Swan 80 sailing yacht Selene, has won the Swan Caribbean Challenge Trophy following her race in the one-of-a-kind 600 nautical mile race, ‘the RORC Caribbean 600’ in an elapsed time of 2 days, 18 hours and 22 minutes. Having circumnavigated 11 Caribbean Islands along with 4 other competing Swan yachts, superyacht Selene sailed by Benjamin Davitt finished 3rd place in the IRC Overall rankings. The yachts were sailing from Fort Charlotte, English Harbour, Antigua and heading as far north as St Maarten and south to Guadeloupe, taking in Barbuda, Nevis, St Kitts, Saba and St Barths.
Team Selene Winners of the Swan Caribbean Challenge © Photoaction 2012
Team Selene, Skipper, Benjamin Davitt:
“Team Selene is delighted to be honoured with the Swan Caribbean Challenge Trophy. We feel that we have really fused as a team in what was a challenging but thoroughly enjoyable race. Selene celebrates her twelfth year in 2012 and it is great to see that she is still competitive in a mixed fleet and we had a few good battles on several of the legs. We would really like to thank everyone involved in the organizing the event and look forward to the next one”.
The closest racing out of all of this year’s RORC Caribbean 600 also went to the Swan fleet, with another two competitive Swans also finishing in the top 10 overall. Colin Buffin’s Swan 62 Uxorious IV was first to finish, but the team did not celebrate a class win. Buffin and his young team know that Amanda Hartley’s Swan 56, Clem was extremely close to eclipsing their corrected time. Just over 3 and a half hours passed before Clem crossed the finish line to win the class by only 21 seconds on corrected time.
There were ecstatic scenes dockside which saw the Spanish crew from Clem celebrate their class win in style, with Clem finishing in 8th and Uxorious IV in 9th overall. The entire crew of Uxorious IV including Colin Buffin very sportingly applauded their rivals.
Amanda Hartley, Swan 56 Clem:
“We had no idea until we crossed the line and turned on our phones which went crazy with people calling in from Spain. By our calculation we thought we had lost out by five minutes. We got stuck at Guadeloupe for four hours and we could only sit and watch Uxorious get away. We are obviously extremely delighted and really appreciate Colin and his team coming over to give us such a lovely welcome back to Antigua.”
Swan 51, Northern Child, chartered for this event by Merkle, the American IT company, had an interesting start to the race after turning back and giving up over half an hour to the opposition. Christian Reynolds however, made a remarkable recovery finishing in 13th spot after 3 days and 15 hours regaining places. Swan 90 charter yacht Nefertiti, then finished the Swan contingent in 17th place, with all Swan entries keeping within the overall top 20.
The stunning Swan Caribbean Challenge Trophy was awarded to Team Selene at the official ceremony held in Antigua.
IRC Overall Results
3 Selene Swan 80
8 Clem Swan 56
9 Uxorious IV Swan 62
13 Northern Child Swan 51
17 Nefertiti Swan 90
