RSB’s founder, Steve Branagh is over in Bermuda competing with the beautiful Pendennis Shipyard built Rebecca in the coveted Americas Cup Superyacht Regatta.

The days start with a two hour motor across the Americas Cup course in the Great Sound and around the inside of the reef from Hamilton to the start area off St Georges where the impressive fleet of J boats are the first to get under way.

Steve reports on the action from S/Y Rebecca, in his ‘quote from the boat’…

‘Days 1&2 in Bermuda have been a relatively light wind affair. With the breeze rarely getting above 10/12 knots and substantial shifts on the race course, at times its been a struggle for most of the crews to keep their yachts moving.

On day one the race committee set a course in the convergence zone between two local breezes resulting in big shifts and variable pressure through out the course. Unfortunately on Rebecca we fell victim to a couple of these shifts and trailed the leaders home in 3rd position.

On day two the racing started in slightly better winds with a course containing a lot more marks to round which always makes for interesting sailing and a happy crew. With a running start the pressure was on to be on the line on the gun with the spinnaker up and set; over the next 6 legs the after guard and sail handling teams kept us in the hunt for a race win although we weren’t counting on Sojana sailing quite so well to take first place by 53 seconds leaving us with the 2 hour motor home to contemplate where we could have saved those seconds and snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.

At the end of play Day 2 we have 4 boats tied for the class win on 5 points and what looks to be an exciting days sailing planned for tomorrow and even got to see Team New Zealand out training as we motored back in to Hamilton.’

Day 3 today and all to play for…

Image by Christopher Scholey