Welcome to the Fort Lauderdale to Charleston Race:
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Recent Race News:

April 2, 2010
Paige Brooks, SORC PR -  The weather gods did not smile on the racers in the Fort Lauderdale to Charleston Race this week.  Unfortunately the high sitting over the stream did not allow for a breath of air onto the sails and they were left slatting at 2 knots heading up the Gulf Stream.  Bandana, the last hanger on, retired early this morning outside of Daytona Florida.  Some of the boats will continue on to Charleston, where they are racing next week in Charleston Race Week, while others will head back to their home ports in South Florida.

April 1, 2010
Joel Bowie , PRO -  Teamwork and Jasmine have officially withdrawn because of lack of wind.

Paige Brooks, SORC PR -  All of the boats are now north of Broward County, but not by much.  Teamwork’s early bid for the stream has so far paid off for them. As of this morning (Thursday), they are nearly to Cape Canaveral while the chasing fleet is currently lingering around Ft. Pierce.  It must have been a tough night finding the breeze.

March 31, 2010
Paige Brooks, SORC PR -  On a gorgeous afternoon for fisherman, the fleet nevertheless cast off their lines in Fort Lauderdale to set off and chase the zephyrs toward the Gulf Stream at the start of the Fort Lauderdale to Charleston Race.  In a 6 knot easterly breeze, the 6 boats started up the coast for the 408 nautical mile ocean race.  Robin Team and his crew on Teamwork went right immediately in hopes of getting to the stream first.

March 30, 2010
Fort Lauderdale to Charleston Race Looks Like a Tough One
Paige Brooks, SORC PR -  With a high-pressure system sitting over the ocean path between Ft. Lauderdale and Charleston, it is anyone’s guess where the best spot in the Gulf Stream will be.

Wednesday morning, the teams from ten ocean racing sail boats will make their final preparations, eat their Wheaties, and shove off for an early afternoon start off of Port Everglades in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida for the 2nd running of the reincarnated SORC race.

Chris Woolsey, the winning navigator last year, has been following the path of the Gulf Stream closely, but today said, “I have no idea how we’re going to get through the roadblock across the entire course.” He will try to chat this evening at the Lauderdale Yacht Club with Peter Bowker, considered locally as the best navigator around, who he expects will say it’s a crap shoot. Bowker simply said to this reporter, “You have to stay in the stream as long as you can but you have to get out of it to turn off for Charleston. At about 100nm away, you must turn, but you have to decide when exactly to do it.” Based on weather, the current, and most off all the opposition, even though you might not see them, he said.

Woolsey will be sailing aboard Jasmine a Little Harbor 54, and his keeping his eye on his old sailing buddy, Frank Junkin, navigating for Bandana, an Oyster 48. And vice versa. The two have sailed together on and off for the past 20 years and have spent the last two weeks testing each other’s research on the stream. Wednesday morning will begin the true test, as they sail east to catch the escalator up, along with the rest of the fleet.

You’ll be able to watch the sailors’ course via GPS tracking devices, updates from the race committee and results on this race website.

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January 5, 2010
Heading North, Downstream
Paige Brooks, SORC PR -  On March 31, 2010 the gun fires for the 2nd annual start of the reincarnated Fort Lauderdale to Charleston ocean race. 

By the time the boats cross the starting line, the navigators and tacticians in this 408 nautical mile distance race will have pored over charts and weather reports for days on end. The Gulf Stream is the strong silent factor that can make or break a navigator. Where this unmarked river is, how warm it is, and how fast it's traveling play into the strategy for each team in addition to the normal distance race elements like weather, course, position and sail selection. 

Chris Woolsey, last year's navigator on the Little Harbor 54 "Jasmine”, followed in his father's winning footsteps some 40 years later. As Jasmine advanced up the Florida coast last April and watched their competitors head further east to chase the stream, Woolsey coaxed the team into staying to the western side of the Gulf where his research and empirical evidence said it was the hottest and the fastest. He calls this race "a thinking man's race." In his winning 1968 race to Charleston, Dr. Dean Woolsey put a thermometer in the toilet and flushed through fresh salt water to regularly check the temperature. With more modern instruments on hand, Woolsey's son watched satellite images for weeks in advance to gauge the temperature trends of the stream and when he heard the Commander's weather report confirm the position of the Gulf stream that hemmed up his strategy to take the "western wall which was the place for the best stream." It was this focus on the elements that won father and son the races for their teams, forty years apart. 

For the navigators and teams in the age old challenge of distance ocean racing, earning the win in the race to Charleston means, whether by flushing the toilet or watching their instruments, they knew how to play "The Stream".

Monohull Record Holder STP65 Rosebud/Team DYT Roger Sturgeon 1:07:52:49 2009