Image: Pyewacket 70 shortly after the start of the RORC Caribbean 600© Tim Wright/Photoaction.com
The Royal Ocean Racing Club announce that the overall winner of the 14th edition of the RORC Caribbean 600 is Roy P. Disney’s Pyewacket 70 (USA). None of the teams still racing under IRC has any realistic chance of beating Pyewacket 70 after time correction. The Pyewacket 70 team will be presented with the RORC Caribbean 600 Trophy at the Prize Giving on Friday 24th February.
Pyewacket 70 Crew: Ben Mitchell, Peter Isler, Tony Mutter, Brad Jackson, Brian Janney, Daryl Wislang, David Tank, Jan Majer, Mark Callahan, Matt Mialik, Robbie Kane, Rodney Daniel, Tristan Louwrens.
“We are super-excited about winning overall,” commented skipper Ben Mitchell. “With Pyewacket 70 we don’t go into these races necessarily thinking that a corrected time win is our goal, we go for Line Honours and potentially to set a new record. So, when a handicap win comes that is fantastic and we are excited that we were able to achieve that.
“The Caribbean has been a popular destination for American sailors for a long time, but the hard core Southern Californian racers do not come here that often,” continued Ben Mitchell. “When you come here you realise how beautiful this course is, with fabulous wind conditions combined with warm water and weather. It’s a fantastic race area. As we saw with Wizard and now with Pyewacket 70, the Volvo 70s are well heeled for this course, which has plenty of windy reaching conditions.”
“For me personally, I feel very fortunate,” continued Ben Mitchell. “I am very lucky to be put in the position by Roy (Pat Disney) with the support of Robbie Haines. This win is right up there with the biggest victories and Pyewacket has had a lot of success with the programme. In recent years the RORC Caribbean 600 victory is right up there with our record in the Cabo Race. This is a great course, but it is also very tricky. In Southern California we are more use to point-to-point distance races. The course designers were definitely using their imagination when they came up with the RORC Caribbean 600.”
Pyewacket 70 joins an impressive list of overall winners from the United States; Warrior Won, Wizard, Rambler 88, Bella Mente, Shockwave, Privateer, and Rambler 100.