The first boats home in the centennial Newport to Bermuda Race should have crossed the St. David?s Lighthouse finish line by the early hours of this morning as the record fleet limp home in anything but record time.

The area of high pressure that has greeted the 265-boat fleet on the way out of the Gulf Stream has remained, leaving the armada with hardly any wind to work with.

Race leader Bella Mente was still 114 miles from Bermuda as of yesterday morning, giving her a predicted finish time of 4.30 this morning.

If Hap Fauth?s JV 66 does make it to the Onion Patch first, it will be a remarkable end to his centennial race that is seeing a comfortable pre-race favourite surprisingly far down the fleet.

Charles Brown?s $8 million Maximus has improved from 40th in the fleet up to around 17th but still had 142 miles to go as of yesterday morning and wasn?t expected home until later tonight ? more than twice as slow as her original 33-hour race predictions.

Joe Harris, skipper of Gryphon Solo, the only other boat in the Demonstration Division, revealed in his blog yesterday: ?We have been making slow progress over the last 24 hours as light winds ?on the nose? (coming from where we want to go) have been the order of the day.

?After exiting the south side of the Gulf Stream in what we thought was pretty good shape, the music stopped and we moved very slowly across a flat and glassy sea for most of yesterday.

?As misery loves company, it was good to see a number of the big dogs such as our demo division rival Maximus, the largest boat in the fleet, just a stone?s throw away.

?So as we head down the last 200 miles to Bermuda, we are certainly a bit behind our hoped-for schedule and arrival time, but that is the nature of this game sometimes.

?However, if one combines excessive heat with no wind, food stores depleted, travel schedules screwed, upset families vacationing alone in Bermuda and you have the makings of an excellent survivor episode.?

The faster Bermuda boats, such as Steve Sherwin?s Nasty Medicine, Robert Mulderig?s Starr Trail and Colin Couper?s Babe, with Governor Sir John Vereker aboard, should be across the line at some point later this evening.

The Newport-Bermuda Race RG Magazine special will be available in today?s Royal Gazette.