Sailing Week underway tomorrow

Alaistair Abrehart looks ahead to the Caribbean top regatta

When registration for the 38th annual Antigua Sailing Week closed today 183 boats representing 27 different countries had registered to race in the granddaddy of them all. Racing kicks off tomorrow with the Dickenson Bay Race from English Harbour and will be tough for the next couple of days. Light winds and big seas deteriorated into rainsqualls later in the afternoon. Durley Dene, a Bavaria 36 in Bareboat VI, saw 40 knots and whiteout conditions on its trip from Jolly Harbour to Falmouth Harbour this afternoon; forecasts for this kind of weather continue until Tuesday.

The much-anticipated participation of Maximus has been foiled by engine problems with the transport ship which has yet to enter the Panama Canal. Maximus is now due to arrive in Antigua as Sailing Week finishes and she'll miss the racing. However she is planning a round the island run before she leaves for the US for the start of the Rolex Transatlantic Challenge.

2005 looks like the year that Tom Hill's Titan XII walks away with the Lord Nelson's Trophy for best overall. Titan XII, the Reichel Pugh 75 hailing from Puerto Rico, is now in her second season of racing. Last year she stole races from the maxZ86s Pyewacket and Morning Glory and won the Caribbean Big Boat Series. She has had a very strong Caribbean race season this year which started with her smashing the Montego Bay Race record. She followed this with winning her class in St Maarten's Heineken Regatta, the International Rolex Regatta in St Thomas and the BVI Spring Regatta. America's Cup veteran Peter Isler, Titan's tactician for this year's Caribbean circuit, believes that the boat is sailed "as well as any maxi boat I have ever sailed on".

Joining Titan in Racing Big Boat II will be Bill Alcott's Andrews 70 Equation, Erck Rickmers Flying Dragon with German math race specialist Marcus Weiser on board, Sir Peter Ogden's Swan 601 Spirit Of Jethou, the Swan 86 Dreamland, the Tripp 60 Serengeti and Swan 62 Gienah. Dreamland competes after a 4 1/2 year circumnavigation. She was last seen racing in the 2002 Sydney to Hobart Race.

In Racing III, 2003 overall winner Swan 56 Lolita returns in a different guise. Chartered by Farr 40 and 12M racer Edgar Cato, Lolita competes this year as Hissar. Jack Slattery, a veteran of many Sailing Week's on Chippewa, joins the crew as tactician and Campbell Field joins as navigator. She'll be up against two other Swan 56s - Aqua Equinox from Belgium and Deneb from the UK. Les Crouch's Storm, the Trinidadian-built Pugh 44, joins this class together with Kativa and Sequoyah, a J/160 and J/145 respectively.

Racing IV, the traditional 'Caribbean class', sees old rivalries in new boats. Enzyme, the former Crash Test Dummies, a Henderson 35, will be sailed by the old Legacy crew with sights firmly set on the crown in Dougie Myers' honour. Dougie, Legacy's owner/skipper who passed away last year, was a perennial favourite at the event. Antiguan boats Caccia Alla Volpe and Lost Horizon II will be fighting hard - in the nicest possible way - to make sure that they don't.

As Paul Solomon, skipper and one of the four owners of Enzyme explained: "We upgraded from the Henderson 30 to the 35 because we wanted to sail Antigua Sailing Week in the same class as Antigua's Caccia Alla Volpe and carry on our long term rivalry on Dougie's behalf."

Celtic V, a competitive Frers 45 from the Dominican Republic, joins the fray as does the J/N 45 Mermaid II now sailing under the Antiguan flag as Geoffrey Pidduck's recent acquisition and Bull 9000 Push the Tempo, a British/Bulgarian combo.

Four Swan 48s - Murka, Affinity, Vocation and Yocahu - join Racer/Cruiser I together with two Swan 51s Northern Child and Star. Beneteau First 47.7 Disco Inferno returns to beat her third place last year.

Six Beneteau First 40.7s will be battling it out in Racer/cruiser II and they'll be joined by two J/120s - Shamrock and Paulista plus others.

Performance Cruiser I is the home of the big boats this year with a Trehard 104 footer, sailing as Brill Nautical Society, as scratch boat. She is joined by Symmetry, a 96ft YDL, Capercaillie, a Swan 77, Ocean 77 Ocean Phoenix, Gefion, a Peterson 73, and Swan 75 FD Dasian.

Dasian is the first of a new line of 75ft Nautor Swan yachts. She was launched in Finland in June of 2004 and has completed 13,000 miles of cruising since then. "We arrived in Sardinia a little too late to prepare the boat for the Swan Cup last year so this will be the boat's first regatta," said skipper Jeremy Peek. "We have entered in the Performance Cruiser class in Division B and are feeling confident that we will do well."

Performance Cruiser II is the stage for another act in the "Battle of The Caribbean Marina Owners" with Bobby Velasquez's L'Esperance from St Maarten and Hugh Bailey's Antiguan Hugo.

Pavlova II, a Swan 43 from the UK, returns to defend her 2004 victory in Performance Cruiser III. She will be up against five Sun Fast 37s including all-girl crew Girls With Wicked Ambition. David Cullen and his Farr 56, Farrfly from Ireland, returns to defend its title in Cruising I.

In the Bareboat class, Phil Otis has returned with a brand new Beneteau 423 launched in St Maarten for the Heineken Regatta and fully intends to repeat last year's performance. Sailing DSD Carnival, a Beneteau 46, Otis got a record-breaking clean sweep. Winning six out of six races, Otis and crew took their class (Bareboat III), overall bareboat and the Bareboat Championship Race. Nanuk of the North, winner of Bareboat I was the first boat to sign up for the 2005 event and keen to defend her title. Durley Dene, the Bavaria 36 that won Bareboat VI, has also returned. Expect a tough fight from this group of boats with BVI ties. Jan Soderberg has also come back to knock these young pretenders from their perches and rack up a seventh overall win in Antigua.

The Virgin Atlantic Beach Bash kicks off as racing finishes at Dickenson Bay with a water ski demonstration by the Stars of Florida water ski team. The Stars of Florida will be followed by a Bath Tub Derby. A karaoke competition complete with continues the afternoon's entertainment, and tribute band ABBA One from the UK completes it.