Wind, Breeze and More Wind Highlight Day 2 of the St. Maarten Heineken Regatta
 St. Maarten, N.A. (March 7, 2009) – It was a day of snapshots, of one indelible image after another. With staunch northerly breeze whipping the cerulean waters of the Caribbean into a frothy, turbulent, massively confused seaway, some 200 boats set sail today on Day 2 of the 29th St. Maarten Heineken Regatta, an event that is rapidly reaching epic, historic proportions.
The crew of the 44-foot Moorings charter boat Lady L will certainly never forget the moment when their forestay parted and their mast and sails came tumbling down. And SAIL magazine editor-in-chief Peter Nielsen, sailing another bareboat, a Sunsail 39-footer called Dancia, will have fond memories of leading 18 other competitors around the top mark. No one who saw Peter Harrison’s Farr 115, Sojana, will have a hard time remembering the huge ketch rolling down the course at double-digit boat speeds and jibing its thousands and thousands of square feet of crisp white sails—including a cloud of asymmetric spinnaker and matching mizzen staysail—almost on a dime.
 And though they’d probably like to, the team aboard the Anteros 36, Easy, would just as soon erase from memory the moment when they botched their spinnaker hoist and came to a crashing halt, their kite wrapped beneath their keel and rudder, their speed reduced to zero. Sailors call it “shrimping,” and Easy made it look, well, easy.
Admittedly, it’s unfair to single out Easy on a day when sail-handling miscues were rampant and blown-out sails were a matter of course. In fact, the crew should be applauded for hoisting their kite at all; many crews in the spinnaker classes decided to sail today’s downwind legs sans chutes and under poled-out jibs. The rugged, stiff conditions often rewarded discretion over valor.
Certainly, after Friday’s inaugural session was conducted under squally skies packing gusts of up to 35-knots, the race committee’s decision to reschedule Saturday’s racing proved to be wise and prudent. Saturday’s races usually end on the French-side port of Marigot. This year, because of the weather, race officials instead set courses on the island’s leeward coast, beginning and finishing off Simpson Bay, and out of the worst of the wind and swell.
Due to the course changes, the racing classes contested two
windward/leeward races while the bareboat and non-spinnaker divisions
sailed a single 17-nautical-mile point-to-point buoy race along the
island’s southern flank. As on Friday, steady north-northeasterly winds
of 20-25 knots were punctuated with piercing gusts that whipped the
waters into a frenzy, topping off at over 30-knots. Because of the
tenuous conditions, an afternoon race for the racing Multihull class
and the Gunboat division was postponed.
“We never saw less wind than 20-knots, right out of the
northeast, which is unusual from my experience at the Heineken,” said
Neil Harvey, a crewman on Burt Keenan’s custom 48-foot Frers-designed
cat-ketch, Acadia. “Usually the breeze is way out of the east. It made
the Anguilla Passage quite choppy, which is why we couldn’t lay Marigot
Bay. The race committee made a good call.”
Harvey, sailing in Non-spinnaker 1 with three fellow veterans
of the tragic 1979 Fastnet Race, said Acadia’s crew included “the
infamous Shag Morton, who’s sailed four Whitbread/Volvo
(round-the-world races). His experience came in handy in the nice sea
breeze we were experiencing.”
On Saturday, provisional winners included: Bobby Velasquez’s
L’Esperance in Non-spinnaker 1; Sandy Mair’s Streaker in Non-spinnaker
2; the Harmony 51, Neerlands Glorie, in Bareboat 1; the Cylcades 50,
Sequoyah, in Bareboat 2; the Oceanis 473, Goldendog, in Bareboat 3; the
Cyclades 43, French Kiss, in Bareboat 4; Insel Air II in Bareboat 5;
the Lagoon cat, DreamCatcher in Cruising Multihull 2; and Goeie Mie in
the Open class.
In the racing classes, Saturday’s two races began to sort out the true
contenders from the rest of the field, setting up an interesting finale
for Sunday’s third and final day of competition. Leading the way was
James Dobbs’s Lost Horizons, in Spinnaker 4, which recorded two bullets
on Saturday to go with their first on Friday to take a commanding lead
in the division. In Spinnaker 1, Team Selene also earned two
first-places to go with a first on Friday to match the feat of Lost
Horizon. So, too, did the Cookson 50, Privateer, leading the way in
Spinnaker 2.
In Spinnaker 3, the battle is on between Mad IV and Lazy Dog,
which split top honors today, both taking a first and a second. But by
virtue of their first on Friday, Mad IV holds the slimmest of leads
over Lazy Dog going into the last day.
In Spinnaker 5, Tony Sayer’s Augustine split today’s two races
with Raymond Magras’s Speedy Nemo, which own the first race on Saturday
but finished third in the second. But with a first on Friday, Speedy
Nemo remains in the driver’s seat with one race to go.
Last but not least, in Spinnaker 6, Robert Armstong’s Bad Girl
took a first and a second today, and lead’s one of the closest
divisions going into Sunday’s action.
For full information on the Budget Marine Match Racing Cup, the IGY
Commodore’s Cup and the St. Maarten Heineken Regatta, as well as entry
lists, results, photos, videos and much more, visit
www.heinekenregatta.com.
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