Footage from a practice day onboard Hap Fauth’s 72-foot Bella Mente
SailingWorld.com’s coverage of 2013 Quantum Key West Race Week. Interview with Hap Fauth, owner of the 72-foot Bella Mente, the reigning Mini Maxi World Champion.
2024 IMA Maxi European Championship
Footage from a practice day onboard Hap Fauth’s 72-foot Bella Mente
SailingWorld.com’s coverage of 2013 Quantum Key West Race Week. Interview with Hap Fauth, owner of the 72-foot Bella Mente, the reigning Mini Maxi World Champion.
The 38th Annual Fort Lauderdale to Key West Race wrapped up yesterday after 26 boats sailed across the finish line. The Bella Mente Racing Team was first to finish the 160 nautical mile race, arriving in just under 13 hours on Thursday, January 17 at 2:04 a.m. Hap and the team took home four trophies: the Committee’s Trophy for best overall performance; the Appleton Trophy for first IRC boat to finish; the Myers / Rodstrom Memorial Trophy for first IRC boat to finish with corrected time; and the Edward A. Powers Memorial Trophy was presented to navigator Ian Moore.
“This was a great race for us,” said Bella Mente Racing manager Rob Ouellette. “We had upwind and reaching conditions for most of the race and that is what this boat loves. We were concerned that the breeze would totally die, but it hung in there all the way through to the finish. This was great training for our next offshore race, which is the Caribbean 600 in February.”
The Fort Lauderdale to Key West Race starts today! Click here to follow us with the live Kattack tracking and get updates during the race at https://www.facebook.com/sorcsailing. We’re looking forward to an eventful race!
Take a look at the CNN series Mainsail. It’s a summary of the Mini Maxi Rolex World Championship with quite a bit of features on Bella Mente.
No racing today due to no wind. What does this mean? We win! Both Ran and Us were tied on points but on count back, we win. The team is very happy and satisfied. It has not been an easy road. A big congrats to Hap for putting the big effort to win this event. A couple of years ago, we came close but were out sailed at the end. It was a very competitive event and the future looks bright for the mini maxi class with a few more new boats getting built and the whole fleet getting stronger.
The boat will now be delivered back to Palma and then off to Florida for some winter sailing.
Thanks for following us,
Doogie
Well, we’ve had better days. Today was a coastal race in very light air. The first attempt was a glamour for us. We started by the pin with decent pace while our closest competition, Ran, were over early. We controlled the fleet nicely and were pulling into a very nice lead. As we approached the rocks we were to round, the breeze died down to 2-3 knots and they abandoned the race.
The race committee waited for a while until the breeze built to a light 6-7 knots. We had a good start in the middle of the line, working our way to the weather mark. We rounded behind Ran, but just ahead of Stig. The next leg was a reach which started with the jib but quickly went to the code 0. The change went well and we were slowly closing on Ran. We got lifted as we neared the next mark and peeled to the A1. The change went smoothly and we quickly set up for the next leg which was a beat back to the pin end of the line. We lost quite a bit of distance on this part of the race. As we neared the mark, we again got lifted and went back to the code O. The next leg was a run with the A1 again so as we approached the mark, we set up and hoisted the kite at the mark. From there on, it didn’t go well for us. As we tried to furl the 0, the kite wrapped itself into the furl at the top causing the bottom unit to twist. I know this all seems like gibberish so let me clear it up a bit. It was a massive cluster !#%”. After trying several ways to untangle the mess, we were force to take both sails down and sort it out. Once we cleared the mess, we rehoisted the kite and kept sailing. Of course, by now, it was time to gybe and our gybe sheet was out of commission having been an ingredient in the cluster. So we quickly grabbed another sheet, connected it to the kite and gybe we did. This was a short run to the mark before a short reach to the finish.
It was really frustrating but in actual fact, the cluster did not cost us that much. We probably would still have finished 4th.
So now we are tied with Ran going into tomorrow. The forecast is again light air, so it will be a real fight.
The original Bella Mente Racing campaign kicked off in 2006 with Key West Race Week, and since then owner and skipper Hap Fauth has had three additional racing yachts in the program.
Launched in September of 2018, the current Bella Mente is a Maxi 72 designed by Botin Partners in Spain and built by New England Boatworks in Rhode Island.
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