Racing in St. Barth's

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May 2, 2011 Gustavia, St. Barth’s
The next morning, all hands mustered at 8am for our departure to St. Barth’s. Dan and I managed to squeak out a run before this (it felt so good to run again! Despite how much it kicked my butt not having done it in a while). The sail to St. Barth’s was for another Classic wooden boat regatta and the passage, as I remember seemed to be uneventful. We arrived late on a Thursday afternoon, I think – anchoring in the harbor the first night. That night us folks that were off watch went to land to scope it out. Holy cow, we were first directed to find an art studio where a welcoming party was taking place for the regatta. Upon walking thru the harbor streets to find this place it became very clear to me how quaint, French colonial this little island is. The party was something out of a catalogue I would want to live in. The party was in a little colonial house right on the harbor and the first floor displayed a black and white photography exhibit of cariacou sloops and old French sailors on St. Barths. Out back, there was a porch and small patch of grass up to the water where most of the people were hanging out listening and singing along with a band. They were singing French sea shanties one of the musicians was wearing a groucho mark’s mask and David the American expat-hippie dude that’s been here since the 70’s was in a sarong – so thankfully a crowd complete with goofballs. Beer, wine and French bread was available and the people were ridiculously casual-chic-without-trying, of all ages swaying and singing along with the band while children ran around playing a game of tag. French and English could be heard interchangeably. The locals were super cool, chill and kind lacking all pretention and snootiness, too – consisting mostly of French expats. Is this real? I felt like it was in some J. Crew/Pottery Barn/Anthropologie catalogue! As Abby put it, it’s what would happen if the PIcton Castle had a marlin spike in 30 years and were better dressed.
The next day we came stern-to into Gustavia, the cute little harbor we explored the night before. That was our watch day and I was on galley which turned into another long day because after finally getting the 2 anchors arranged with the help of 3 push boats and 4 dock lines, we also cleaned up the ship and prepared a marlin spike on board for the harbor. Donald the cook prepared fish for over 100 people! We had our stations set between welcoming at the dock, helping with the skiff that was attached to a pulley system to get guests to the ship, helping off the skiff (you should have seen the “DJ from LA” who arrived in a long magenta pink gown with 4 inch platform shoes climb up the rope ladder to get into the ship from the skiff! I think she may have been expecting a different party), dishes duty and general walking around chatting duty. The same musicians from the night before brought their instruments and our Katlyn joined them on her violin for a proper jig. It was a proper good time that lasted well into the night.
Then the next 2 days were filled with racing cariacou sloops which was insane fun. The first morning, Saturday, I made sure to get on the dock early to get a spot on one of the sloops and Charles, one of the owners to “Summer Cloud” was looking for crew for her cariacou sloops. Dave and Frankie from the picton castle joined us as well as a few others. Our first task was to provision for the day. Charles handed over a bunch of euros and Dave and I headed to the market to get beer, water, and stuff to make sandwiches (French bread, salami, ham and cheese) and some apples. There was a total of 7 or 8 cariacou sloops in for the occasion of which 3 we helped sail in from Antigua.
I knew the first day would be loads of fun as the owner said he had not sailed her under her current rigging and of the 8 of us, Igor was the only one who had sailed her before. Igor, is this super energetic bad-ass Brazilian who during the first day, when Charles decided he wanted to a reef put in, Igor shimmied out to the end of the boom, while under way, over the water in over 20 knot winds to lash a reef in – no preventer, periodically getting dunked in the swells – holy cow, I couldn’t watch. The first day we led the race the whole way and came so close to winning, but lost wind on the last gybe when we were nose to nose with Genesis, one of the other cariacou sloops. After the congratulatory refreshments, a bunch of us paid a visit to Shell Beach where snazzy 12 euro pina coladas are served – the beach is literally made out of shells, complete, beautiful ones. We instantly headed into the water for a swim. There are cliffs off to one side to where a few of the ship mates swam to dive and jump from. The rest of us chilled for the rest of the afternoon on the beach.
That evening there were festivities for the regatta including a movie showing set up on the dock. The first one was about cariacou sloops showing a lot of familiar faces racing the same sloops and some of the locals helping build them. The second was put on by the Swedish society and was a historical perspective of life on St. Barth’s/in the Caribbean a long time ago. The third was our very own “Block and Tackle” shot during the Picton Castle’s Atlantic Voyage when a handful of crew went into the Grenadian jungle to saw down a tree, mill the wood into wood that is presently being used to build a new boat. It also showed how they hauled the wood through 1.5 miles of jungle by hand with the use of block and tackles and lots of hands. Holy cow, I could not believe it. And then how they got it on to the ship and back to Lunenberg.
The second day included more excitement! It started with a run with Alli – which included more walking breaks seeing as how the island is much steeper than St. Martin – then we stopped at a café on the way back for a proper café and pain au chocolat. That day’s race course led to an island where lunch of swimming and such would be spent and then a race back to the finish line. On the way out, we rigged up the bamboo on our jib to go wing to wing, but with the force of the wind, the bamboo kept splitting forcing us to down rig it. Then on the way back, we lost the halyard to our jib which sent a flurry of action to rig up a new halyard. Then, our jib split in half, which sent another flurry of action to send up another jib – I heard there was a sea turtle and whale spotting during the race, but I was too occupied with all the stuff that was going wrong with our sloop. I have to admit, I hadn’t had that much fun sailing ever before.
After returning, there were big celebrations with live music, food, drinks, we performed our island dances and retelling of the days’ adventures.
We were supposed to leave the next day, but seeing as how we sailed those sloops pretty hard, they needed some work before we took off, so we took the day to work on them. I was on watch, and being after a raucous night, we were all hurting. But, it didn’t stop us from sending down the lower tops’l, bending up a new one, loosening all sail, stowing all sail, and stowing 5 sails in the sole (below the salon). We departed the next day after taking all morning to pull up the anchors, add on a couple lines and with the help of a couple push boats, get us out of the harbor.
I hope to return to St. Barth’s for another regatta. The sailing community (as it is anywhere) is strong. The ship’s presence did not go unnoticed and was greatly appreciated as well as all the help in working on all the other boats. It was great to see so many people come together to preserve a waning tradition. I am told the harbor these days is filled with fancy rich yachts. But, it used to be filled with sloops. So, all the locals (mostly French expats) greatly appreciated it being filled with an old ship and sloops again. They said it reminded them of the old time and the harbor looked like they remembered it looking a long time ago.

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