The Spirit of Bermuda won a race around Canada's Prince Edward Island – and landed $40,000 in prize money. The sloop and her 24-strong crew set off at noon on Thursday and finished the 360 mile race at 7 a.m Saturday. She crossed the finish line some six hours ahead of the other four vessels in the fleet. When time handicaps were worked out based on different boat sizes, her winning margin was calculated to be one hour and 20 minutes.

 

Alan Burland, chairman of the Bermuda Sloop Foundation said,"It was an absolutely wonderful experience – young and old, black and white, all working together. It was a really interesting race." Spirit came in

ahead of well-respected vessels such as the Pride of Baltimore, and the Schoonner Virginia. 

"We were very much the dark horse,"  said Alan. "We were delighted with the performance of the vessel and even more delighted with the camaraderie and team spirit."

 

The inaugural Around Prince Edward Island Schooner Race has a $40,000 purse for first place, $26,000 for second place and $13,000 for third place. The prize money will go towards meeting the annual operating costs of the vessel , and sail training for youngsters.

 

SPIRIT OF BERMUDA is a 112-foot, three-masted schooner based on a mid-19th century Bermudian vessel. Paintings depict these boats with low-slung freeboard, sharply raked masts and a bermudian rig. Built for the Bermuda Sloop Foundation, SPIRIT OF BERMUDA offers sail training opportunities to the youth of Bermuda.

 

The vessel utilizes modern wood composite construction (seven layers of wood and epoxy), carbon fiber spars, outside ballast, and up-to-date systems to ensure long life and to provide far higher levels of comfort and safety than the historic vessel would have had. However, her character and outward appearance harken strongly to the original. Langan Design Associates of Newport, Rhode Island created the design. 

Marine architect Bill Langan, a resident of Jamestown, RI with an office in Newport designed the Spirit of Bermuda, a 112-foot schooner that sailed to Narragansett Bay to participate in the 2007 Tall Ship Festival. The three-masted schooner was launched in 2006in Rockport, Maine

"The design was based on an 1831 painting, by artist John Lynn, of an early to mid-19th century Bermudian vessel called a ballyhoo schooner," Langan said. The boat was built as a school ship to teach young Bermudians about life at sea and their maritime history.

 

Langan explained that the idea for the project showcasing the Bermudian rig was one of the primary goals of Malcolm Kirkland and Alan Burland, who first promoted the idea about 10 years ago. They formed a corporation called the Bermuda Sloop Foundation, a group comprised of shipbuilding experts, experienced sailors, historians and educators ,to bring the project to reality, he said.

 

According to the foundation Website, in the 18th and 19th centuries, Bermuda was a boatbuilding center, producing some of the most versatile small ships in the world. It was a crossroads between North America, England and the sugar colonies in the West Indies, and as a result was crawling with sailors. Kirkland and Burland wanted to build a Bermudian flagship to advertise the island's nautical heritage and the oil painting, which they saw in a book called "The Glory of Sail," fired their imaginations.

 

These ballyhoo schooners were fast, particularly to windward, making them good patrol boats to keep an eye out for privateers. Some even went as far afield as Africa to chase speedy Baltimore clippers that were often used in the slave trade.

 

After considering their needs, the Website said that the foundation approached Langan and asked him to design the ship that was in John Lynn's old painting. Langan had been one of the owners and chief designers at Sparkman & Stephens yacht builders for 20 years and had just finished a school ship design.

Since he had previous experience drawing modern interpretations of traditional boats, they felt he was a logical choice. The problem was, Langan had little to go on. There were no known plans of this ship and nothing in the Admiralty records.

 

Langan's challenge was clearly to make the boat pretty much the way John Lynn had painted it, but also to make sure it was seaworthy for its task as a teaching vessel. To meet the double requirement of authenticity and seaworthiness, Langan said that he recommended a small boatyard in Maine called Rockport Marine. He said they had past experience building traditional wooden ships, including a Baltimore clipper and a replica of one of John Smith's ships that came across the Atlantic in the early 1600s. There was never any question that the boat would have a wooden hull, but Taylor Allen of Rockport Marine convinced the foundation to do a cold-molded wooden hull no less than threeinches thick to meet American Bureau of Shipping standards. This type of hull made of Douglas fir with an outer layer of mahogany would be extremely strong and need less maintenance.

 

From concept to fruition, the project took somewhere around 10 years, Langan said. "I was involved in the process for about seven years," he added. "The foundation had to get sponsors, and make many decisions about the requirements for the boat. From drawing the plans to launch spanned approximately three years. I was honored to be involved with such a worthwhile project, and I'm happy to see that everyone is satisfied with the results. Although the boat is a quasi replica of the original, it fulfills the needs of the foundation. It will be used to educate many young people who would never have otherwise had such an opportunity."

 

Sparred Length: 112’

Draft: 10’

Three-masted Schooner

Sall Area: 5,372 square feet