BARBADOS SAILING WEEK

Barbados Sailing Week is the first regatta of the Caribbean season, held in the middle of January and built around a single race: a clockwise circumnavigation of the island.

Some ninety boats from twenty countries, in classes running from maxi yachts down to kiteboards and a radio-controlled fleet.

The Schooners

The race around Barbados began in the nineteenth century among the trading schooner captains, who sailed it for the fastest time and the standing that came with it. To a working captain, that reputation was worth money.

There was also a consolation prize: a barrel of Mount Gay rum for the slowest boat home. It was discontinued after two schooners stayed out at sea for several days, each refusing to finish ahead of the other.

The first properly organised race was sailed on the first of January 1936, with five schooners entered.

It now runs on the twenty-first, which is Errol Barrow Day, a public holiday for the birthday of the man who led Barbados to independence. He was a keen sailor and co-founded the Barbados Cruising Club, which runs the regatta.

The Course

Sixty miles if the island could be sailed round in a straight line. About ninety as it is actually sailed.

The fleet starts in Carlisle Bay and turns clockwise. Twenty miles of tight reaching up the west coast in flat water, past Holetown and Speightstown and the houses along that shore. Around the northern tip about midday, and then the Atlantic, which arrives all at once and with no shelter.

Then the best of it: eighteen miles downwind under spinnaker along the south coast, past Oistins and Worthing, before the kites come down and the fleet rounds the south-west corner back into Carlisle Bay.

There are twenty separate records to be broken on the course. The multihull mark stands at two hours thirty-seven minutes. The monohull at four hours thirteen.

What to Know

The trade winds are the point. Twenty to twenty-five knots is ordinary and thirty-five is not unusual, which is why records fall here rather than elsewhere.

The Red Hat Party at the Cruising Club follows the round-the-island race. It is not a formal occasion.

You do not need a boat. The course runs close enough to shore for most of its length that the island is its own grandstand, and the race can be followed from the coast road.

An ocean race of some two hundred and sixty-five miles leaves for Antigua at the end of the week, which delivers the fleet north for the season there.

The mistake is coming only for race day. The days before it hold coastal racing, and the island is at its best in January.

The Court

Barbados Sailing Week is not the Court’s own. Places aboard competing yachts, spectator boats and rooms on the west coast are sought on a member’s behalf, and the Court arranges the whole of it: getting there, where to stay, and the table afterward. A member with the time can follow the fleet north to Antigua.