Racing at this year’s Antigua Sailing Week is so close that one-third of the classes started the penultimate day with boats tied on points at the top of their respective leaderboards.
Thursday’s first race started in 9-10 knots of wind, with the breeze later reducing to mostly 6-7 knots as a storm cell developing to the west of the island progressively sucked wind away from the course area. Nevertheless it remained dry and warm both on shore and on the race course throughout.
CSA Racing Class 1 is the only one in which a consistent overall winner has emerged – Roy Disney’s turbocharged Volvo 70 Pyewacket, the winner of every race so far. The Volvo 65s Sisi and Sailing Poland are currently lying in second and third places respectively overall.
WaveWalker posted a solid performance in CSA Racing Class 2, taking second place in both races, while Don Terwilliger’s Beneteau First 47.7 Dauntless finished with a pair of third paces. However, Wayne Zittel’s X-Yachts XP50 DNR has been consistently improving all week and won both her races today.
WaveWalker now leads the class on 13 points, with Dauntless on 15 and DNR on 17. With two races scheduled for the final day of competition all three boats have a mathematical chance of overall victory.
The top three boats in CSA Racing Class 3 – Jim Vos’ young Antiguan crew on his RP37 Warthog, plus two chartered J/122 Steve Rigby’s El Ocaso and Richard Matthews’ Oystercatcher – all remain in contention for an overall class victory. Roughly half of Warthog’s crew, including skipper Jules Mitchell, are alumni from the early days of the Y2K programme, while Matthews is racing with three current members.
By contrast, CSA Racing Class 4 has seen three boats – Caccia alla Volpe, More Zessin’ and Quintessence III – take race wins to date, while two others have also scored podium results. In addition, Colin Baldwin’s Archambault A40 Sete Mares was fourth in both of Thursday’s races, missing out on third place by only 6 seconds in the first race and by 7 seconds in the second race.
