BC Boats Head to BVI SR
Apr 3, 2024
Yesterday (Apr 2) the 37 nautical mile Round Tortola Race for the Nanny Cay Cup kicked off the 51st BVI Spring Regatta & Sailing Festival. With five days of spectacular racing and boats form 13 countries, crews will be ready for a great week of racing, partying and celebrating with friends, family, competitors and locals.
Two prominent West Coast boats are in the Caribbean for the fun:
Panacea X (CAN), Salona 45, Katy Campbell
“We’re sailing Panacea X under the Sea to Sky Sailing banner… we’re the only RYA training centre on the west coast of North America, located in Vancouver, offering a mix of RYA training and race coaching.
In the winter, we run Panacea on the Caribbean race circuit. We’ve had strong results this season (2024) so far, with two seconds in class for Barbados Sailing Week and Grenada Sailing Week, 4th in class in the RORC Caribbean 600 and our second consecutive class win at the St Maarten Heineken Regatta. Next stop – Antigua.”
Salacia 1 – Beneteau 44.7 – Chris Chart
Chris Chart lives near a lake in Proctor in eastern British Columbia, Canada where he sails in the summer. He started looking for a boat to buy during Covid, which proved a difficult market at the time given all that was going on back then. He finally found Salacia 1, a cruiser racer in the BVI two years ago and other than needing to install a new rig for insurance purposes, the boat was ready to go.
Chart’s been making the most of his time aboard; he’s cruised from the Caribbean up to Annapolis and Long Island Sound, then back to the Caribbean for the 2023 Heineken Regatta. This year he did the Heineken Regatta again with a group of friends from his sailing club in Canada – the Kootenay Lake Sailing Association – before heading to the BVI where he has local friends who are helping him put together a scratch team.
“This is an experimental run at BVISR as we’ll be a group of people who haven’t raced together previously,” Chart smiled.
Also, BVISR organizers report a chartered Sunsail 41 called Sul Vento, Steve Denure/McLaughlin from RCYC will be participating and some Canadian crew will be joining the J/121 Apollo.
