Puerto Rico
Sunny skies, winds blowing 12 to 15 knots and a six-foot chop on the seas made for competitive and challenging conditions on the first day of racing at the Puerto Rico Heineken Regatta and Puerto Rico International Dinghy Regatta.
"The upwind sea was hard to read. There were big waves and a lot of swell," says St. Thomas' John Foster, who sailed his Kirby 25, The Good, the Bad & The Ugly. "Downwind it worked to our advantage as we glided off the waves. That's when we pumped everything we had."
Foster ended the day with nothing but bullets in the three races sailed in the Spinnaker B class.
St. Maarten's Frits Bus, skippering his Melges 24, Coors Light, finished the day in second, behind St. Croix's Bad Girl, in first. "The first race ran 3 1/2 hours and it was a real drag race. The second was a really short race, like a laser race. We would have liked to see a little more competition."
Meanwhile, close competition is what the BVI's Colin Rathbun, enjoyed about sailing in the IC24 class.
"It was very competitive," says Rathbun, who is helming his Lime. "In fact in the first race, we had a good battle with Sal Pa Fuera and only beat them by five to six boat lengths."
Junior Optimist and Laser sailors struggled in winds that gusted to 20 knots by the end of the day. Yet, Puerto Rico's Eric Torres topped the Opti class with two bullets and fellow islander, Ramon Gonzalez, finished first in the Laser class with all bullets in four races sailed.
Meanwhile, Puerto Rico's four-time Olympic sailor, Enrique Figueroa, finished first in the Hobie class.
Kiteboarding is a new class added to this year"s regatta. David Kerr, who ran the race committee for the Puerto Rico International Dinghy Regatta, says, "All sailors have different personalities. Let's just say the kiteboarders are more radical than the Hobie sailors. They sailed over the committee boat bow and jumped over the buoys today."
The Puerto Rico Heineken International Regatta and Puerto Rico International Dinghy Regatta are hosted out of the beautiful new marina facility at Palmas del Mar.
For complete results, visit results.vg
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Here's
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