Sweethearts of the Caribbean Day 2

Another regatta, another party, more rum! Day 2 of the regatta was to be the classics race. Here, they had tried to limit entry to traditional wooden craft but had found the numbers too low, hence the rule that a “classic” was “any yacht constructed true to a design 30 years old or older of any hull”. Hence we found ourselves in a class against yesterday’s schooner champion, “Russamee”, Thorpe in his newly relaunched 52ft S&S “Mah Jong” and several large and fast racing GRP boats from the 1980s up to 60ft with fully branded crew!

Newly launched S&S "Mah Jong"

James and I set out to double hand the course whilst the children kept out of the way down below. The extra hand meant that James could keep the new genoa in trim today and it worked a treat. At the end of the into wind leg, we were in a close battle with a large GRP yacht for second, leaving the other contenders behind. We rounded the mark (a barge in Great Bay, Peter Island) cleanly and coaxed the fickle airs out of the bay to round Pelican and Flanagan Islands and return to the finish line in a respectable third place – and the top finishing wooden boat. We only lost by a few minutes on corrected time and this could have been closer if we’d not been so short handed.

Schooner Russammee - yesterday's winner

Our prize was two nights free berthing at Nanny Cay. The kids are thrilled as it means another two days in the pool and James plans to get some jobs done on Croix des Gardes whilst she’s in sheltered waters. Now James is convinced that a new main would do wonders for our performance and we’re considering getting quotes from the US ready for our passage up there.