Les Voiles de St. Barth: It's a Wrap

Bella Mente lining up for the start with the rest of the Maxi class on the last day of racing (Photo Credit: Christophe Jouany)

Bella Mente lining up for the start with the Maxi class on the last day of racing (Photo Credit: Christophe Jouany)

After a bullet in Saturday’s race, Bella Mente Racing moved its way up from a fourth to a second place overall at Les Voiles de St. Barth. The team dealt with a few challenging obstacles throughout the week, including a DNS in the first race of the week due to a minor equipment failure.

Owner/Driver Hap Fauth

We had some physical problems the first day, but after that everything was just fine. Like in most series, you always want to win the last race, so we did and the numbers stacked up. Rambler won, but everyone else was tied and so we ended up winning the tiebreaker.”

Tactician Terry Hutchinson

On Saturday, Hap, Doogie and Soapy nailed the start and we sailed a solid first beat. From there it was about boat handling execution. We were consistent enough with our maneuvers that Bella sailed to a solid win. Inevitably though this event was determined on the first day of racing when we had a car failure. Our main focus needs to continue to build reliability into all aspects of the Bella Mente program. After two successful events such as Quantum Key West and the RORC Caribbean 600, we took a step back in that regard here in St. Barth, but the real mistake would be to not learn from this. All in all it has been a reasonable start to the 2015 campaign, and we have plenty of opportunities in the future to continue to develop.”

Crew Boss Mike Sanderson

Saturday was the day that we came to St Barth for. There was a fantastic mix of reaching and windward leeward legs, and long enough legs for the big boys to stretch there legs but enough corners to keep it exciting. We had a solid day with good pace, went the right way and did some nice maneuvers, and so we are very pleased to have come away with a win in that race. From us all, a huge thank you to Hap Fauth for another fantastic event on the ‘Mighty Bella’ and although we didn’t have a lot of close boat-on-boat action this week, I have no doubt that the coastal racing will put us in good shape for our European campaign starting in three months.”