Antigua Sailing Week & Heineken Regatta - From the Committee Boat

While I used to compete at an international level in another sport (gliding), I’m not racing sailboats. I’ve realized that I’m not a good enough sailor, and don’t want to damage my sailboat. My solution is to be a volunteer, which lets me participate at arm’s length.

Surprisingly, the primary qualifications needed to be a volunteer are:

• be there
• don’t get seasick
• do what you are told

While the last qualification applies to many roles, the first two are most important for volunteer work on the committee boats.

The sailing world is surprisingly lax when it comes to licensing, and few licenses are required to skipper or handle a boat. But since I’m a German, I have a thick folder full of licenses – from the basic skipper’s license to offshore certifications, various radio licenses, first-aid and ISAF certificates, and so on. Since these regattas are commercial events, this lets me be skipper of the committee boats even when others might be available who can handle the 40–50-foot catamarans better than I do, but don’t have all the paperwork that the insurance companies want and the event organizers require.

I’ve been working aboard or being captain (and working aboard) the start and finish boats for these regattas for years, and my old site had several hundred pictures of racing crews and yachts starting and finishing these races. But since I’ve had to transition the site from the old SV-ZANSHIN.COM to this one, I’ve realized it would be too much effort to convert every page for every boat and every race manually. If anyone has raced in these events and would like pictures, drop me a line in the comment box below, and I’ll get them from my archives!

I’ve added a small selection of those images I like below. From now on, I’ll keep better records of events (2022 onward).