Caribbean tour moves to Tortola

The next event on the Caribbean racing circuit is the 51st edition of the BVI Spring Regatta and Sailing Festival. The schedule begins with the Sailing Festival, a warm-up event, on April 2 with the traditional Round Tortola Race and the Scrub Island Invitational on April 3. After a lay day at Nanny Cay Resort & Marina, the BVI Spring Regatta kicks off on April 5 for three days of racing off Tortola.

In CSA-1, the event welcomes newcomers: the Mills 41 Final Final owned by Jon Desmond (Cohasset, MA), the Swan 60 Lee Overlay Partners II owned by Adrian Lee, the RP42 Rikki owned by Bruce Chafee (Boston, MA), and Team 42, the Solaris 55 owned by Daniel Segalowicz. Returning CSA-1 competitors include Wavewalker, the Swan 58 owned by Woody and Carolyn Cullen, and last year’s CSA-1 overall winner, Dr. Laura Schlessinger. Racing again on the Lombard 46 Pata Negra, Schlessinger is ready to defend her title with a mainly Santa Barbara, California-based crew.

“We’re not greedy,” she laughed. “It was spectacular racing in the most beautiful venue. Winning is great – the whole experience is greater!”

Three Cape 31s comprise CSA-2 with Flying Jenny, owned by Sandy Askew (FL, USA), returning after finishing second a year ago. She is joined by M2 owned by Marc Morris (CA, USA) took third in class last year, and new to BVISR this year, Shotgunn owned by Michael Wilson (Isle of Man, UK).

Don Nicholson is competing on his J/121 Apollo in CSA-3 for his third BVISR event. He bought the boat in 2018, and BVISR was one of its first regattas prior to doing Newport to Bermuda the same year, when Apollo won its class.

“We absolutely love coming down to the BVI -– we enjoy everything about it; the temperature, the winds, the islands,” Nicholson enthused. “A lot of the racing we do in the Newport area tends to be monotonous windward leewards. Here we are doing quality distance racing on courses that mix it up with different angles of sail so that you have to think intelligently about sail choice, and you have islands to use as marks – it’s great!”

David McDonough raced BVISR last year for the first time as guest on another boat. He’s returning this year on his own boat, a J/40 Trinity VI racing in Performance Cruising A. He is also a co-partner in Trinity IV, a J/42 co-owned and captained by David Hensley racing in CSA-3.

“We raced last year, and it was terribly, terribly good,” McDonough commented with a big smile. “We have friends racing with us. We have reserved slips side by side at Nanny Cay so that we can taunt each other before and after racing – we’re really excited about the prospect of going there to compete.”

In the bareboat classes, 93-year-old Robin Tattersall, a Tortola local and a regular BVISR competitor will be sailing in Bareboat 2 on the Bavaria 37 Jitterbug. Jim Proctor, a regular in the bareboat division who frequently charters multiple boats and fills them with sailing friends from the USA, is back with three bareboat entries. Sailing on the Sunsail 41 Cara, Ben Sampson, (PA, USA) received his bareboat certification in the BVI, and with a small group of friends and family completed passages to Bermuda, Bahamas, and back to the BVI.

“We learned to love the BVI and the Sir Francis Drake Channel with all of its outlying islands,” Sampson said. “Four years ago, we entered the Spring Regatta and have competed every year since. It’s been a wonderful journey and a big part of life for my family and friends.”

Charlie Garrard (MA, USA) who is returning with friends to race Bareboat 2 on a Sunsail 42, said, “In the daze of rum punch we seem to have lost count of how many Spring Regattas we have done. It’s upwards of five, possibly as many as ten. We keep coming back because this is simply the best of all the bareboat Caribbean regattas.

“Due to unforeseen circumstances, or maybe it’s just old age, we have had to switch up the regular crew; two are on the injury list and two decided there were better things to do with their time (they will come to regret this decision). Instead of sailors we filled the boat with members of our local Badminton Club, Gut ‘n’ Feathers (Marblehead, MA), hence the boat name ‘Smash’. We are hoping for cold beer, Painkillers, warm weather, fair winds, and maybe even a sailboat race or two!”

The International Maxi Association’s inaugural Caribbean Maxi Multihull Series (CMMS) has its deciding event in the BVI Spring Regatta. After three events, the competition is close with Adrian Keller’s 84ft Irens-designed catamaran Allegra holding a narrow lead over Todd Slyngstad’s HH66 catamaran Nemo. Joining Allegra and Nemo in the Performance Multihull division for their first time at BVISR is the Gunboat 68 Convexity² owned by Don Wilson (IL, USA).

Event details: bvispringregatta.org

NOTES:
* The Round Tortola Race has a 36 nautical mile course around the island of Tortola. Conditions permitting, the start transit is in line with the western tip of Peter Island and the Western tip of Nanny Cay. Racers pass Beef Island, Scrub Island, Great Camanoe, and Guana Island to port as they head round the northern side of the island for a spectacular circumnavigation of Tortola. The current Round Tortola record was set in 2019 by Fujin, the Bieker 53 catamaran owned and skippered by Greg Slyngstad (USA), with the fastest elapsed time of 1:57:16.

* The Scrub Island Invitational is a fun 12nm upwind race to a fabulous island party hosted by Scrub Island Resort, and this year the Resort is offering a prize for the boat crew wearing the best costumes. The short race to Scrub Island gives sailors plenty of time on the island to enjoy the best of Caribbean resort life – barbeques, beach, and ice-cold beverages.