Sunrise
The teams on the committee boats had to report for duty at 08:00 for Antigua Sailing Week Day 1. I woke up early enough to do some work on the computer, then shower and change into my team polo shirt prior to going ashore. I tied up at the public dock and walked to our catamaran, arriving at 08:00 on the dot.
Morning
It took a while to get sorted out with breakfast, lunch, drinks and ice. But we did manage to depart on schedule at 08:30 and motored to the start position at “Windward”. The mooring was there and the foredeck crew (Vaughn, Myron and Nigel) had to do it twice, as the first arrangement would have caused chafe on the lines while the catamaran swung around in the seas. But soon we were attached with two mooring lines that formed a bridle and our race officers could go about setting up the starting lines, courses, flags and boards.
Soon the competitors were circling around us, coming past the stern to be recognized and put on the list of starters in their respective classes.
10:00
The first race of the the first day started at 10:00 and we had rolling starts scheduled such that we could start the races with but 5 minutes between them. The start line was square to the wind, but the racers seemed to prefer milling about and starting from the committee boat side. We did have a pod of dolphins playing around the boat for a bit, but they departed before the races.
We only held 2 races for each of the classes today. The winds were light and most of the competitors who had flown in still needed to get their sea legs and acclimate to the extremely warm prevailing temperatures.
Afternoon
As we had a finish boat, we could return relatively early and didn’t need to remain at our mooring until the last competitor returned. This meant that we were first back to the dock and had to slide past the submersible cradle for the ABSAR boats and snuggle up to the dock. Fortunately we had light winds and the catamarans really do drive like a tank. By using the two engines, which are far from each other, one can literally spin in place.
We tidied up the boat and waited for the other committee boats to return and for the day’s prizegiving ceremonies to take place. Our Nautitech Open 40 catamaran is spacious, but the ventilation in the wide-open cockpit area leaves much to be desired and it was quite hot. Fortunately, we had sufficient liquids in the cooler to tide us over.
