Saint Maarten Heineken Regatta

If you’ve read any of my previous posts, you’ve probably gathered I love to travel. Well, I also love sailing — and beer — so what could be better than a few days in the Caribbean, racing on a 45-foot boat in a regatta hosted by Heineken?

In March 2023 one of my sailing buddies arranged a charter through LV Yachting, in which 10 of us would split the cost of racing on Panacea X, a Salona 45. I had done the Heineken Regatta a few years before and was looking for an opportunity to go back, so naturally I jumped at the chance.

The Heineken is an annual event on the Caribbean racing circuit and always well attended, with boats and crews from all over the planet. Participation dropped during Covid but it’s clearly on the rebound — this year I met a crew from Greece who had chartered a boat for the week, and there were people from all over North America as well as places as far-flung as New Zealand and Australia.

All are attracted by the great sailing — propelled by the warm, reliable trade winds in the Caribbean at that time of year — as well as the big-time partying. The Heineken Regatta’s tagline is “Serious Fun” and it definitely lives up to the name. After a day of challenging competition on the water, finishing up with a colorful parade through the drawbridge into the lagoon at Simpson Bay, crews tidy up their boats, then head to the regatta village for cold beers and cocktails. Later on the daily winners are announced and the awards presented, then the heartier (and younger) souls head to various venues around the island to dance and party into the wee hours.

The next day it starts over, with all and sundry a little more bleary-eyed than the day before…..

As with many sailing regattas, boats are split into classes, to keep the competition as fair as possible. Our Salona 45 was technically a “racer-cruiser,” which means it had live-aboard amenities such as a galley, shower and sleeping quarters. We raced in CSA Class 6. Other boats, such as the Volvo 70s and 65s, were more dedicated racing machines, stripped of comforts, built of high-tech materials and sailed mostly by professional crews. There were also “one-design” dinghy and sport boat classes, as well as catamarans, trimarans, bareboat cruisers and various other yachts new and old.

Our 10 crew members had never sailed together as one unit before. In fact, some of us had only met when we showed up at the dock on the first day. If you know anything about sailboat racing, you might imagine this to be somewhat problematic — especially when racing in high winds and executing “dip-pole” jibes with a symmetrical spinnaker (I won’t get into the technical details. Suffice it to say it requires a good deal of teamwork and coordination, for which we had little time to develop).

But we managed to sail well in every race and ended up winning our class, thank you very much. So in addition to being up on the podium every evening to collect our daily prizes, we also got to take the rock-concert stage on the final night of the regatta where, under the klieg lights, we hoisted our first-place trophy as well as a second trophy for garnering 6th in Fleet out of roughly 100 boats. Not bad for a bunch of (mostly) old geezers from Massachusetts.

There were three races the first day, all “windward-leewards,” with the breeze around 18 knots. Perfect conditions for a boat like the Salona 45. On that day we got a first, a fourth and a first, leaving us in first place overall. On day two we did one long race from Simpson Bay to Marigot and back. We crossed the finish first but the boat just behind us “corrected” to knock us into second place for the day, but still first overall. Day three was the Round the Island race and a repeat of day two, with the same boat (our nemesis) correcting to take first and leaving us with a second. Day four was the icing on the cake, with Panacea X taking another first and winning our class with a total of seven points for the regatta (in sailboat racing, low score wins).

The win was especially poignant for one of our crew who had gone through a heart transplant just 18 months prior, after waiting over a decade for the organ to become available. You’d never know it from sailing with Gary. He was as capable as anyone on the team, trimming the mainsail through four days of full-on racing.

Performing well in a world-class sailing event, in the sunny Caribbean, with a great group of friends both old and new? I’ll drink a Heineken to that.