The 2020 race has been cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 52nd “Thrash to the Onion Patch” will occur in June, 2022.

The 635-mile biennial Newport Bermuda Race is the oldest regularly scheduled ocean race, one of very few international distance races, and (with the Transpac Race) one of just two of the world’s regularly scheduled races held almost entirely out of sight of land. Depending on the weather, the currents in the Gulf Stream and the boat’s size, the race takes 2 – 6 to six days, finishing off St. David’s Lighthouse.

The race is nicknamed “the thrash to the Onion Patch” because most Bermuda Races include high winds and big waves, and Bermuda is an agricultural island.

The 2020 race is the 52nd since the 1906 founding, and it also marks the 91st anniversary of the relationship between the Cruising Club of America and the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club, serving as co-managers and working through the volunteer Bermuda Race Organizing Committee. Its purpose was stated in 1923 by CCA Commodore Herbert L. Stone: “In order to encourage the designing, building, and sailing of small seaworthy yachts, to make popular cruising upon deep water, and to develop in the amateur sailor a love of true seamanship, and to give opportunity to become proficient in the art of navigation. . . .”