Heineken Regatta 2024
I’ve been a volunteer at the Heineken Regatta in St. Martin / Sint Maarten for many years. I missed a couple of events due to the twin knockout blows of Hurricane Irma and the COVID-19 lockdown.
The main events are no longer held at Kim Sha beach, but at the bigger venue at Port de Plaisance across from the Simpson Bay Bridge and the Sint Maarten Yacht club. The event is growing in size again each year, with around 120 yachts participating this time around.
I’m fortunate to have been on the Race Committee Boat “A”. The bigger yachts as well as the true racers were started and finished from our boat; this gives us the best seats in the house. From my vantage point aboard the catamaran I can get close-up shots of the boats starting the races as well as pictures of the finishes.
Committee Boat
Life aboard the committee boat starts early, the volunteers meet up a 07:00. After some coffee and fresh croissants to get us going, we gather aboard the committee boat and leave the dock in time to catch the special 08:00 bridge opening. Despite the early hour there are usually quite a few guests at the SMYC, many of them nursing bloody Mary drinks.
Our start position is off Cole Bay and quite a distance from the bridge. The water is quite deep at our location and the charter boat doesn’t have a huge amount of chain; we had some extra line along in case we needed to extend the anchor. Our skipper put us dead on position each day. On day 1 he was 15m from the GPS coordinates, then he got better each day with the record set at 4m. For those who haven’t done this, it is difficult to judge holding, current, and wind – the results are impressive indeed.
Racing
The weather was perfect for the sailors. The winds started out light, but still in the 10-15 knot range and got stronger each day. There was no significant swell to deal with so it was comfortable aboard our catamaran. In years past we’ve had to deal with rougher conditions and had several cases of vertigo. Not this time around.
Our team aboard the committee boat worked well together and we all had fun. Although we had a couple of minor hiccups along the way, none of them were visible to the competitors and we got everything sorted out in the end.
I’ve put together a lot of pictures and have grouped them by day of racing and one category with images of the volunteer work and things not directly related to the races.