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Hot Participation in 27th St.Maarten Heineken Regatta |
While the
Caribbean awaits the arrival of an annual influx of boats, word of
plans to participate in the Heineken Regatta continues to come in. This
year the regatta will be known for the participation of ABN AMRO 1, the
sensational machine that won the Volvo Ocean in grand style and brought
great exposure to the largest Dutch International Bank that supported
it.
The ABN
AMRO 1 is a speed machine that surprised even the most skeptical with
the speeds that were produced consistently going around the world. She
was the fastest of a crop of boats that were going around 27% faster
than the fast boats of the race four years earlier. The “Black Boat” as
ABN AMRO1 has got to be known, is a development of No 2 and a result of
the designer, Juan Kouyoumidjian’s further researches. The black boat
has a little more stability in her hull than two and more structural
input from two top technicians being Will Brook and Herve De Vaux. Both
the ABN AMRO boats were built in Lelystad, Holland by Killian Bushe,
also the builder of Illibruck, the winner of the previous edition. Many
observers of fast yachts thought that design and development of wind
powered boats had peaked and that improvements in the future were
likely to be marginal. The huge increases in speed with averages of 25
knots on a day run calculation proved that the peak had not been
reached and that technology could take it all a lot further. Sint
Maarten is going to be fortunate to see the vessel that made this so
obvious in the upcoming Heineken Regatta. It has not yet been announced
which crew will sail the boat. It is very likely though that they will
crush the around the island record for monohulls set by Brunel Sunergy
quite a number of years ago. 
Another entry that is expected is that
of Lia Ditton, a solo racer and artist who took a 5th place in the
Ostar sailing a 34 foot trimaran “Shockwave”. She will first be sailing
the Route du Rhum after which she will do a series of Caribbean
Regattas with her 40 foot trimaran that was previously “Spirit of
Canada” (sailed by Erek Hatfeld in the 2001 Around Alone) but is now
called “Dangerous when Wet”. When she visited the Sint Maarten stand at
the Southampton Boatshow in September she conveyed to be adamant to
break the around the island record set for multihulls by Steve
Fossett’s Playstation in 2003.
She will be offering charters and taking
investors on the boat in the Caribbean, an area with which she is
familiar having done charter skippering as well as sailing on some of
the boats that raced here like Rosebud.
Lia is an artist who in her work explores the questions surrounding persons doing long solo voyages under sail.
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