Despite the calendar date, there were precious few pranks occurring today at the 40th Anniversary BVI Spring Regatta and Sailing Festival (March 28-April 3, 2011), where 122 boats assembled on four different racecourses, eagerly anticipating their starting guns. Fifteen to twenty knots and small seas greeted sailors racing in the protected waters, and classic Caribbean ocean rollers fueled surfing sessions outside of the lee of the islands. The race committees made sure to entertain, sending boats on a variety of courses, ranging from windward-leewards to scenic excursions around the numerous islands that pepper the Sir Francis Drake Channel near Nanny Cay Resort and Marina, the regatta’s base.
 
Back ashore, however, a few sly moves were attempted. “It was mostly in the racing class!” laughed Renata Goodridge, the Regatta Measurer. Caribbean Sailing Association (CSA) rules—the regatta’s governing rules—stipulate that owners can only change their rating three times per year, but this didn’t deter some shenanigans. “Guys always try to one-up each other. They’ll say, ‘that first spinnaker, we used it for one whole regatta—it’s really blown out, let’s measure a new one and see if it will make us go faster.’ But, for the most part, everybody plays by the rules.” Given that Goodridge is also an official CSA measurer, you can bet your last bottle of rum that nothing slipped under her radar.