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BFC - J24 Regatta
The 2010 Barbados Fertility Centre sponsored J24 regatta raced off on last Sunday, marking the beginning of the 2010 National Championship series of regattas to crown a new national J24 champion.
Hawkeye, the returning 2009 National Champion sponsored by Peake Construction/Williams Industries, owned and skippered by Robert Povey, came out on top for the racing for the day by putting in a very consistent performance. Actually winning the second of the two races and coming second in the first race they managed to wrestle the win away from The Banks sponsored Esperanza, skippered by Ian Mayers. Esperanza had dominated the first race, from start to finish, but while they recovered magnificently from a difficult start in the second race to finish 2nd in the race it was not enough to overcome Hawkeye who owned the points tie break of winning the last race.
The Battle for 3rd place was very tight on the day, raging among the other boats with BNB Impulse, skippered by Neil Burke succeeding in holding off stiff challenges from Fadeaway skippered by Charlie Gloumeau, and Maximum, skippered by Colin Symes; with only 2 points separating these 3 boats any errors on the water and the others were waiting to pounce. In fact BNB Impulse in the first race did well to recover from an out of control broach at the second leeward mark, when a tactical decision to attempt to take down their spinnaker on the windward side of the boat in order to round the mark nearly resulted in disaster as a wind gust caught the spinnaker and caused the boat to broach. No harm done they recovered to claw back 4 places in the remainder of the race to finish 4th. Even in medium to light winds crew work and tactical decisions play such a critical role in each result.
Thanks go out to our local sponsors, The Barbados Fertility Clinic, who have been supporting local sailboat racing for a few years. Their J24 regatta this year has catapulted the local fleet of competitors into the mêlée of racing with a huge amount of enthusiasm. This regatta marked the return of the competitors from their successful overseas campaign in Grenada. The return of the fleet to racing in Barbados is almost at full strength, as there are still a couple of boats undergoing repairs which has only heightened the thirst of the competitors for on the water racing and off the water camaraderie. The second regatta in the National Championship series is March 14 and the boats will return to Carlisle Bay to do battle to take the overall crown.
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