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| Antigua Sailing Week 2006 - 27th April to 6th May 2006
Antigua Sailing Week 2006 report
Monday, 1st May 2006 Antigua Week time again. The Big One - hot sunshine, great winds and simply the best parties in the Caribbean. Renowned for sailing hard and partying hard, the week's practice sessions started off with light southerly winds and a gentle swell from the south. Did I say south? The wind never comes from the south and it never rains at this time of year..... With a total crew of 15, we are lucky enough to have two of our regulars back on board, Peewee on the bow and David on the main, together with Nina, our mate and myself, Julian as skipper, we soon had our motley crew whipped into shape. Practicing off the Pillars of Hercules and the entrance to Nelson's Dockyard we progressed to being able to throw in a series of faultless gybes and declared party time on. This year our shore base, Magali, has managed to secure us a berth in the Historic Nelson's Dockyard, a perfect place to soak up the atmosphere of the oldest working Georgian Dockyard in the world, and the atmosphere of the Caribbean's biggest regatta. Friday night kicked off with a great free rum party hosted by Mount Gay on the beach at Galleon Bay - who was it that we could blame for the Vanilla rum and pineapple juice? The first race is on Sunday and is a 23 mile race around the west end of the Island to Dickenson Beach. Our start was awesome - having been hit by an American boat on the start line at the last regatta out here, we were being ultra conservative and managed to fall into a hole with absolutely no wind - fantastic. But at least no-one hit us this time! Renowned for it's regular heavy trade winds of 25 knots, Antigua managed to produce between 6 and 10! But what a beautiful day - flat clear seas, bright sunshine and fantastic scenary. The crew performed faultlessly once we found some wind, and after an intial beat to the windward mark managed to sail mostly under spinnaker for the rest of the day. A boat like Northern Child is normally raced with between 14 and 16 people, so with our complement of 15 we are perfectly set up. Everyone has jobs to learn and it is a real team event to perform any of the required manoeuvres. We crossed the finish line in the middle of our group, a great result considering our skipper's start! Having heard the music on the beach from 6 miles away, Dickenson Bay Beach Bash was already under way; set in a perfect crescent of fine sand and palm trees, Antigua had come out to Party and what a party it was! Monday we race 20 miles to Jolly harbour and another Party venue - someone has to do it! Tuesday, 2nd May Overnight in Dickenson Bay - the music kept pumping to the early hours - even 1/4 mile out in the anchorage! Returning to the boat in the dark is sort of interesting, all you have to do is tell the water taxi driver that your boat is the white one with the lights... amongst the identical 250 other boats..... Mixed cloud and rain greeted us on deck with light winds filling in by the time we got tour start line at 10.00. One of the civilised things about our class is that the start time isn't at 08.40 like the first class. Wind was just enough to get a safe start and a quick tack onto port put us on the first beat right where we wanted. With the wind gusting up to 22 knots we were carrying the big no.1 North Genoa and we pounded our way through the fleet upwind a few miles to the north-west corner of the Island. With the coast getting ever closer on our starboard side and a huge reef on our left, Antigua Sailing Week sailing came alive and was everything it was predicted to be - great winds and blue seas.
With well over 100 boats racing in our division the windward mark was exciting with boats everywhere at close quarters, and powering away after the turn we were able to set our reaching spinnaker and head off down to the leeward mark. The wind suddenly died on the whole fleet just as we got into the shallow reef-strewn waters by Sandy Island, but somehow we managed to keep moving on starboard and drift our way past some of our closest competitors, the two Swan 53's in our close. One of them, Mistress/Mezza Luna has been chartered by some good friends of mine who own a sail-loft in San Diego, and this week they have bought down a new set of racing sails to try and beat us - so they're our main target; they all sail together regularly and they are a well trained crew including sailmakers to trim the sails. We exited the first parking lot in fine form, came back on the wind and we were away. The wind came on hard again, and Northern Child revelled in the hard conditions. Crew work had been fabtastic all morning, and a huge rain squall in the middle didn't dampen our enthusiasm for the day, within 15 minutes we were all dry again. Demolishing some of our closest rivals we noticed a windshift on the last but one legs and in super quick time we got our spinnaker up and managed to steal away. A quick check ahead of us and we saw the whole division parked up by the last mark, so it was quickly down with the kite (spinnaker) and we crawled our way up to the mark, dodging boats all over the place at slow speed up to a very crowded and confused mark. A few polite requests to other boats in our way with rights and we picked a cool lane out of the mess and off to the finish three miles away.
Wednesday, 3rd May The wind was looking fantastic for the
third race day, the race from Jolly Harbour back to Falmouth Harbour, a
distance of about 20 miles - Around the twenty knot mark from the east
with moderate seas. A complex start line posed a problem for us, but we
managed to cross in front of the fleet with a perfect start and led
upwind to the first mark. With our biggest headsail and a full main the
boat was pretty maxed out and the adrenaline running. We were still in
the lead at the windward mark, powering away on the first reaching leg
and hoisting the big kite on the beam. Following perfect crew work on
the hoist, the wind gusted up from the shore and came forward really
pushing us to the edge. Discretion being the better part of valour a
quick drop was called for as we were in danger of wiping out!
We led around the second mark and scooted off on a long power reach of about 5 miles with the 2 Swan 53's and the 48 behind us - sweet! Again getting to the reaching mark first we powered up onto the wind and were incredibly pleased - in the lead and only a two hour dead beat home in moderate winds, conditions the Swan 51 loves and we were confident of holding people off. But it just wasn't to be - a split appeared in the top of the main and our race was over! We folded the sail away and continued upwind to the finish an hour and a half away. Pretty disappointed, nonetheless we had had a brilliant days' sailing and we were all really fired up with the brilliant sailing. The best part of it all has been the great teamwork and the emegence of a great team spirit amongst us. To celebrate we had organised a team meal out with girlfriends/wives at Life restaurant/nightclub just outside the entrance to Nelson's Dockyard. After too many drinks we hit the dance floor, and although we hadn't won the race, we did win on the dance floor! Wednesday is a layday from sailing and weare racing again on thursday - can't wait.
If you wish to join our racing team in 2007, please enquire now at julian@northernchild.com. |
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Last modified: July 08, 2007 |
