Antigua Sailing Week & Heineken Regatta - From the Committee Boat

While I used to be a competitor at an international level in another sport (gliding),  I’m not participating in racing sailboats. I’ve come to the realization 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 main 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 the most important when it comes to volunteer work on the committee boats.

The sailing world is surprisingly lax when it comes to licensing, and few of them are required to skipper and handle 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 then I, but don’t have all that paperwork that the insurance companies want and that 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 site I’ve realized that it would be too much effort to manually convert every page for every boat and every race. If anyone has raced in these events and would like pictures, just 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. Going forward, I’ll keep better records of events 2022 onward.