Pyewacket70 captures line honors in the 35th Pineapple Cup - Montego Bay Race
by Pineapple Cup 26 Jan 2023 06:22 NZDT
January 21-28, 2023
35th Pineapple Cup - Montego Bay Race © Julianna Barbieri
Pyewacket70, the modified Volvo70 owned by Roy P. Disney crossed the Appleton Estate finish line of the 35th Pineapple Cup - Montego Bay Race this morning at 08:20:19 to capture line honors. Pyewacket70 sailed the course in an elapsed time of 2 days 18 hours 20 minutes and 19 seconds. The winner of the Pineapple Cup is awarded to the team with the best overall corrected time and with two teams still on the course, the competition for the perpetual trophy is wide open.
Following the race Ben Mitchell, Watch Captain, said, "It was a great race, super fun! We got out of Miami really fast, probably fastest crossing of the stream we've ever had. Our goal was to try and match or exceed the record set by Titan many years back. We had a pretty good exit, routing was looking good and were ahead of schedule all the way down through the Bahamas. As we passed Eleuthera we knew there was going to be a little high pressure bubble sitting all around the Bahamas creating a little convergence zone. With good luck we might get through it without any problems, but as expected it was a problem and we kind of stopped for several hours, the wind got very light, but after that we got back through into the prevailing breeze and were moving along past Cuba and made great time. Last night we had a beautiful sail, absolutely crystal clear skies and we thought maybe a six am finish was possible but then the wind gods decided we were maybe a little ahead of schedule...
But other than that we're just super happy to be here, it was a great race. Clearly we were disappointed other competitors didn't make the effort to come out and attend such a great event and come to such a beautiful finish line and hopefully in the future everyone will put it on their schedules and do the race."
Pyewacket70 is made up of multiple Volvo Ocean Race winners including 2-time America's Cup winner and Olympic sailor Peter Isler, 2-time Volvo Ocean Race winner Tony Mutter along with multiple Volvo Ocean Race competitors Daryl Wislang and Brad Jackson. The full crew list can be found below.
Crew on board:
- Mark Callahan
- Rodney Daniel
- Scott Easom
- Peter Isler
- Brad Jackson
- Brian Jannie
- Jan Majer
- Ben Mitchell
- Tony Mutter
- David Tank
- Gary Weisman
- Daryl Wislang
The overall Pineapple Cup is still up for grabs as it is awarded to the team with best overall corrected time. Both the Pac52, Callisto and R/P 42 Rikki are still on the race course and expected in late this evening/early tomorrow morning.
Tracking is available on the homepage of www.pineapplecup.com and also via the YellowBrick tracking app and will update every 30 minutes. Further updates will be on both Facebook and Instagram.