Today marks the first day of the Antigua Sailing Week with a special event, the “Around the Island Race”. The boats are started from and finished at a line set outside of the English Harbour entrance.
For the first time since I’ve been coming to ASW the weather did not play along. The day was rainy and overcast and the winds were very light. At my anchorage position in Falmouth the boats were all backwinded and pointing in various directions.
We had scheduled a dry run of the starting sequence for 10AM but that was postponed just a bit until we finished setting up the flag poles and other racing necessities aboard our committee boat “A” (Anagua). But the dry run went smoothly thereafter, and both of our race officers were confident that things would go just as smoothly during the races.
The race officials were in for a long day, particularly a long wait at the finish line since those on course around the island were hitting speeds that were closer to drifting than to racing. At the end of the day the races were called off due to sunlight issues, although each of the racing classes did have at least one finisher.
We held a briefing for the bareboats at 15:00. The bareboats are charter boats and therefore are all either identical or alike, and only have the standard 2 sails. They make them a bit more fast-looking by taking down the biminis and dodgers, but I don’t think that removing that tiny bit of extra drag is going to make much difference. The crews tend to be groups of friends and quite often there are only a few experienced sailors on board. Therefore, a briefing makes sense to go over the rules of the races and the sequence of events. The race officer for the boats in these classes is Irene McNeil and assisted by Clare Cupples and I’ve worked with Irene for several years where she was the assistance, and this race is her first time as senior officer in Antigua. She asked me to come along and either translate or talk about some things in German as there is a very big contingent (15 boats) manned by Germans. This is all arranged by KH&P from Germany, and they have been organizing this for many years. The presentation went well with a large audience in attendance, and I didn’t have to do much except stand around.
After that the work duties for me were over and the rest of the afternoon was spent doing very little until the live band came on stage, a steel drum band that did a great job of getting the festivities going. I’m always amazed at how they can play music ranging from classical to AC/DC with only percussion instruments. That music tided us over until dinner, when Josie, Alec and I went to Trappas. It was packed but they found us a table in the back and the meal was delivered promptly and was excellent. We ordered a meal to-go for Neil back on the committee boat as he was still busy with regatta-related work.