Every winter, a series of sailboat races are held throughout the Eastern Caribbean. These include the Heineken Cup sailed out of St. Maarten, and others in the Virgin Islands, and elsewhere. Antigua hosts the final and largest of these regattas each year with hundreds of boats participating from Europe, North America and the Caribbean.
The races include coastal legs as well as Olympic courses, and even a round the island race for the largest boats. Each night, a different harbor hosts the parties, that can be quite lively given perhaps a thousand or more sailors, many of which are in their twenties and thirties.
The biggest boats include world class maxi racers, with professional crew and frequently world famous skippers. At the same time, there are many classes of chartered sailboats with families and friends making up the crew, and less than serious cruising boats. We raced on Encore I in the 1996 series, just for the experience of having done it once. We were in the "non-spinnaker, cruiser/racer class" a catch all of larger, relatively high performance boats, that chose not to race full out.
Encore I Racing
We finished in the middle of our class and were happy just to not have hit any other boat. Racing does add a lot of wear and tear. The first race was held in pretty strong winds, and we were among 100+ boats that had to get sails repaired overnight to be ready to race the second day.
Ironically, the winner of this class was another boat called Encore, only she was a maxi racer about 80 feet long. We sometimes had to explain that we were the "other" Encore. The maxi Encore, had previously won several years in a row in the Racing division, but the owner Charles McGaw who founded McGaw Cellular (which was sold to AT&T), had entered a newer boat, Sagamore, in that division. He also had a smaller boat, only about 60 feet, entered in our division, called Bravo, plus a 100 foot sailboat and similar sized motor yacht, acting as mother ships to his fleet. Needless to say, his crews were all dressed very sharp in matching uniforms, that were different colors each day.
After a day of races in Jolly Harbour
Our marina hosts the fleet for one night during the week. Hundreds of boats are jammed together. Vendors set up booths with food and drinks, race results are posted, and the party begins. The local casino enjoys its best night of the year.
s/v Maiden
One of the race boats docked next to us was Maiden, best known for having all women as crew when participating in the Whitbread Round the World Race. The sign on her bow was for the Capetown to Rio de Janeiro race in 2003.
Sport Boats
Among the smallest boats racing are "sportboats", in the 25-30 foot range. The racing is just as serious and attracts sponsors such as McDonalds.
They'll gave a crew of 5-6, and compete in a fleet of frequently identical boats.
Maxi Racers
At the other end of the spectrum are serious race boats around 80' long. They'll have crews of 15-20, and annual racing budgets in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
A week before Antigua Sailing Week, there is a special race series for large charter sailboats. The requirement is that the boat has to be over 100' long.
s/v Chippewa
A perennial contender in the "big boat" classes is Chippewa
Dismasting
Sometimes strong winds can cause equipment failures and masts to come down. In this race, World of Tui, the yellow boat, collided with Kings Legend, and lost her mast. Ruins your whole day. The photo below shows the salvage effort with a helicopter standing by, and tow boats trying to pull the boats apart as other boats raced by.
The year we raced, a steel hulled maxi, Creighton's Naturally, t-boned a high tech kevlar boat called Donneybrook. The picture we bought shows Creighton's bow right over the top of Donneybrooks deck, just forward of their wheel.
Creighton's
was apparently at fault in this collision, and having a reputation for
taking collisions rather than giving way, they were allegedly asked to never
come back and race again.
Donneybrook was lucky not to sink with a v-shaped hole in the side, and fortunately no one was hurt, except for the insurance company that wrote a $1 million + check to settle the claim, which was a write-off.
This site was last updated 01/04/06