Newport Bermuda race review

Well, we made it to Bermuda. It was a reach for the whole race. No tacks, no gybes, but plenty of sail changes, probably too many. We started the race under A2, after a few minutes, peeled to the R2, and then to the jib top, all within 15 minutes. We sailed alongside Rambler for a good portion of that afternoon with small losses and gains on them. We were pleasantly surprised as to our performance against them in those conditions. Throughout the rest of the day, we were between the jib top and the R2, reefs in and out. This continued all night with us holding up well against the competition. Our biggest competitor was the water coming into the boat. There was constant pumping and bailing for the whole race.
We started crossing the gulf stream late at night and early in the morning. As conditions got lumpy, we slowed down a little to keep things under control. At this point, Rambler was able to stretch on us. We probably waited too long to get back to 100% and lost some valuable miles to Shockwave. By the end of the day we had Shockwave a couple of hundred yards to leeward of us and the battle continued like this all the way to the finish the next morning. As the light came up in the morning we could just make out the mainsail of Shockwave just a couple hundred yards ahead of us. Both boats were pushing hard and we ended up bow even and to leeward of them about 20 miles from the finish. As squalls rolled through, both boats changed sails to try and stay in tune with the shifts. We had to improvise on some of our changes because of a damaged tack line that had occurred the previous night. We finally passed them about 10 miles from the finish and held them off until we finished the race.
The race was quite a big learning experience for us. We learned quite a bit about the new boat and its strengths and weaknesses. We have quite a bit of waterproofing work to do to make the boat more seaworthy. Proper sail combos and when to go to them also need to get sorted.
Now the boat gets loaded onto a ship and gets shipped to Palma in the med. Our next 2 events will be inshore oriented so our focus will be on that. See you for the Copa Del Rey.
Doogie