Hetairos (Overall winner, Les Gazelles class winner) – Graham Newton, Captain
We didn’t think our closest competitor would be WinWin; we thought it would be Visione, because we’re two of the biggest boats in the fleet and WinWin is the smallest. Also, racing against My Song was close on Saturday and Sunday. We were a little more consistent, however, and won the first race, so that put us in a good position.
It was a strong-wind challenge for us today (Sunday). All we had to do was beat WinWin. They seemed a long way away at the start (having started 14 minutes ahead). We had pretty good passing lanes upwind and played Visione and My Song up the beat, then we managed to position nicely with the small boats going downwind.
We had a deploying problem on our spinnaker run, but others had some problems, too. Then it was a great long reach to the finish. Five boats finished within a minute or so of each other, which was pretty exciting stuff. It goes to show that the rating system works. For such a disparate fleet to finish so close together, it showed a fantastic effort by the ORC, and the Race Committee made great decisions over the three days.
Sojana (Les Mademoiselles class winner) – Jonny Malbon, Captain
This is one of the owner’s favorite regattas. Who wouldn’t enjoy sailing here? There’s an incredible selection of hardware out there on the water, and we have friends in St. Barths, so it’s a little like coming home.
We had to finish at least third today (Sunday) to win, so the we concentrated on not doing anything stupid. It was super close. On the last jibe to the finish, we got inside Farfalla, but it could’ve gone either way. We’re happy we sailed very clean, except for blowing up our spinnaker yesterday. Farfalla had some problems, too, so it was tit-for-tat all the way around.
It’s always difficult having a ketch rig going up against a sloop. We’ve known Farfalla a long time and Spiip beat us hear two years ago, so we knew they would make a good battle. Missy was the unknown.
We won our class last year with a second and two firsts, so this year (1-1-1) was an improvement.
Blue Too (Les Femmes class winner) – Chris Bouzaid, Afterguard
This is our seventh bucket, and we’ve never won our class, for whatever reason. The owner has a new boat coming this year, so we put everything into it. It’s very good that we did so well for the last regatta on this boat with this owner.
It’s always hard at this regatta, because you never know when another boat is going to catch you. We watched Bella Ragazza and Nakupenda the most.
Even with two wins from Friday and Saturday, we had to be careful today (Sunday). The hardest thing at these regattas is that not only do you have to do well but also you have to get around the course in all three races. These are big machines, and everything has to go right. Especially in this kind of wind, it’s pretty easy to do damage. We pushed our boat as hard as we could; we have a good crew, which includes my son (Richard Bouzaid) as tactician, and it all jelled.
Aquarius (Les Elegantes class winner) – James Turner, Captain
We never came here expecting to win. It was Aquarius’s first regatta; we knew she would be an exciting boat to sail, so we wanted to crew her with a bunch of talented guys and see how she did. The team took a couple of practice days and jelled well. I’ve always looked favorably upon Rebecca as stiff competition, but coming into this, we didn’t really have any expectations about our competition. When we won our first race, we were surprised, and at the end, it was between us and Velsheda.
Velsheda is well-practiced and hard to beat, so we were happy to win today (Sunday). Yesterday favored them with more upwind and flat water and moderate winds, but today favored us with our sail plan and off-wind sailing. Today, reaching to Ile Fourchue, we got caught in the rain storm with winds that blew 25 true, so we were pressed pretty hard.
Rosehearty (Les Grandes Dames class winner) – Paul Cayard, Tactician
We had some luck today (Sunday) in that the wind was quite left, which made the course a bit favorable to us. Normally, this race course is hard on us compared to the sloops, so the wind direction offset that. We executed well, and the crew did an amazing job. The big difference on Rosehearty compared to some other boats is the crew makes very few boat handling errors.
Up the windward leg, when we ducked under the island and still had a mile or two to go (on the leg), Perseus^3 was pretty close to us. I was thinking we might not be far enough ahead, and in fact, when we tacked for the final time on port tack and they came out and tacked on our line, I looked at that distance and thought that with eight miles left, the boat that’s 15 feet longer might grind us down. But then, when we set the spinnaker, we were physically further ahead, so I think we sailed across the top (of the island) – which was a series of reaching angles – better than they did.
Nin (Nicholas O’Leary, driver) and the boys kept the boat going fast, and Bruno (Zirilli, navigator) and I, with help from local Birdy Caizergues, kept the boats off the rocks. We had one hiccup when we lost the winch for a minute on the last spinnaker hoist, but basically, we went around the island and everything worked out for us.
Ohana (Les Voiles Blanche class winner) – Mattia Dzaja, Captain
We are very happy that we won, and the owner is even more convinced than he was when this started that Corinthian Spirit is the way for us to sail. He really hopes more and more owners will understand the comfort it brings. It only took us a couple of hours to bring Ohana back to cruising condition, and again it showed today (Sunday): the racing is not boring. It has been a battle since the beginning. Today (Sunday), we started with a new rating, which brought the competition between the three of us to an even higher level. It made it more difficult for us. We passed Child of LIR at the first mark and were chasing Q after that. We were close, but Q changed track and went offshore, and we went inshore for less waves. It was good for us until the wind shifted 15 degrees in the squall; it was a good angle for Q and 15 degrees of bad angle for us. When the squall passed, Q tacked for the lay line to the finish, and they were far ahead, reaching faster, and we said, ‘the game has ended.’ But then we tried to get close to shore while Q went offshore, and we ended up 80 metres away from them near the finish. We tried to go over them, but Q was faster with this wind. The finish was breathtaking, because it was close.