AIn the end, Charlie Enright didn’t let himself be caught up. The lead had changed spectacularly 16 times in the past few days between his 11th Hour Racing yacht and Team Malizia’s Seaexplorer boat – but finally the 38-year-old skipper from the USA and his crew arrived after 17 days, 2 hours, 26 minutes and 41 seconds at sea late Thursday evening German time was the first to reach the port of Newport on the American east coast and thus won the fourth stage of the Ocean Race.
They crossed the finish line just 40 minutes ahead of the Malizia crew, which was led by Briton Will Harris on this section of the route. “I’ve been dreaming of this moment for so long,” said Enright, who is taking part in the more than 32,000 nautical miles (about 60,000 kilometers) long around-the-world regatta for the third time, after the home win and let himself go and his crew celebrate in bright sunshine with the obligatory champagne shower.
“I’m so proud of the whole team”
With the French Team Biotherm, the third and last crew will finish the fourth Ocean Race stage this Thursday, which started in Itajai, Brazil, at the end of April and crossed the Atlantic towards the north through several complicated weather passages with heavy storms and high waves , but also led to longer periods of slack.
Difficult conditions during the stage meant that with the highly favored Swiss Holcim team around skipper Kevin Escoffier and the German-French Guyot crew with Berlin-based Robert Stanjek on board, two out of five yachts stopped the stage prematurely due to broken masts had to.
Serious setbacks, which the Malizia crew, which had already had problems on previous stages, were spared this time. “It’s a wonderful feeling. We had almost no technical failures on this leg and proved that we can sail quite fast even in light wind conditions. I’m so proud of the whole team. Now we’re up there in the fight for overall victory,” said Harris after crossing the finish line.
Because after their retirement, the Holcim crew is now only one point ahead of Team Malizia and 11th Hour Racing with 19 points in the overall standings with three stages to be sailed. The fifth stage in particular is now of particular importance in the fight for regatta victory. It starts on May 21st in Newport, leads 3500 nautical miles across the Atlantic back to Europe to the port of the Danish city of Aarhus and is counted twice.
Then the Malizia crew will again be led by skipper Boris Herrmann. After a several-week break with his family that had already been planned in advance, the man from Hamburg feels “full of energy and fresh” for his “re-start in the race” and the upcoming finale of the regatta, which will pass Kiel around June 9th and via the stage destination The Hague will end in Genoa in Italy at the beginning of July.
However, it is questionable to what extent the Guyot team around Stanjek will take part in the Ocean Race again. After the mast broke a few days ago, the time until the start in Newport in ten days is likely to be too short to make the crew, who were completely devastated after the end of the second stage, and the boat, which is only conditionally competitive anyway, fit for another strenuous transatlantic stage .
In addition, the organization and transport of a replacement mast is said to cost more than half a million euros. Accordingly, the words of co-skipper Benjamin Dutreux sound less than confident: “We are a small team and cannot always do what we want. First we have to come ashore. Then we can find solutions.”
