With Budget Marine staff competing in three different classes during last weekend’s 36th Heineken Regatta we can truley say “We’re boaters at Budget Marine!”
It was yet another close race between the St.Maarten knights and longtime rivals Sir Bobby Valasquez on his beneteau 45, L’Esperance, finishing just ahead of our founder Sir Robbie Ferron racing his J/39 with Team Budget Marine Micron 99 in CSA 5.
Team Budget Marine Micron 99
Robbie Ferron commented on the race in an invited comment by Scuttlebut news on saturday: ‘We were just seconds behind his lordship in the last race.’ joked Robbie Ferron. ‘We need to beat Bobby tomorrow in the last race and we are planning on that. We have a long history of competing, normally he beats me but today he didn’t, so we are just celebrating that for now! Bobby is from Great Bay and on the weather leg we went in there and got ahead of him, which was very nice. Unfortunately on the reach he creamed us, but we got back at him on the downwind leg with some brilliant action, where we gybed into some good pressure. It would give my team great pleasure to win CSA 5 tomorrow, and a degree of deep satisfaction that would be difficult for everybody to comprehend.’
Unfortunately satisafction was with a second place win for Team Budget Marine Micron 99 after very tight battles over the days with winner L’Esperance.
Team Budget Marine Micron 99 celebrating their 2nd place win at the 36th heineken Regatta
On the water and competing in Melges24 with the Gill Race Team, were also Christopher Marshall, Group Managing Director, and Lomig Henry, Manager Budget Marine St.Martin. Their outstanding performance during the Gill Commodore’s Cup earned the team skippered by Andrea Scarabelli the coveted Commodore’s Cup.
The Melges won the Gill 2 Class by half a point scoring a second, third (3.5) and fourth place and remarkably
tied on identical points in the second race with the French Melges 24 GFA Caraïbes from Martinique, winner of
the class last year. According to Race Director Paul Miller Gill Race Team had never won class in all the Commodore Cup events they entered so this victory was particularly sweet, and as Miller pointed out it is ‘a
very hard’ class to win.
The Gill Race Team
The course this year was longer as the melges24 actually sailed around the island for the first time in a
long time. In the past the races started in either Simpson Bay or Cay Bay and featured an up-wind start toward Great Bay before heading downwind to round the island. This year the race started with a downwind spinnaker
pop in race class in Simpson Bay and finished in Simpson Bay. After three days of sailing, the Gill Race Team came in 2nd overall in their class, showing that they are a force to reckon with.
Lastly we had our colleague Bernard Sillem, product manager at Budget Marine, racing in the Beach cats on Gonzalo. Bernard played an instrumental role in getting the Beach Cats racing in the 36th Heineken Regatta again since they last participated in the event in 2008.
Bernard Sillem on Gonzalo
Bernard Sillem’s St. Maarten Beach Cat Gonzalo, deserves special attention after finishing the round the island course in an astonishing elapsed time of 2 hours 21 minutes and 16 seconds, despite encountering problems. Although he was not able to continue racing after the problem encountered on the first day, he has left his stamp, not only with a suucesful addition of the Beach cats but also with his time set in the around the isalnd race on teh first day.
All of you that raced: you make us proud!
For full race results of the 36th Heineken Regatta go to Regatta Guru:
https://regattaguru.com/heineken/100131/results
