The biennial event returns for its 54th installment and the 100th anniversary of the current host clubs as organizers
“The danger of the sea for generations has been preached by the ignorant.”
Thomas Fleming Day, editor of The Rudder magazine, made this proclamation in 1906, insisting amateur sailors could race offshore before he organized his own race to Bermuda.
One hundred and twenty years later that competition continues on the afternoon of June 19, when more than 150 sailboats gather in Narragansett Bay’s East Passage to cross an invisible starting line off the coast of Fort Adams State Park and head out into the Atlantic bound for Bermuda, a 636-mile journey made almost entirely out of sight of land.
It is the 54th Newport Bermuda Race and the 100th anniversary of the relationship between the Cruising Club of America and the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club as organizers.
“When you tell somebody you sailed to Bermuda, they understand immediately that you took on an immense challenge and did a difficult thing,” says Richard Feeny, education director of the New
Bedford Community Boating Center, which is participating in the race for the first time.
The 2026 contest offers spectators a send-off party at Fort Adams on race day. Running from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., there will be food trucks, live music, a beer garden, and exhibits from race partners. The Artillery Company of Newport will fire a cannon at 1 p.m. signaling the countdown to the start, with the opening class crossing the line at 1:10. Subsequent classes follow every 10 minutes, with the last boat away by 3:10 p.m.
More than 4,000 spectators turned out two years ago when race organizers substituted Fort Adams for Castle Hill as the starting point for the first time, adding roughly a mile to the course.
“It’s great for the city of Newport,” says Dan Litchfield, who owns the Newport-based sloop Hound and is competing in his seventh Newport Bermuda Race. “It’s great for supporters of the race to be able to see all the boats start.”
He says racers break down the journey into three segments: maneuvering out of Newport, navigating the Gulf Stream, and making the final approach into Bermuda. The roughly 50-mile-wide Gulf Stream is the race’s defining geographic feature. The warm water cuts across the North Atlantic and generates its own weather, spawning squalls on otherwise clear days and impeding or boosting a boat’s progress.
Feeny, who has made the passage seven times and completed the Newport Bermuda Race three times, describes the Gulf Stream as a near-constant source of surprise. “No matter what you do,” he explains, “the Gulf Stream, because of all that thermal energy, just breeds its own weather.” His advice to his young crew: expect the unexpected.
Among the fleet of entries, four sailboats are particularly worth tracking from the Fort Adams lawn.
The youth from New Bedford
Crazy Horse, a 50-footer donated to the New Bedford Community Boating Center, is sailing with one of the youngest crews in the fleet. Eight crew members between 18 and 21, all of whom trained in the center’s youth sailing and leadership programs, are racing alongside Feeny and three other seasoned sailors.
The Boating Center, founded in the late 1990s by a New Bedford social worker, uses sailing as a vehicle for youth development, providing opportunities for youngsters and teens with limited access to the sport to learn how to sail and be part of a crew. Its offshore program has grown over several years to include Ida Lewis distance races, overnight training runs, and last summer’s Marblehead to Halifax Ocean Race.
That 361-mile adventure validated years of training, Feeny says. The crew managed the weather, worked through seasickness and fatigue, and found ways to look after each other when some were struggling. When a long-time supporter donated a 50-foot race boat to the center, he says plans for the Newport Bermuda Race fell into place.
Built in 1990, Crazy Horse is a Baltic 50 — a white sloop with black sails designed by the Dutch firm Judel/Vrolijk. “If we finish safely, it doesn’t matter who comes in first or last,” says Feeny. “When we all get to the dock in Bermuda there’s just this beautiful, shared experience.”
The governor on the Tall Ship
One crew that will be all too comfortable when it reaches that final dock is sailing aboard the Spirit of Bermuda, the British island territory’s national Tall Ship. The three-masted vessel is operated by the Bermuda Sloop Foundation and designed in the tradition of early 19th-century Royal Navy sloopsof-war. Built in Rockport, Maine, 20 years ago, Spirit of Bermuda is the centerpiece of a program that has trained more than 8,000 young Bermudians for week-long educational voyages at sea.
The foundation has competed in the Newport Bermuda Race five times, most recently in 2022. Executive Director JohnPaul Doughty took the helm in November and is leading the organization’s relaunch after a period of financial difficulty. This competition is both a symbolic and an operational milestone, he says, noting that a Tall Ship must meet a high bar of safety requirements to participate in an ocean race.
Governor Andrew Murdoch of Bermuda, a former Royal Navy officer, has a personal interest in the foundation, says Doughty, and is among the crew racing aboard Spirit of Bermuda. Historically, the governor of Bermuda presides over the race’s prize-giving ceremony after the fleet arrives in Hamilton. This year, he’s part of the fleet.
“He is also very outgoing,” Doughty says of Murdoch. “And he likes the challenge and the idea of being on board for the race… I think he’s going to be pretty comfortable given his background.”
Spirit of Bermuda will likely be among the easiest boats to spot from Fort Adams. “It kind of looks a little bit like a dart,” says Doughty, “but also has the appearance of a classic historical sailing vessel. You’ll instantly recognize it.
Sailing through history
Designed in 1929 by Olin Stephens of Sparkman & Stephens, Dorade’s first offshore race was the 1930 Newport Bermuda Race. The classic wooden yacht fell into disrepair over the decades before Matt Brooks, a San Francisco-based sailor, purchased it, spent 18 months refitting and restoring it, then raced Dorade five times in the event that originally made the boat famous.
He wasn’t planning to race this year, says Brooks, but his son Bill, one of his triplets, asked if he could skipper the boat; Brooks will sail as navigator. His 75th birthday falls during the race so the crew of eight will celebrate at sea.
Dorade’s narrow beam — 10 feet 3 inches, compared to at least 12 feet on subsequent Stephens designs — makes it prone to rolling. But modern sail technology has made the yacht faster than ever, Brooks says, and it has proven its seaworthiness during transatlantic voyages and the Sydney Hobart Yacht Race from Australia to Tasmania.
John Burnham, a crewman from earlier campaigns, once described sailing aboard Dorade as “kind of like dating Marilyn Monroe — everyone else is looking at you.
The local contender
Designed by Aage Nielsen and built in Germany in 1970 out of aluminum, Hound has a long racing history. Dan Litchfield first encountered the 59-footer as a teenager sailing in Maine and bought
it in 2020, primarily for family cruising.
In his first race with the boat in 2022, Hound was first in its class to finish, despite being the slowest-rated boat in its class and experiencing “a problem each day,” as sailing journalist Carol Cronin reported in the 2024 race program.
Two years later, Hound — in its 14th Newport Bermuda Race — finished second overall on corrected time, losing by 12 minutes after a three-and-a-half day race. The margin was traced to a 30-minute penalty incurred for crossing the starting line early.
The sloop is racing this year with a crew of 16, roughly three-quarters of whom sailed the Transatlantic Race from Newport to Cowes with Litchfield last year. He describes Hound visually as a throwback — long, narrow, heavily varnished, often mistaken for a wooden vessel.
“She’s the most beautiful boat,” he says, “in my unbiased opinion.”
The fastest boats in the fleet are expected to arrive in Bermuda by Sunday or Monday morning — two to three days after the Friday start. Most of the fleet will trickle in over the following days, with double-handed boats, sailed by crews of just two, not expected until Tuesday or Wednesday.
Spirit of Bermuda’s Doughty grew up on the island and recalls the arrival of the fleet from Newport “as a landmark event every two years.” Locals toast and celebrate the finishers during a week of parties and award ceremonies.
“It’s as regular as Easter and Christmas and New Year’s,” he says of the Newport Bermuda Race. “People look forward to it.”
