A stiff north-easterly breeze helped the 11th Marion-Bermuda Cruising Yacht Race off to a brisk and smooth start under sunny skies yesterday afternoon.

A fleet of 103, the biggest the biennial event has seen for six years, headed south out of Buzzards Bay, off the south coast of Massachusetts, on the first section of the 645-mile crossing to Bermuda with 12 to 15 knot winds behind them.

The armada of yachts which had transformed this small, picturesque harbour into a forest of white masts over the past week, went out in a staggered start over one-and-a-half hours. The boats are divided into six different classes and two separate divisions for celestial and electronic navigation for the first time in the race's 22-year history.

With no spinnakers or racing sails allowed, the race has gained a reputation as a family-orientated cruising event, less competitive than its biennial counterpart, the Newport-Bermuda race.

But there was no lack of competition evident yesterday, as boats jostled for position at the starting line and though there were no collisions, there were one or two near misses.

All five Bermuda skippers competing, Warren Brown, Buddy Rego, Paul Hubbard, Colin Couper and David Roblin, set sail without a hitch, as did the first two all-female crews ever to take part in the race.

Race chairman John Braitmayer said conditions were as near to perfect as the sailors could have wished for.

"They've got a back wind and all the times I've sailed to Bermuda I never got one of those -- it's always been south-westerly, windward sailing, hard going,'' said Braitmayer.

Race press officer Rich Healey disagreed. "The perfect wind for starting is a south-westerly, because that can help them get a more controlled start,'' he said.

"When the wind is coming out the north and blowing from behind you, you've got to pretty much go where it takes you.'' Roblin was Bermuda's first starter in his yacht Lullaby in class F, for the smallest of the boats with electronic navigation equipment which uses satellite technology to allow sailors to pinpoint co-ordinates.

At 40-feet long, the recently re-rigged Lullaby is the biggest boat in its class and it got off to a flying start, moving straight to the front.

Class C, for the mid-sizes celestial boats, saw Hubbard and his yacht Bermuda Oyster depart. To start was an achievement in itself for Hubbard, after a nervous week of 11th hour repairs to the boat, which left him with little time to test new equipment.

Oyster was third to cross the starting line and held its position in a smooth start. Rego's Tsunami and Couper's Babe were the next Bermudian entries to start, in class B for the biggest vessels using electronic navigation.

And it looked like a case of Islanders sticking together as the two boats emerged from the pack sailing side by side, just yards away from each other.

Not far behind was another boat, Caribe , one of the all-female craft with its crew unmistakable in their garish pink T-shirts and a banner on the side of the boat proclaiming `women for sail'.

The banner referred to an American organisation founded with the aim of teaching inner city women how to sail. Another class B boat, Sequoia , did not enjoy such a smooth start as their main sail collapsed to the deck.

Brown's War Baby , probably Bermuda's best hope of success in this race, is competing in class A for the biggest boats travelling by celestial navigation.

At 61-feet long and weighing 37 tons, War Baby is the largest boat competing and yesterday it got off to a steady start, the wily 69-year-old Brown appearing to allow others to make the early pace.

Brown and his crew are expected to be among the first to arrive at the finishing line off St. David's as early as next Monday evening. Fast times should be possible if a briefing from Atlantic weather expert Herb Hilgenberg given to skippers on the eve of the race proves accurate.

Good sailing winds should prevail all the way, increasing to 25 knots over the Gulf Stream, a river-like body of water flowing off the eastern seaboard directly across the race route.

Today, some of the boats will get a boost to their speed from a warm eddy, a clockwide-moving current, and that should lead them into a south-flowing kink in the Gulf Stream itself later in the weekend.

On the only previous occasion she took part in the Marion Race, War Baby set a record time for the old, long course which still stands, although a faster time was set for the new, shorter course in 1993 by another Bermudian, Kirk Cooper with his boat Alphida .