December 18th and 19th 2021. The Antigua Yacht Club hosted the annual Budget Marine High Tide Series. The sailing conditions were challenging for the regatta with strong NE trade winds and numerous squalls with gusts reaching 33knots at times and seas up to 3 meters on the southern edge of the course. The committee set the course on the South coast of Antigua with a reaching start in Falmouth Harbour out to a 4 leg 1.5mile windward Leeward course between Rendezvous Bay and Windward Bay with a reach back to the finish line.
10 yachts took part in the racing with 4 in Racing Division and 6 in Cruising division. Race 1 saw some of the racing division confused about the committee’s use of a large inner distance mark but eventually everyone got away, Ashley Rhodes’s Whiplash led out of the harbour and sailed cleanly for the entire race, finishing first while Jules Mitchel’s Spirit struggled after a bad start, Jules’s team sailed well and finished second with Challenger sailing very well to a third and Scia forth. Race 2 had a similar result while in Race 3 Spirit and Whiplash had a very close race with the lead changing 3 times whiplash held them off at the finish with a corrected time delta of only 19 seconds.
In Cruising class there was some very close racing at the front of the fleet with Huey Too, See Falke, Encore and Cricket having quite the battle. The day saw Huey Too leading with 3, 1sts Encore in 2nd with 2, 2nd s and a 3rd and See Falke in 3rd
Day 2 of Racing got off to a difficult start for the Committee with a cruise ship anchoring on top of the mooring for the Windward Bay Mark, the start was postponed by 40 minutes while a new Windward Bay Mark was set. The day was very squally with squalls coming through about every half hour with heavy rain and bad visibility and gusts in the low 30s. race 4 saw Whiplash continuing to hold off Spirit to take Racing class with 4 firsts. Huey Too continued domination of Cruising class winning the last race to take Cruising class with 4 firsts. All the competitors returned to the Antigua Yacht club for a great prizegiving with prizes provided by Budget Marine. everyone said they enjoyed the challenging conditions. The results were.
