RETURN TO BLUE WATER CAMPAIGN
After purchasing Dorade in 2010, Matt Brooks and Pam Rorke Levy spent a year restoring the yacht to its original condition before kicking off the “Return to Blue Water” campaign. Their goal with the campaign was to repeat all of the major ocean races the yacht had won in the 1930s, matching or bettering her original performance in the Transatlantic, Newport-Bermuda, Fastnet and TransPacific ocean races.
The campaign was successful beyond their wildest dreams, with the team not only bettering Dorade’s original times in all of the races, but also reaching the podium in every race and winning the 2013 Transpacific Yacht Race overall on corrected time, 77 years after Dorade won that race for the first time. In 2015, the campaign wrapped up with stellar performances by an all-star crew, placing second in class in an exceptionally rough and windy 2,800-mile Transatlantic Race, followed by second in class in the Rolex Fastnet Race, where Dorade finished 7th overall out of 356 boats.
2013 - 2015
Transpacific Race 2013 - 1st overall
Newport Bermuda Race 2014 - 1st (IRC)/2nd (ORR), Class 2, St. David's Lighthouse Division
Transatlantic Race 2015 - 2nd IRC Class 4, 9th overall
Rolex Fastnet Race 2015 - 2nd in class, 7th overall
Check out this feature on CNN's Mainsail :
CAMPAIGN BLOGS
“We started out four years ago with almost no experience in ocean racing and some very modest ideas about what we wanted to accomplish, but with persistence and the right people on our team we were able to grow this into a global campaign that has put us on the podium with the very best in the sport.” - Matt Brooks