Puma pipped as 'Moose' strikes

Behind Sanderson, a personal battle raged between two key players in the PUMA Ocean Racing campaign. The protagonists were PUMA’s second generation Volvo Open 70, il mostro, skippered by Ken Read and the 90-foot Rambler.

Up until il mostro’s launch last month, Rambler had been used as part of Read’s crew evaluation programme for the 2008-09 Volvo. For the Bermuda event there had been a friendly wager between Read and his counterpart on Rambler, George David.

Despite close-quarter combat during the 635-mile journey it was Rambler who came out on top. Rambler crossed the Newport-Bermuda finish line at St. David’s Light in Bermuda with an elapsed time of 69 hours 5 minutes and 27 seconds. Il mostro clocked 69:33.24.

“It was a 600-mile light air beat – not exactly Volvo conditions – but when you make a wager, you’ve got to honour it,” Read said.

“It was a pleasant surprise that we were as close as we were to Rambler at the finish. It was a very benign race. It felt like an inshore day race.

“Having said that we treated it just like a mini Volvo leg. We ran systems checks, operated watch systems, made sail choices, packed food and diesel just like we would in the Volvo.

“It was also good to sit down and shoot the breeze with guys like Moose and Stan (Honey) about the Volvo. We talked to them about their experiences, what works, what doesn’t work. We are not naïve enough to think we know everything.”

Read and his team will spend the next few days single boat testing, including a race simulation on the return journey to Newport.

PUMA’s navigator Andrew Cape had followed in the navigational tracks of Stan Honey who was with Sanderson aboard Speedboat along with designer Juan Kouyoumdjian. The Argentine penned the lines of Speedboat – and the Ericsson boats for the 2008-09 race.

Both Sanderson and Honey were aboard the winning ABN AMRO ONE, another Kouyoumdjian design, in the 2005-06 Volvo.

Speedboat crossed the line in 64 hours 42 minutes and 56 seconds. "The boat has been faultless,” Sanderson said. “The race was a great opportunity to learn as much as we could about the boat. We are all really happy, the boat is performing well on its targets.”

Speedboat now heads north where the crew will be on standby for the right weather window for a transatlantic record attempt next month.