NEWS AND NOTES
Blue Water Sailing
April 30, 2009
Antigua Sailing Week - Day 6: Report from the Finish Line
The 42nd edition of Antigua Sailing Week began April 25 with a single race for the Division A Racing fleets and the Division B classes of Performance Cruisers, Cruising fleets, Dragons and Multihulls.
The rare Saturday start was the first of many new innovations for the 2009 running of the annual event. The four Bareboat charter classes that comprise the remainder of the 140-strong fleet begin their racing on Sunday.
Day One was not without some casualties including Mike Slade’s canting-keel maxi, [i]ICAP Leopard[/i]—fresh from a dominating performance in the Antigua to Guadeloupe feeder race—who suffered a disappointing start to the official proceedings after breaking its boom prior to Race 1.
'Man,' said Slade. 'Just when I thought the boom and bust days were over.'
Your Cruising Editor was out on the course today for Division A and B racing.
Division A racers sailed a pair of windward/leeward contests off the island’s southern coast enjoying a good strong breeze, while the Division B fleet returned to Falmouth Harbour in the 16-nautical mile Jolly Harbour Race under light air.
On a day of firsts for Antigua Sailing Week, Peter Harrison’s Farr 115, Sojana, won the inaugural Corum Round Redonda Race—establishing a benchmark elapsed-time race record in the process—while Adrian Lee’s Cookson 50, Lee Overlay Partners, corrected out to first overall in the same contest to win the first-ever Antigua Ocean Series.
Sojana’s winning elapsed time of 7h 55m 58s in the 65-nautical mile event earned Harrison and his crew the Corum Round Redonda Trophy, sponsored by Corum Watches, just days after setting a new course record. Many of the flat-out race boats chose to race in Performance Cruiser 1, opting to forego the offshore contest to Redondo Island.
In Performance Cruising 1, Damon Guizot’s well-sailed Swan 53, Katrina—a Northern California-based entry sailing an extended Caribbean season after a transit of the Panama Canal, and ably navigated by Tom 'The Curmudgeon' Leweck, the founding publisher of the well-known newsletter 'Scuttlebutt'—kicked off the regatta with a victory in the 20-boat class, the event’s biggest.
In Cruising 2, local knowledge paid off in spades for Antiguan sailor Hugh Bailey and his talented team aboard the First 456, Hugo B, the day one victor. The Cruising Multihull class was won by Larry Pollock’s 54-foot trimaran, Running Cloud, a feat equaled by Compass Point in the long, lean Dragon fleet.
The final day of racing will be left for the four Bareboat classes, which will close out their week with Friday’s Gold Silver Fleet Race to determine 2009’s top Bareboat crews and skippers.
Photos: Nancy Birnbaum, 2009.
Antigua Sailing Week website at www.sailingweek.com
