted that this year’s race would be the fastest for the whole fleet, with most of the boats crossing the finish line within a tight time frame.
Bowen Island Yacht Club board member Maria Steernberg watched the end of the race from her boat Sea Snaps, and says this year’s race was one of the most exciting sailboat races she’s ever seen.
“Over the radio, the race committee was asking me if I saw Il Moro, and I told them yes, I saw Il Moro come around Hood Point and none of the others. Then, a few minutes later I called in a correction because I saw a dozen boats coming up right behind her. A few minutes after that I called in another correction because saw a hundred boats coming around Hood Point, and all of them heading towards the finish line which was only 300 feet wide as opposed to the much wider starting line.”
Il Moro is a 12 meter boat built originally for the Italian Team to compete in the America’s Cup. This year was the third time Il Morro has competed in the Round Bowen Race.
For Bowen Islander and amateur sailboat racer Martin Wedepohl, this year’s race was also the most exciting he’s experienced. Wedepohl’s boat, Ecliptic, is 9 metres long. This is his fifth year sailing it in the Round Bowen Race.
“I am not a super-experienced racer so I usually try to hang back during the start of the race,” says Wedepohl. “This time, the wind was strong about five minutes before the start, but then three minutes before the start it died down making it hard to get into the proper position.”
Wedepol says that usually there are a few dead spots in the journey around Bowen but this year that wasn’t the case.
“My boat was going at about 7 knots most of the way around, which is about as fast as it can go. I didn’t even set my spinnaker, and a friend mine, his spinnaker ripped,” says Wedepol. “There were probably six points during the race when I was so close to the boat next to me I felt like I could hold hands with people crewing it.”
The finish, he says, was particularly confusing and challenging because one of the boats had accidentally hit and hooked the finish mark.
“When that happened, the race committee asked me to stand in as the finish mark” says Steernberg. “I wasn’t particularly keen on the idea, because it’s a horrid feeling to just be sitting there while all of those boats are coming at you. If I’m taking pictures, I love to be in front of the boats but I can get away. When Jason and Kevin [from the Yacht Club] came out in the Zodiac to replace the finish mark, I was terrified for them. It was mayhem out there.”
Wedepol says his boat came through the finish while Sea Snaps was acting as the marker.
“There were three other boats all aiming for the finish at the exact same time, and one of them beat me by just two seconds.”
Ecliptic finished the race in three hours and fourty-one minutes, beating the previous year’s time by two hours.3:41
“Normally I sail by myself,” says Wedepol. “But this year I took four crew with me. One of them was on a sailboat for the first time. We were all exhilarated by the race, and the crew member who had never done this before definitely understood by the end why I have such a passion for sailing.”
Il Moro was the first boat to cross the finish line in this year’s race, with a time of two hours and twenty-three minutes. The overall winner, in corrected time, was Flying Tiger #37, skippered by Pierre Martin.
