Nanny Cay sponsored Triple Jack is second in the Racing Multihull class after the first day of racing in the Heineken Regatta.
Yesterday was not a day for the meek of heart or the weak of hull. For after a brief series of morning squalls, a northerly breeze packing gusts over 30-knots swept in with a vengeance, and the steady, pumping winds that accompanied them generated gear-busting seas of 8-10 feet and more. Torn sails, bruised sailors, broken equipment—as well as a dismasting, numerous collisions, and a near sinking—soon followed.
The carnage began after the respective racing, cruising and bareboat classes came hard on the freshening breeze off Plum Point on the island’s western flank in the early stages of the day’s traditional round-the-island race, a 30-nautical mile course for the all-out racing divisions, and a slightly shortened 25-miler for the non-spinnaker and charter fleets.
Before all was said and done, at least two other crews would be thanking their lucky stars that the serious mishaps that befell them weren’t even more disastrous. The first was the team aboard the Melges 24, French Connection, who lost their mast off Point Blanche in the final stretch of the race, which ended nearby in Philipsburg’s Great Bay. The second was the crew of the Beneteau 47.7, Yo Yo, which was holed in a collision off Tintamarre, and with the boat beginning to flounder, made it to safe haven and the travel lift at Bobby’s Marina in Philipsburg in the nick of time.
“We jibed with another boat and right afterwards there was a collision,” said a Yo Yo crewman soon after the boat was safely in the slings of the boatyard hoist. “Their stanchion pierced our hull. We tried to plug the hole but as quick as we could get it out, it was coming right back in. We all put on lifejackets immediately and bailed as quickly as possible, but we couldn’t get ahead of it.”
While French Connection and Yo Yo may have suffered the worst mishaps, there were countless other misadventures, as well. “There were some spectacular t-bones in the bareboat class, right at the windward mark,” said David De Vries, who had a ringside seat aboard Ian Hope-Ross’s Beneteau 36.7, Kick ‘em Jenny. “Then a squall came through and you could see all these spinnakers tearing and popping. It was wild.
“We clocked 32 knots of wind in the Anguilla Channel and 34 knots in the squall,” he added. “The waves were great with this enormous swell.”
Of course, it wasn’t all gloom and doom; in fact, amidst the fray, there was some tremendous sailing and boathandling. “We had a helluva ride,” said Billy Burke, a crew aboard the Newport, Rhode Island-based canting-keeled Cookson 50, Privateer. “Down the coast, we were surfing at 16-19 knots in a 4-6 foot swell, which we rode pretty well. It was a pretty spectacular spinnaker run.”
Read the fill account and see the photos here
