Racing at this year’s Antigua Sailing Week is so close that one-third of the classes started the penultimate day with boats tied on points at the top of their respective leaderboards.
CSA Racing Class 1 is the only one in which a consistent overall winner has emerged – Roy Disney’s turbocharged Volvo 70 Pyewacket, the winner of every race so far. The Volvo 65s Sisi and Sailing Poland are currently lying in second and third places respectively overall.
By contrast, CSA Racing Class 4 has seen three boats – Caccia alla Volpe, More Zessin’ and Quintessence III – take race wins to date, while two others have also scored podium results. In addition, Colin Baldwin’s Archambault A40 Sete Mares was fourth in both of today’s races, missing out on third place by only 6 seconds in the first race and by 7 seconds in the second race.
Today’s spotlight also swung onto the many young Antiguan sailors who now compete across all classes at Antigua Sailing Week. Among numerous success stories is that of 16-year-old Isaiah Tonge, who has been sailing for three years. He raced on one of the largest boats at ASW last year, Woody and Carolyn Cullen’s Swan 58 WaveWalker from Nantucket Yacht Club, joining them again this year as part of the foredeck team.
Today’s first race started in 9-10 knots of wind, with the breeze later reducing to mostly 6-7 knots as a storm cell developing to the west of the island progressively sucked wind away from the course area. Nevertheless it remained dry and warm both on shore and on the race course throughout.
WaveWalker posted a solid performance in CSA Racing Class 2, taking second place in both races, while Don Terwilliger’s Beneteau First 47.7 Dauntless finished with a pair of third paces. However, Wayne Zittel’s X-YachtsXP50 DNR has been consistently improving all week and won both her races today.
WaveWalker now leads the class on 13 points, with Dauntless on 15 and DNR on 17. With two races scheduled for the final day of competition all three boats have a mathematical chance of overall victory.
The top three boats in CSA Racing Class 3 – Jim Vos’ young Antiguan crew on his RP37 Warthog, plus two chartered J/122 Steve Rigby’s El Ocaso and Richard Matthews’ Oystercatcher – all remain in contention for an overall class victory. Roughly half of Warthog’s crew, including skipper Jules Mitchell, are alumni from the early days of the Y2K programme, while Matthews is racing with three current members.
This initiative was created in 2018 by Antigua Sailing Week, the Antigua and Barbuda Sailing Association, the Caribbean Sailing Association and the National Sailing Academy. The latter provides dinghy sailing for all Antiguan secondary schools, plus a Sailability programme for disabled adults and children, all of which are free of charge to participants. However, it doesn’t have resources to leapfrog them from dinghies into keelboat racing on an international stage.
The Y2K scheme provides opportunities both for young people to sail with their peers on all-youth boats and on boats with adult crews and has grown significantly since its advent. This year there are 31 participants, roughly one third of which are female, across 13 boats competing at ASW. These range from some of the smallest boats at the event, through Gary O’Grady’s traditional long keel Tradewind 35 Cara of the South, to the biggest yacht at this year’s regatta, Lennart Davidsson’s legendary 79ft Sparkman and Stephens designed Kialoa III.
For more information about Antigua Sailing Week including racing, watching the action and the fun-packed shoreside entertainment, visit the official website: www.sailingweek.com.
