Fortunate Finisterre

Beating to windward in a black night of rain squalls rolling up from the southeast, the vanguard of the 21st biennial Newport-to-Bermuda yacht race boiled past the finish line off St. David's Head in a swirl of windy confusion. Busy skippers forgot to flash their sail numbers in code to the race committee, and their boats slid by in the gloom, unrecognized and unrecorded. To compound the chaos, a few pessimists figured that they had failed to fetch the line, came about and crossed it again. Not until they had suffered through an hours-long session did frantic officials make sense out of what they finally decided they had seen. First to finish the 635-mile thrash to the "onion patch" was the 64-ft. yawl Good News. Overall winner on corrected time, for the second time in a row, was Carleton Mitchell's beamy keel-and-centerboard yawl Finisterre.

For Finisterre, the victory was a kind of vindication. Ever since her swift, shallow hull lines were laid down on the drawing board of noted Naval Architect Olin Stephens four years ago, competitors have complained that she was nothing but a rule beater. She was designed, said her detractors, to take advantage of loopholes in the ocean-racing handicap rule, getting such a large time advantage over sounder, abler craft with conventional deep keels that no one could catch her. In response to this complaint, the Cruising Club of America revised its calculations, sent Finisterre off for Bermuda with a shortened time advantage.

White Water. The start off Newport came in a spanking northwester, and a too-daring majority of crews broke out their spinnakers. The billowing kites caught more wind than they could handle. The U.S. Naval Academy's 44-ft. yawl Fearless was knocked down and her decks rolled under white water until she finally worked free. The 45-ft. sloop Sirius lost her spinnaker over the side and caught the waterlogged tangle with her keel. Two days later the Finisterre had spinnaker trouble too. Despite an elaborate net of lines designed to keep it from fouling, the soaring, cranky sail yanked loose and fouled blocks at the head of the mainmast. For a nerve-racking hour Skipper Mitchell headed Finisterre back into the wind, riding under jigger alone to keep his boat steady while a crew member was hauled into the rigging to make repairs, and other boats slipped away toward the horizon.

Shallow-draft hulls are at their best in a following wind, and the wind stayed aft for three days. Finisterre ran downhill and showed her stern to many a deep-keeled craft that might have passed her had they been slugging it out to windward. Four days out, Finisterre got another break when the big boats up ahead ran into a calm. While they slatted helplessly, the smaller boats like Finisterre closed the gap the big fellows had opened up. On the last day, when storms made up in the southeast, Finisterre held her own in dusty going and drove home an easy winner.

X Factor. When the race committee had completed its calculations and the winners in each class were announced, it was Yacht Designer Stephens (who stayed home all the while) who did as well as anyone. Not only had he produced Winners Finisterre and Good News, he was also responsible for the three class A leaders (on corrected time) Legend, Gesture, Argyll. Class C Winner Glory was one of his boats; so was Golliwogg, runner-up to Finisterre for the overall trophy.

But Finisterre's Mitchell was convinced that Designer Stephens had put something special into the sleek hull that has carried him to so many victories. Said he: "Every once in a while a boat comes along that seems to go faster and do better than the naval architects say is possible. It must be some kind of an X factor, an extra. I guess Finisterre is one of those fortunate boats."

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