The Royal Ocean Racing Club's Caribbean 600 is currently off and running, with a record 70 yachts participating in the offshore races that takes competitors around 11 Caribbean islands. Yachts are racing under the IRC, SCA, and MOCRA racing systems, along with the Class 40s.
James Muldoon's Donnybrook is currently in fifth place in IRC CK, 44th overall. He's sailing with a whole crew of Bay sailors. There are six boats total in the IRC CK class: Comanche (Super Maxi), Donnybrook (Andrews 800, Dosalba (IMOCA 60), Team Brunel (Volvo Ocean 65), Varuna (Ker 56), and Lee Overlay Partners (Cookson 50).
George David's Rambler 100 holds the course record for the race, finishing in 40 hours, 20 minutes, and two seconds. One cool feature of the fleet tracking system is that they've plugged in a ghost boat for Rambler, for the rest of the fleet to see how they stack up against David's record.
Currently, the only monohull remotely close to Rambler's record is Comanche, skippered by Ken Read and crewed by guys like Stan Honey and Kelvin Harrap. Read was enthusiastic that Comanche could catch Rambler's record, saying, "Technically, Comanche is 10 years newer than Rambler 100, and not wishing to sound over the top, we should have a bit of an edge in every condition. But tell me what the weather conditions will be and I will give you our finish time." Emphasis mine. Currently, Comanche's finish time is estimated to be around 8:25 a.m. on February 24. Bets, anyone?
The multihull fleet at 3:30 p.m. EST on Tuesday, February 23.
Comanche was quickly overtaken by the MOD70s, Phaedo 3 and Concise 10, who are (at the time of writing) averaging 32 and 29 knots respectively. The two MOD70s are actually rounding Redonda Rock before the rest of the multihull fleet has a chance to pass it, even. A Gunboat 62, an Outremer 5x Racing, and two other multihulls are in the fleet. It will be interesting to see how the fleets shake out overnight.
