Louay Habib Caribbean blog: Pinch Me
by Louay Habib 3 Feb 2014 20:29 GMT
30 January - 2 February 2014
Paul Deeth, proprietor of The Admiral's Inn in Nelson's Dockyard decided to create a perfect event for superyachts and along with his longtime friend, Stan Pearson, they have hit the ball out of the park with the Superyacht Challenge Antigua.
A tooty-fruity mix of stunning superyachts and crew from all over the world come to race in arguably the best sailing grounds in the world. Top class racing sailors like Mike Toppa, Chris Main, Chris Mason and Tony Rae, all from the America's Cup and boat captains from many well known race boats make the journey to Antigua. But they are rubbing shoulders with amateurs and wealthy owners who rarely race their own yachts. A famous rockstar from The Who's Who of guitar greats was racing for the first time and I can assure you, he absolutely loved it. But his business manager was steering and the foredeck crew were all young sailors picked from smaller yachts out in Antigua. This event is about good racing and fun, politics and commercial endorsements are not tolerated and the owners of the impressive yachts love that.
The two performance sloops, Inoui (113') and Unfurled (108') were extremely well sailed but the stand out class act was most definitely the 182' Schooner, Adela. With over 2000 sq.m. (that is not a misprint!) Adela can put an astonishing amount of North 3Di in the air and the crew work is like clockwork but it has got to be.It's a dangerous environment, just the load on a staysail is many tons, as one crew member found out when he was flicked over the side like a crumb off a table. It was a dream come true to step on board Adela, but I can not stress enough that the Adela crew, calmly skippered by Greg Perkins, is technically brilliant and bold as brass.
Without doubt the best party was "The Cook Off" eight Superyacht Chefs competing for points towards their overall racing score provided some amazing food, in an amazing location with some of sailings greatest characters.
Bring on Grenada Sailing Week.