The race start was on 27th December 2014, from the False Bay Yacht Club in Simon’sTown, South Africa. Seventeen yachts set off for the race and heavy sea swells and winds gusting up to 40kts helped them to push forward. The 31ft trimaran ‘Banjo’ – first across the finish line in 2012 – led the fleet as the yachts left Simon’s Town and headed for Cape Point.
‘Banjo ’ arrived first at St Helena, at 1:53am on 6th January, and thus took line honours and also broke the yacht’s previous race record by sailing in after 9 days, 13 hours and 36 seconds at sea.
Banjo was skippered in 2014 by Kevin Webb, with crew Sarel van der Merwe and Brad Stemmett. Sadly Customs and Immigration would not come out for a 2am arrival so the crew had to wait offshore until nearly 10am to come ashore.
Next in was ‘Avanti ’, two days later at 2:04am on 8th January 2015, followed by ‘Black Cat ’ at just before 9am the same day.
‘Avanti ’ was re-classified by the race organisers into the ‘Cruising Class’, and hence ‘Black Cat ’ was declared winner of the 2014 Governor’s Cup.
The next yacht in was ‘Strumpet ’, which arrived early on 9th January, flying the Jolly Roger and loudly playing the theme from Pirates of the Caribbean on the boat’s music system. Apparently their only problem during the voyage was running out of Coke for their Rum and Cokes.
The final race positions were as follows:
Racing Class
1: Black Cat, Dave Immelman
2: Iechyd Da, Stephan Hunt
3: Spirit of Africa, Vic Smit
n/a: DoDo, Roux Gerber (Out of time)
Multihull Class
1: Banjo, Kevin Webb
2: Revelation 1, Wiets Wilkin
3: ZigZag, Brian Alcock
4: Entheos, Bertie Chapman
Cruising Class
1: Avanti, Klaus Wiswedel
2: Tallulah, John Seager
3: Strumpet, Justin Spreckley
4: Canace, Kevin Ward
5: Vulcan 44, Steve Wilson
6: Cool Runnings, Carel Jacobs
n/a: Solas, Paul Rae (Retired)
n/a: Windjammer, Ashley Kerr (Retired)
n/a: Aurora, Andre Greeff (Retired)
