The Antigua Classics Regatta

Ruth & I hopped on a plane to Antigua with Aine after spending half an hour rushing about the boat, showering, packing and eating and speeding the dinghy across the lagoon to the airport. I went barefoot through the airport and might have made it all the way through the entire process except a random security guard saw my feet when I was about to go through the gate to my plane - so I dug my shoes out for the first time in months. Then I took them off again as soon as I got on the plane and no one noticed again until I was exiting baggage claim. Then I had to put them on again for apx 20 feet until I got out the door after which they came off again for the duration of my stay in Antigua. I haven't worn shoes in months and I loathe the idea of having to start again when I go north. We grabbed a taxi to English Harbor and went straight to the Mad Mongoose, one of the main bars there to find Aine's friend Emma. We hadn't really made any plan of where to stay or what we would do there. We crashed at Emma's house that first night then met a neighbor of hers who rented us the spare room for the week. Another friend of ours, Sophie, had arrived as well, along with Matt and Daniel, all of whom had been at Daniel's birthday party in Grand Case. Everyone was hoping to get on a boat for the Classics Regatta. We all showed up at the docks every morning and wandered about among all the beautiful teak and shiny winches asking if any of them needed an extra hand. The boats were gorgeous. There were two J boats there for the races: white hulled Ranger who had been parked at Palapa Marina outside the Soggy Dollar in Sint Maarten since the Heineken Regatta, and navy hulled Velsheda, who was the first J boat I had ever seen when she glided past us like a great winged creature wrapped in an aura of light during our crossing from Antigua to St Barts. Their Kevlar sails shone like burnished gold in the light and the deep earth grinding groaning sound of their rigging as they adjusted the sails made everyone look up anxiously wondering if the rigging would come down. Being near them under sail was like being in the immediate vicinity of some enormous beauteous wild creatures who had supposedly been tamed but whose power and strength were tremendous and you were never quite sure just how tame they would really be if you got too close.

The first day of the races I was too shy to push my way on to any one's boat. I wasn't sure how serious everyone was about winning and felt unsure of my abilities as I had no experience with racing at all. So, instead, Ruth and I climbed up a bluff and bushwhacked through cactus and scrubby shrubberies and found the hillside over the starting line for the races. We got to see all the boats tacking in circles before their races. Besides the two J boats there were several huge gaff rigged schooners, including Altair and Eleanor. These were some of my favorites because they had three head sails and then the gaff rigged sails (where the top of the triangle of sail is cut off at an angle to make the sail shaped more like a trapezoid) and the small upper triangular sail. This kind looks even more like beautiful birds all puffed up with their feathers ruffled and strutting their stuff. There were boats everywhere as they awaited their start times veering in and out between each other. Other big boats were White Hawk, Lion's Whelp, Wild Horses, Ticonderoga, Mistress, Aschanti VI, Lone Fox, Galatea, and so many others. We watched as long as we could stand being in that turgid sweltering sun. There was no shade to be had and we felt like the air itself was a layer of wet on our skin. I felt like a snowman melting away. After the starts all happened the boats were far out at the furthest mark and not likely to be back any time soon so we wandered back and explored a secluded beach on the back side of the bluff. It was the same coral rimmed cove we had swam in to that last time I had been here when I first met Ruth. There was a lovely little under hanging cave carved out of the cliff with rocks jutting up all about and breakers crashing where we sat in the shade with a gorgeous breeze wafting through and recovered from what felt like death by sunshine. We had been so used to living on the boat and spending a lot of time not on land where there was always wind to be had - that arriving in Antigua and spending a lot of time on land where the heat was just stifling with barely a breath of breeze was a bit overwhelming. We were pretty exhausted as, typical of most race weeks, the parties in the evenings went long into the wee hours, and we had danced the night away at the yacht club so we spent several hours sleeping in the sand on the beach and watched all the boats parade back into the harbor after the race was over.

Later that night there was a party at the Pineapple House, which was the local crew house similar to the Secret Garden in Simpson Bay. It was a cool house up on the hillside with the walls all open to the air and the feeling of being in a tree house. They had made an ice luge for doing shots of Jaeger which was quite yummy. There were tons of people there and we mingled about and met a lot of the crew for local boats and the rest of the Antigua crowd similar to the group of friends we had become involved with during our lengthy stay in Simpson Bay. I was walking through the main room and got distracted by an intriguingly detailed tattoo on an arm that I saw out of the corner of my eye as I was passing. Without even looking up I pushed the sleeve up so I could see better and then sheepishly looked up and said "may I see?" And that was how I met Adam, a singularly intriguing individual, who I quickly learned would be spending time in the Vineyard in the coming summer. We chatted for a bit, comparing tattoos and became fast friends.

The next morning I met the crew off of Old Bob which was a 40 ft ferrous cement hulled gaff rigged cutter ketch with blood red sails. A friend of a friend had suggested I might be able to find a spot on their boat and they were very welcoming. Dave and Emma were great fun and gave me a small job to do - taking care of the running back stays on the starboard side which merely needed to be taken off and put back on each time we changed tack. Just being out on the water amidst all those awesome boats under way was exhilarating but the best moment of all came at the second mark. We were in the second group starting out and our class included some other small gaff rigged ketches and schooners including Moia and Rainbow. There were so many boats about that it is quite amazing that there was not more carnage during these races. Often times there would be several boats sailing close enough to us that we could hand a beer over the rail. Several times there were situations where a boat tacked a few moments sooner than they should and there were close calls where everyone was running about with fenders and people lined the rail pushing boats apart. We lucked out in that we never actually touched anybody else but there were definitely some close shaves. In the beginning it was a race between a whole bunch of smaller boats all vying for position. All the big race boats had started at least half an hour behind us but as we approached the second mark, they started to catch up to the herd of smaller boats ahead. We were coming up on mark two and Rainbow had just tacked towards the mark and was parallel to us about 30 feet to our port side. Juno was coming up somewhere on our starboard stern. There were at least 5 other medium to large boats in the very near vicinity of us and we were all in position getting ready to tack at the mark when we looked behind us and saw Velsheda in all her glory bearing down on us at what seemed like 20 knots. We were going about 6 knots. The bowman was jumping up and down and shouting "go upwind! go upwind!" At first we thought he was talking to us. And we all looked around at the mine field of boats around us and wondered where the hell he thought we could go. Then, of course, we realized that he was yelling to his helmsman and that they were fine tuning their approach to go between us and Rainbow. The beam of that boat has got to be at least 20 feet. As we came to this realization we all just sort of stood there frozen in position praying that they knew what they were doing because by the time we could do anything that would have any effect on our boat actually moving out of the way she would have already cut us in half. Scotty, the skipper on Juno, told me later that from where he was watching he could see all of us just standing there with our mouths gaping open. Velsheda scudded forward with a shower of water spraying in an arc to either side as her bow cut through the waves, her golden sails gleaming like a pyramid of light twice as high as our boat and maybe then some. The raw power streaming towards us was immense and intoxicating. We were all of us on every boat around holding one breath together as we waited to see what would happen -
and then she was passing through.
The bowman stepped back and waved and smiled, saying "thank you," cool as a cucumber, no worries at all.
They glided between us at top speed with maybe a few feet clearance on either side. I could have stepped from our deck to theirs.
We all exhaled together. I was so excited I never really had time to be scared.
It was perfect. They knew exactly what they were doing and it was like watching excellence. Like watching someone when they are doing what they love most and what they do best. So that they glow from the inside out.
We had time to exhale once only before we saw Ranger coming up right behind her. She thought about following Velsheda through the gap and we all gulped again, but we had drifted a bit closer to Rainbow by then and there was no way she could fit through there. At the last minute the bowman directed the helmsman to veer to starboard and they cut across our stern and around Juno as well with a great deep groan of her rigging that made us all cringe away and she cut about in a big loop around and between the mass of boats rounding the mark just behind Velsheda. They let out their spinnakers flying with the breeze and within minutes they were far away. The whole thing had taken less than three minutes to transpire, but may have been one of the most exhilarating, unforgettable moments of my life. It was a beautiful day for sailing and after being stuck in Simpson Bay lagoon for nearly a month I was happy to be out on the water in any circumstance. But those few minutes in that one day of racing made all the waiting time worth while. When the racing was done that day we were walking about the docks and I saw some of the crew from the two J boats. I went up to them and thanked them for making my day, my week, my year. Wow!!!! There really aren't words to express what it was like to be in the midst of that moment. I continued to meet other people who were on one of the boats involved in that little interlude and every one of them agreed that it was the best moment of the regatta. Some day I hope to have a chance to be on deck of one of those larger race boats while they are sailing full speed but being within a few feet and being able to see them in action was a gem of a treat.

That night we wandered from bar to bar searching for where the migrating party had disappeared to. Normally there was a crowd of yacht people somewhere and that was where the party was. But most places seemed somewhat deserted. We eventually ran into some friends including Adam and we all had many deep conversations long into the night. It was so loud in most of the bars that I started to lose my voice as we were shouting to be heard. We ended up in the Rasta Shack still talking at 5 am and decided to take an excursion out to Adam's boat. The captain was his Australian friend Frouie (no idea how to spell that) and it was some kind of 75ft sailing yacht. Quite a beautiful boat. We were all drunk as skunks and it was already full daylight. We sat on the deck talking and watching the neighbors wake up. There was another boat anchored nearby that Adam had just arrived with from Florida. His captain was a nudist and Adam had many crazy stories about his naked captain during the crossing. Frouie was very concerned by this. He jokingly said the problem was like a disease and it was catching because now his chef was also acting as a nudist. He spent all his time running about telling her to put some clothes on. It was a wacky fun adventure and when people finally passed out strewn about the boat we got stuck there with no dinghy. So we spent the day lazing about watching movies and napping and checking emails and hanging out. We were still there in the afternoon when the parade of boats went by. It was quite a relaxing and lazy day.

Later that night we went up to Shirley Heights for the usual Sunday night rum punch craziness. We were with the crew from Port Louis, one of the Carriacou Sloops that was berthed right next to Summer Cloud and Summer Wind. They had invited us to come out on their boat for the last day of racing. The party got rained out as a torrential downpour started and we were drenched to the bone within minutes. That cast a shadow on the weather for the final day. We showed up and got on the boat and we all went out and circled about waiting for our start but it was still raining and there was no wind. After a whole lot of circling, the race committee announced that the races would be abandoned for the day. The parade of boats re-entered the harbor, with Jex, the captain on our boat blowing on his conch shell. Everyone went straight away to have Pim's cups and cucumber sandwiches at the yacht club...or maybe that was a different day...they all started to blur together. I hadn't had a real night's sleep in days and my voice was completely gone by then. We spent our last night bouncing about between bars and hanging out with a lot of the friends who we would finally being leaving behind for good. Most of the people we knew there were staying on for Antigua race week one week after the Classics Regatta but we had to get back because our boat was supposed to be heading north. In the morning we hung out at Skull Duggery and had our last chicken roti and started the long stream of goodbyes. Up until now there was always the chance we would see them again somewhere else in the Caribbean, but now the season was ending and the great migrations north and south ahead of hurricane season were beginning. Of course, I quickly discovered that a lot of these boats were going north to Newport, RI and Martha's Vineyard - exactly where we would be heading soon. So, maybe not such a long goodbye after all.

We made it to the airport and found Adam sitting dejectedly among his bags having been bumped off his flight and trying to fly standby for the last 2 days. We had some lunch together and then went back to the line with him to lend him moral support. He was lucky and made it on to the flight. We went through customs together and said our final goodbyes tho we expected to see him again soon as he would be in the Vineyard for the summer. We made it back safely to Simpson Bay and Sam was waiting for us at the airport. Simon's mast was up again and mostly attached with a few final problems with his shrouds. We felt a lot less stressed after our brief little escape and were ready to get back to business.