The RORC Caribbean 600 brings sailing legends to St Kitts
Last week, we were lucky enough to witness some serious racing yachts in the waters around St Kitts participating in the Royal Ocean Racing Club’s (RORC) Caribbean 600. One of the great 600nm ocean race challenges, along with the Rolex Fastnet Race and the Rolex Sydney Hobart Race, the Caribbean 600 (running 22 February to 26 February this year) sees participating yachts circumnavigating 11 Caribbean islands, starting at ending in Fort Charlotte, English Harbour, Antigua, taking in places like St Maarten, Guadeloupe, Barbuda, St Kitts and Nevis, Saba and St Barths.
Since the first race in 2009, this event has attracted a wide selection of yachts including superyacht schooners and classics to the latest IRC designs. The winding island course requires crews to work with currents, use tradewinds and manoeuvre the coastlines in a complicated race that brings in some of the best sailors in the world.
This year saw a record number of 70 yachts participate, including Kristy and Jim Clarke’s famed Rolex Sydney Hobart Race-winning S/Y Comanche, the beautiful three-masted 65m schooner S/Y Adix and 25.5m Reichel/Pugh Wally Highling Fling VI. The team at Christophe Harbour enjoyed watching the yachts racing in the flat waters in the lee of the island.
One of the most talked about sailing battles of the event ended up being the one between multihulls Concise 10 and Phaedo3. Cutting through the water at speeds of 30 knots and more (apparently topping out nearer 40 knots!), sometimes just a boat length apart, the heroic contest ended after 32 hours racing, with Phaedo3, co-skippered by Brian Thompson crossing the finish line at English Harbour in 31 hours, 59 minutes and 4 seconds, impressively breaking their own multihull race record set last year by over one and a half hours. Concise 10, skippered by Ned Collier Wakefield was just 9 minutes 52 seconds behind.
“It was just incredible watching these powerful sailing machines reaching such speeds in our waters,” says Aeneas Hollins, director of yachting at The Marina at Christophe Harbour. “Watching Phaedo3 in the lead and tacking upwind in the lee of St Kitts was really exciting. At over 25nm, we believe that St Kitts and Nevis has the longest, leeward sailable full wind, flat water stretch in the eastern Caribbean. The future of yacht racing is here!”
You can see all class results of the RORC Caribbean 600 here.
Images courtesy of: @willgould1