Victory for Rambler

As George David' maxi thunders home to Hamburg

The 90ft Reichel Pugh maxi Rambler, owned by Connecticut businessman George David and skippered by America’s Cup veteran Ken Read, is the winner of the HSH Nordbank blue race from Newport, Rhode Island, to Hamburg, Germany, after a blistering 11 day 16 hour 13 minute and 59 second voyage across the North Atlantic. Ramber (formerly Neville Crichton's fixed keel Alfa Romeo) finished the race on Thursday, July 5 and corrected out to first overall today while its main rival, the 80ft Bon Bon, remained at sea.

Rambler’s record-setting passage – its time was over a day-and-a-half faster than the previous record for the event, set in 2003 – was highlighted by a survival storm with winds nearing 60 knots, when the boat hit a top speed of 41.9 knots.

“We had some tough times,” said Read, “but the team was perfect for the boat, we had fun and we had talented guys. We intermixed the younger guys with us veterans, and in the end we were a big, happy family. In tough times, in scary times, the team stuck together. We had one huge wave wash into the cockpit, it knocked out all our antennas and people were thrown around like bowling pins.”

Rambler’s finish capped off an eventful week of racing. On 2 July, the 52ft Outsider was the first to complete the course on elapsed time after a trip of 14 days, 20 hours. Outsider was followed nearly two days later by the Irish Cookson 50 Chieftain, and the third boat across the line was the Swan 82 Grey Goose. All three Class II boats started on June 16. Rambler was fourth on elapsed time, and the first in the second group of Class I starters, which left Newport on 23 June. Earlier this week, the Class I entry Parsifal III, the largest boat in the fleet at 177ft, retired after damage to her rig and main and mizzen sails.

Earlier today, three more Class II entries completed the course, including former New York Yacht Club commodore Lawrence Huntington’s 50ft Snow Lion, whose arrival was sandwiched between the finishes of two German entries, the Andrews 56 Norddeutsche Vermogen Hamburg and the 53ft Bank von Bremen. Huntington said he’d hope to cross the finish line a day earlier, but that Snow Lion’s progress was hampered in light air due to a broken gennaker pole.

For Rambler, the HSH Nordbank blue race was the start of a full season of racing, including the upcoming Rolex Fastnet Race and, later this year, the Cape Town-Rio Race. But it will be hard to top this inaugural event for the powerful water-ballasted yacht. “It was my first transatlantic and it was exciting,” said owner David, the CEO of United Technologies. “It was more challenging sometimes than expected, but the team was experienced and good and we had a great time on the Atlantic.”