Image copyright Christophe Jouany/Les Voiles de St Barth
by Sabina Mollart-Rogerson
Gustavia’s
Quai General de Gaulle was abuzz with Les Voiles de St. Barth
competitors this morning as they fortified themselves with croissants
and café au lait while checking the official notice board for the
day’s race courses. With the nine classes separated into four
starts, the fleet was sent off in a light southeasterly breeze of
about 8 -10 knots, sailing courses of either 21 nautical miles or, in
the case of the bigger, faster boats, 28 nautical miles. The light
breeze made for a long day for most, though no one was complaining
given the otherwise ideal conditions. With the breeze forecast to
build throughout the week, all boats will have a chance to revel in
their best conditions.
In
today’s racing, the Maxis had the closest finish, with Caol
Ila R correcting
out two minutes ahead of Bella
Mente to
win the Maxi division. Swiss sailor Franck Noel led his crew on Near
Miss to
a win in Spinnaker Zero; pre-race favorite Sergio Sagromoso’s
Puerto Rican team, Lazy
Dog, won
Spinnaker One; Jack Desmond, back at Les Voiles this year on his Swan
48 Affinity, won
Spinnaker Two; and in Multihulls, the smallest in the class, a
Seacart 26 named Team
All Stars,
managed to best the bigger boats.
Maxis
Mix it UpSeven
boats make up the Maxi division and range from the Mills 69, Mini
Maxi Caol
Ila R,
owned/helmed by Swiss sailor Alex Schaerer, to the Swan 112 Highland
Breeze, under
the command of Dutchman Ben Kolf.
Image copyright Christophe Jouany/Les Voiles de St Barth
CaoI
Ila R (ex-Allegra)
has competed over the last two years in several of the top regattas
in the Mediterranean, including the Rolex Capri Sailing Week Volcano
Race, which it won in 2013. For this year, the boat’s U.S. program
included Key West Race Week and Les Voiles de St. Barth, and Schaerer
recruited a formidable, mostly Australian crew, many of whom come
from the ultra-successful supermaxi Wild
Oats XI.
Stepping
in as tactician, Gary Weisman, past president of North Sails, is the
lone American onboard. Weisman has sailed in St. Barths often, but he
is at Les Voiles for the first time. Caol
Ila R’s
main competition is the 72-foot Bella
Mente. Caol
Ila R finished
2ndto Bella
Mente at
Key West by just two points; but Weisman admitted, “Bella
Mente will
be tough – on the kind of race courses here in St. Barths, when you
crack sheets and reach and run in a breeze, they’ll really hammer
us. On the shorter courses upwind and down (like in Key West), we
could kind of hang in there.”
Meanwhile Bella
Mente’s
owner Hap Fauth (Minneapolis, Minn./Naples, Fla.),comes to St. Barth
with his own seasoned team, which includes America’s Cup, Volvo
Ocean Race and grand-prix race veterans – a blend of offshore and
‘round-the-buoy sailors that is fairly common now among
professional sailors.
Fauth,
who helms his boat, is joined in the afterguard by Mike Sanderson
(NZL), Terry Hutchinson (Annapolis, Maryland), and John Cutler (NZL).
Fresh off a victory at the Caribbean 600, where Bella
Mente took
line honors and won CSA overall, the boat is racing at Les Voiles for
the first time.
Image copyright Christophe Jouany/Les Voiles de St Barth
Hutchinson,
who sails as tactician, said, “I haven’t done the Bucket regattas
or Les Voiles before, so it’s been quite spectacular – the last
couple of days out training, seeing the sights and where the courses
might go. It’s quite a tricky course for navigators – we’ve
spent a lot of time after our practice sessions out on the rubber
boat measuring different areas and finding rocks. We sailed across a
rock yesterday that was charted in 120 meters of water, and we saw it
a boat length off and sailed around it. We went back out in a chase
boat later and found out we would have run aground had we sailed
across it. That makes you a bit apprehensive…but as you can see,
the sights around are pretty spectacular and I’m quite thankful to
be here.”
Also
competing in the Maxi class is George David’s 90-foot Rambler,
at Les Voiles for the third time. Rambler is
stacked with a solid team, including the new wave of ‘younger’
sailors such as Rome Kirby, enjoying a semi-busman’s holiday in the
tropics after being an integral part of the winning Oracle Team USA
at the 34th America’s
Cup, and Jesse Fielding, who has sailed many impressive miles since
his starring role in Roy Disney’sMorning
Light campaign
(and movie of the same name).
Rambler
has scorched the race course here before and will be one of the Maxis
to watch. “Looking at the scratch sheet, George
David’s Rambler will
be quite good and quite difficult beat,” Hutchinson continued.
“And there is Caol
Ila R that
we also race against in the Mini Maxis. It is one of those teams that
sits right behind you, and the boat’s fast enough that it can nip
at your heels and never seem to go away. So I suspect those are our
two biggest competitors.
“Then
there are a slew of big Swans that we’ll be out battling against,
but I don’t really know how they go or we go against them. I
suspect it’s as much about staying out of their way in the
pre-start and letting Bella get
her nose out and doing her work for us.”
What
They Said….
Pedro
Mendoça, Balearia, long-time
grand prix racer from Portugal, has owned a series of boats
called Bigamist: “I'm
sailing here in St. Barth with the same crew I had on my TP 52 or
Soto 40, along with some friends from Spain. It’s a crew I'm used
to sailing with. This is a nice place to sail. I've been told that
St. Barth is a wonderful place for sailing, and for fun, but also to
win because that's a goal on our mind, to win or at least finish in a
good position. Our opponents are probably more familiar with the
area, but we'll see what happens!”
Manu
Le Borgne, St. Barth Sail Racing, is
a low-key French sailor who has made a name for himself through
numerous Tour de France à la Voile campaigns in the late ’90s,
before successfully joining the 60-foot ORMA trimaran circuit. He
notably won the 2007 doublehanded Transat Jacques Vabre alongside
French sailing legend Michel Desjoyeaux, two-time winner of the
Vendée Globe Race. Le Borgne was also part of the historic Maxi
trimaran Banque
Populaire V when
she smashed the Transatlantic race record in just three days and 19
hours. He is sailing in Les Voiles with friends from his home town of
Brest, France, onboard a chartered A 40. Le Borgne said:
"We'll try to keep things simple on the water. We’re here to
have a good time, and that means giving it our all when on the
water…what happens next, once we set foot in the village, is also
part of the St. Barth philosophy. But we're all competitors and
whenever there's a starting line to cross, we all give our best to
achieve the best result possible."
Event
Schedule
Racing
continues tomorrow, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday (all 10
a.m. starts)
for the nine classes: Maxi, IRC52, Spinnaker 1-2-3-4, Melges 24,
Non-Spinnaker, and Racing Multihull. On Thursday, the now traditional
lay day on St. Jean Bay, competitors will enjoy lunch at Nikki Beach
as well as festivities that will include stand-up paddle board
racing.
Les Voiles de St Barth
