For Chris Sheehan, owner and skipper of USA-flagged PAC52 Warrior Won, winning the RORC Transatlantic Race was a dream come true. But despite incredible memories of surfing the Trade Winds under endless starry skies and the special camaraderie of a close-knit team, the race brought challenge as much as it did reward, making the win all the sweeter.
This 3,000nm race was the culmination of Warrior Won’s concerted five-year campaign of offshore racing that included wins in the RORC Caribbean 600, TransPac and Newport-Bermuda races, along with third place in the Fastnet, and a fourth in the Sydney Hobart. Impressive stuff.
But for Chris, this was the ultimate ambition. Speaking to Y&Y after the race, the New York-based skipper could not hide his joy, saying: “Winning the RORC Transatlantic Race was just a wonderful way to finish out this five year campaign with a crew that I love, on a boat that I love, on a body of water which I grew up on, sailing from Massachusetts on the Atlantic Ocean as a child and through my adult life with my wife and children on my cruising sailboat… It was very much a dream come true.”
completed the race – from Calero Marinas, Lanzarote to Camper & Nicholson’s Port Louis Marina in Grenada – in an elapsed time of 11d 5h 18m, logging some 4,000nm, to win on corrected time under IRC and joyously lift the RORC Transatlantic Race
