Caribbean Gold

Antigua Sailing Week 2017 Marked 50 Years of Top-flight Racing. Helen Fretter Reports
 

The tropical heat of Antigua during the last week in April is not a languid heat. It is a loaded energy that brings a hot, heavy breeze out onto Rendezvous Bay, powering along the 143 boats competing in Antigua Sailing Week. It the hum of what feels like the half the island’s population working to feed, house and transport the 1,500 crew that descend from all over the world for one week. And it is accentuated by the buzz of adrenaline that comes with a week of surfing conditions, close, close racing, and a frisson of tension until the very end.

Antigua Sailing Week may have typical Caribbean informality, yet it is also venerable. The 2017 edition was its 50th iteration. This year was not its largest – the days of near 250 boats are a decade ago – but nonetheless felt like a fitting celebration. With numbers back around the 140 mark, the atmosphere was friendly, not charged.

Caribbean regattas are renowned for their eclectic entry list, and the 50th Antigua Sailing Week was no exception. Yachts which were once the cutting edge of design come to live out their retirement here, among them TP52s from the Med and USA, a Farr 45 from the Solent, even local hero Geoffrey Pidduck’s unique 6-metre Biwi Magic, a 1989 design originally used for match racing training by Peter de Savary’s America’s Cup challenge, and later modified with a coachroof and interior before being sailed single-handed across the Atlantic.

Most are a little less precisely tuned than in their glory days, their rivals no longer matching them to the split second. The appeal instead lies in pushing challenging yachts hard in a daily dose of solid 15-20 knot breezes and bathwater-warm seas.

A hard day’s night