Daytona TransAt Race when she sailed across the finishing line at St. David's at 11.30 a.m. yesterday.

Piper, of the Biscayne Bay Yacht Club in Florida, successfully guided the Class `A' J40 sloop over the 883-mile route starting from the Ponce de Leon Inlet.

His time of 166 hours, 36 minutes and 16 seconds was a little under two hours faster than the second boat, Gitana (168:08:02).

However, with six boats having already finished the trip at Press time -- Class `A' Pipe Dream is tumbling down the standings on the basis of corrected time.

Pipe Dream's time is corrected to 149:06:16, while Gitana's time is 147:44:42.

Currently Lagniappe, captained by Wayne Braud of Georgia, leads the overall standings, her 172:24:37 elapsed time the equivalent of 140:05:02 taking in the handicap.

Gene Boyd's Bananas , which came in third in 168:41:35, is second with a corrected time of 140:59:05.

"It was a great trip down,'' said Boyd, a first-time competitor and visitor to the to the Island. "Conditions were varied, upwind, downwind and at times it was very light.

"It was good that nothing unfortunate happened and the crew had a good time.'' There was some concern earlier in the week with the emergence of a tropical depression in the Caribbean, but fortunately this was never a major factor.

"We heard about it and tracked it, but weren't really worried because it didn't really get close to us,'' added Boyd, who had the luxury of having the navigational chores in the experience hands of Bubba Ball, in his sixth TransAt race. "We were happy about the time and hope it holds up. We sailed a good race.'' The other craft to make it in safely were Will Guy's Onery and Scirocco (John Martin).

Fifteen boats started out from Daytona with one, La Padolu being forced to divert to an east coast port after experiencing equipment failure.

Dinghy racing resumes tomorrow with two races hosted by the Royal Hamilton Amateur Dinghy Club.

Races will be in either Granaway Deep or Hamilton Harbour depending on the wind direction. The first is for the BAA Cup and the other has contestants battling for the Whitney Cup.

Currently leading the Coronation Cup standings after three races is Challenger II skippered by Paul Fisher. Challenger stands on 161 points from three races, and leads another Somerset boat, Echo by a mere quarter of a point.

Defending champion Contest , with new skipper Andreas Lewin, stands ideally poised in third place (141 points).