St Martin to Nevis yacht race - The Hawaiian Tropic Caribbean Offshore Regatta.

I was conned! The Hawaiian Tropic Caribbean Offshore Sailing Yacht Regatta [NEVIS PHOTO] was supposed to be "just for fun," as in "come on, Jeanne, it's just for fun." Well. Monohulls' start was midnight, June 13. We were looking good, until the five-minute warning signal. Because winds were gusty and crazy, we left our Genoa furled - at the 5-minute warning, it hour-glassed itself loose from the forestay. Can't roll it, can't sail with it like that, so we ran off, to try to clear it. We did, but by the time we came about and got back to the starting line a half hour later, all the boats were practically on the horizon, and the committee boat had gone home. That was the least eventful part of the whole race. Winds were wild - never dropped below 25 knots. Seas were nasty (do read about the Anegada Passage between Virgin Islands and St. Martin - we had worse seas than those for 12 hours). Because wind and seas were so foul we slept in the cockpit and stood 1 to 1-1/2 hour watches. Neither one of us could sleep below; we would have been up every five minutes to be sure the other was okay. Mind you, it was no dangerous sail - for monohulls, anyway. Sure scared some of the multihulls. It was just damn uncomfortable.

The winner of Class I multihulls was Eagle, a 65-foot catamaran. It did 65 miles in 3 hours, 45 minutes. That's flying (Dougie, owner/skipper, popped his spinnaker in 30-knot winds and just flew)!

We have a crazy friend, a Frenchman named Jacques Bellier [PHOTO]. He raced in a 23-foot Steletto cat. Ultra-light, weighs 700-900 pounds. Everyone was worried about him, and absolutely astonished that he survived (Jacques is 63 years old). There's more to this story, but it's better in the telling in person. Suffice to say that I sat in the cockpit for 3-1/2 hours waiting for him to get in and even began to entertain thoughts of going out looking for him two hours after sunset. However, a tribute to his exceptional seamanship: his was the smallest boat by far, and he beat several
multihulls, including a 50-foot one.

The party at Nevis was great, the island is beautiful, the people are lovely, and it was a good time. Until we sailed back. Same winds, same seas, but lots of squalls thrown in to keep us on our toes. We made the 65-70 mile sail back in less than 9 hours, and we poked along (with just two of us, we are very conservative). The wind was so wild that weekend that the vane blew off the Windbugger while we were anchored in Nevis - in the lee of the island!

It's a good thing we'd been practicing anchoring under sail - our engine wouldn't start when we got back to Philipsburg - a minor problem, solved with a few hours of head-scratching - but it makes you very wary of relying on mechanical devices.

Peter is not going to make a racer out of me, but I did enjoy the race. We've been in far worse wind and seas - but I don't recall being as uncomfortable as that sail was.

The end of the regatta was a great barbecue put on by the Seafood Galley.
Real good food.