Culebra International Regatta!

What an awesome venue for racing! The island is totally beautiful and the people are amazingly friendly and go out of their way to make you feel welcome on their island.

As I mentioned last week, I was signed on to sail aboard the RP 44 Storm for this event. What a great bunch of guys led by Trini Peter Peake. It was great to see my old friend Philip Barnard who is the crew boss and tactictian on Storm for the CORT Series this season.

We got out on the water for a short sail on Friday to get some bugs worked out. The boat is quite nice to sail and is very fast. We were the fastest boat there and scratch boat by a long while. We ended up losing to a well sailed Megles 24, how the hell do you cover a boat that you are finishing more then 9 minutes ahead of?

Anyway we did three windward leeward races on Saturday in 13-17 knots of breeze the sun was shining and the waves were big enough for us to have a couple real nice rides downwind! This boat is very slippery downwind and a lot of fun to sail. We had a couple crew snafu's but that is to be expected when you had 7 of the 11 crew on the boat for the first time.

Some good partying on Saturday night was now due and the boys did not disappoint! If you are ever in Culebra check out El Bate after midnight! It will not disappoint :)

Sunday morning arrived with a little less wind and a lot more sun! The RC decided to the send the big boats on the around the island race. What a beautiful venue this is. There some some awesome views along the coast line of this tiny island. The white sand of Flamingo beach is gorgeous and certainly made more of us wish we could have been on the beach for some of the day.

We ended up finishing 4th in that race but had enough of a point lead on the third place to hold our second place OA for the event.

We again hit the bars for Sunday night and did the team proud again!

I would recommend this regatta to anyone that is interested in some really nice sailing, beautiful women and great parties. I would however advise that you sail a boat more in line with what the fleet has to offer. Bringing a 44'er to a small boat regatta is not what I would do again. I know that Peter was wishing he had brought his Henderson 30 result wise.

Anyway, it looks like BVI spring regatta is the next on the ticket for Storm. I will know by the end of the week if I am on or not.

The picture here is Storm on the mooring in front of the house that we had. Not a bad way to go sailing each day!
Cheers

Tac