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8 February 2005, 09:22 am

Titan 12 Smashes Record

2005 Pineapple Cup

Montego Bay, Jamaica

Nine boats have broken the record in the Pineapple Cup Montego Bay Race, but it will be Tom HILL's Puerto Rican entry Titan 12 that will go down in the books as the new record holder.

The Reichel/Puch 75 shaved almost 13 hours off the previous record set in 2003 by Zephyrus V for a new benchmark of 2 days, 10 hours, 24 minutes and 42 seconds.

The official Pineapple Cup Montego Bay Race starting time was 14:05:00 on Friday, Feb. 4. Titan 12 officially finished the race at 00:29:42 (local time) on 7 February. The race course was 810 miles from the Port Everglades inlet off Fort Lauderdale, Fla., across the Gulf Stream, through the Bahama Islands, past Cuba and on to the finish at Montego Bay, Jamaica.

'That's some fast sailing!,' said Race Chairman Ken BATZER about Titan 12's performance. 'At the start, it was blowing 15-18 out of the north/northwest. Everyone started with either blast reachers or spinnakers, and it was pretty much reaching or downwind conditions the whole way.'

With six boats left to finish by tonight or early tomorrow morning, Makoto UEMATSU's Japanese entrant Esmeralda, with multiple world champion Ken READ (Newport, R.I.) aboard, currently leads the fleet on corrected time.

The Pineapple Cup Montego Bay Race is jointly hosted by the Storm Trysail, Lauderdale and Montego Bay Yacht Clubs.

Barby McGowan (As Amended by ISAF)